无知的乐趣

禅海一粟

(英)罗伯特.林德
同一個普通城裏人在鄉下散步，而不對他的無知的領域象海洋那樣寬闊感到驚訝是不可能的。成千上萬的男女活著然後死去，一輩子也不知道山毛櫸和榆樹之間有什麽區別，不知道烏鶇和畫眉的啼鳴有什麽不同。我們整整一生都有鳥生活在我們的周圍，然而我們的觀察力是如此微弱，以致我們中間許多人弄不清楚蒼頭燕雀是否會唱歌，說不出布谷鳥是什麽顏色。我們象孩子似地爭論布谷鳥是否飛的時候總是唱歌還是僅僅有時候在樹枝上唱歌，爭論查普曼（英國作家和翻譯家）的下面兩行詩是根據他的想象呢，還是根據他對大自然的認識寫的：
當布谷鳥在翠綠的橡樹懷中歌唱，
初次使人們在明媚春天心花怒放。
然而，這種無知並不完全是可悲的。從這種無知我們可以得到有所發現的樂趣。這種樂趣是經常的，只要我們足夠無知。
博物學家的幸福在某種程度上也依靠他的無知，無知給他留下這類新天地讓他去征服。他可能在書本上已經達到了知識的頂峰本身，但，在他用自己的眼睛證實每一個光輝的細節之前，他仍然感到是半無知的。他希望親眼看見雌布谷鳥一種罕見的情景——在地上下蛋然後用嘴把蛋叼到窩裏（在這窩裏註定要發生殺害幼鳥的事件）去。他將一天又一天地坐在那裏，望遠鏡緊貼著眼睛，為的是親自確認或駁斥這樣的說法，說布谷鳥確實是在地上而不是在窩裏下蛋的。如果他是十分有幸竟然發現了這種最遮遮掩掩的鳥在下蛋，那麽也仍然有其它領域在等待他去征服，有一大堆有爭論的問題等待他去解答。無疑，科學家們迄今沒有理由為他們錯過的無知而哭泣。要是他們似乎什麽都懂，那麽這僅僅是因為你我幾乎什麽都不懂。在他們發掘出的每一個事實下面總是有一筆無知的財富在等待著他們。
　　我曾經有一次聽到一位聰明的太太問，新月是否總是在相同的星期幾出現。她補充說也許最好是不知道，因為，如果人們事先不知道什麽時候、在天上的哪個地方能夠看見新月，那麽它的出現總會給人帶來意外的愉快。然而，我想，即使對那些熟悉新月的活動時間表的人們，新月也總是出乎意料地來到的。我們並不會因為我們對一年四季的職司有足夠的知識，知道要在三月或四月，而不是在十月裏，去找報春花，而在發現一株早開的報春花時就不那麽高興。我們也知道蘋果樹是在結果子之前而不是在結果子之後開花的，但當五月份我們到一家果園去度假日時，這並不會減少我們對假日之美妙所感到的驚訝。
　　一位當代的英國小說家曾經有一次被外國人問到：在英國，最重要的莊稼是什麽。他毫不猶豫地回答：“黑麥。”象這樣的完全的無知，在我看來似乎帶有豪言壯語的味道；但是，即使是不識字的人的無知也是巨大的。使用電話機的普通人解釋不了電話機是怎樣工作的。他把電話、火車、鑄造排字機、飛機視為理所當然的東西，正象我們的祖先把福音書中的奇跡視作理所當然的東西一樣。對這些東西，他既不懷疑也不理解。我們每一個人好象只是調查了一個小圈子裏面的事實並把這些事實變成了自己的。日常工作以外的知識被大多數人看作是華而不實的東西。然而我們還是經常對我們的無知作出反應，加以反對的。我們不時地喚起自己並思考。我們喜歡對什麽事情都思考——思考死後的生活或思考那些象據說曾經使亞裏士多德感到困惑的問題——“為什麽從中午到子夜打噴嚏是好的，但從半夜到中午打噴嚏則是不吉利的”——人類感受過的最大歡樂之一是：迅速逃到無知中去追求知識。無知的巨大樂趣，歸根結蒂，是提問題的樂趣。已經失去了這種樂趣的人或已經用這種樂趣去換取教條的樂趣（這就是回答問題的樂趣）的人，已經在開始僵化。人們羨慕象喬伊特（本傑明，1817—1893，英國古典學者。—譯者）那樣愛一問到底的人，他在六十歲之後還坐下來學習生理學。我們中間的大多數人在到達他這個年齡以前很久就已經失去了無知感。我們甚至對我們象松鼠那樣積攢的一點知識感到自負，並把不斷增長的年齡本身看作是無所不知的源泉。我們忘記了蘇格拉底之所以以智慧聞名於世並不是因為他無所不知而是因為他在七十歲的時候認識到他還什麽都不知道。

罗伯特.林德（1879-1949）,英国近代散文名家，生于爱尔兰，曾任伦敦《新闻报》文学编辑，工作之余著作颇丰，在散文创作方面有较高成就。

The Pleasures of Ignorance by Robert Lynd

It is impossible to take a walk in the country with an average
townsman--especially, perhaps, in April or May--without being amazed
at the vast continent of his ignorance. It is impossible to take a
walk in the country oneself without being amazed at the vast continent
of one's own ignorance. Thousands of men and women live and die
without knowing the difference between a beech and an elm, between the
song of a thrush and the song of a blackbird. Probably in a modern
city the man who can distinguish between a thrush's and a blackbird's
song is the exception. It is not that we have not seen the birds. It
is simply that we have not noticed them. We have been surrounded by
birds all our lives, yet so feeble is our observation that many of us
could not tell whether or not the chaffinch sings, or the colour of
the cuckoo. We argue like small boys as to whether the cuckoo always
sings as he flies or sometimes in the branches of a tree--whether
Chapman drew on his fancy or his knowledge of nature in the lines:

     When in the oak's green arms the cuckoo sings,
     And first delights men in the lovely springs.

This ignorance, however, is not altogether miserable. Out of it we get
the constant pleasure of discovery. Every fact of nature comes to us
each spring, if only we are sufficiently ignorant, with the dew still
on it. If we have lived half a lifetime without having ever even seen
a cuckoo, and know it only as a wandering voice, we are all the more
delighted at the spectacle of its runaway flight as it hurries from
wood to wood conscious of its crimes, and at the way in which it halts
hawk-like in the wind, its long tail quivering, before it dares
descend on a hill-side of fir-trees where avenging presences may lurk.
It would be absurd to pretend that the naturalist does not also find
pleasure in observing the life of the birds, but his is a steady
pleasure, almost a sober and plodding occupation, compared to the
morning enthusiasm of the man who sees a cuckoo for the first time,
and, behold, the world is made new.
And, as to that, the happiness even of the naturalist depends in some
measure upon his ignorance, which still leaves him new worlds of this
kind to conquer. He may have reached the very Z of knowledge in the
books, but he still feels half ignorant until he has confirmed each
bright particular with his eyes. He wishes with his own eyes to see
the female cuckoo--rare spectacle!--as she lays her egg on the ground
and takes it in her bill to the nest in which it is destined to breed
infanticide. He would sit day after day with a field-glass against his
eyes in order personally to endorse or refute the evidence suggesting
that the cuckoo _does_ lay on the ground and not in a nest. And, if he
is so far fortunate as to discover this most secretive of birds in the
very act of laying, there still remain for him other fields to conquer
in a multitude of such disputed questions as whether the cuckoo's egg
is always of the same colour as the other eggs in the nest in which
she abandons it. Assuredly the men of science have no reason as yet to
weep over their lost ignorance. If they seem to know everything, it is
only because you and I know almost nothing. There will always be a
fortune of ignorance waiting for them under every fact they turn up.
They will never know what song the Sirens sang to Ulysses any more
than Sir Thomas Browne did.

If I have called in the cuckoo to illustrate the ordinary man's
ignorance, it is not because I can speak with authority on that bird.
It is simply because, passing the spring in a parish that seemed to
have been invaded by all the cuckoos of Africa, I realised how
exceedingly little I, or anybody else I met, knew about them. But your
and my ignorance is not confined to cuckoos. It dabbles in all created
things, from the sun and moon down to the names of the flowers. I once
heard a clever lady asking whether the new moon always appears on the
same day of the week. She added that perhaps it is better not to know,
because, if one does not know when or in what part of the sky to
expect it, its appearance is always a pleasant surprise. I fancy,
however, the new moon always comes as a surprise even to those who are
familiar with her time-tables. And it is the same with the coming in
of spring and the waves of the flowers. We are not the less delighted
to find an early primrose because we are sufficiently learned in the
services of the year to look for it in March or April rather than in
October. We know, again, that the blossom precedes and not succeeds
the fruit of the apple-tree, but this does not lessen our amazement at
the beautiful holiday of a May orchard.

At the same time there is, perhaps, a special pleasure in re-learning
the names of many of the flowers every spring. It is like re-reading a
book that one has almost forgotten. Montaigne tells us that he had so
bad a memory that he could always read an old book as though he had
never read it before. I have myself a capricious and leaking memory. I
can read _Hamlet_ itself and _The Pickwick Papers_ as though they were
the work of new authors and had come wet from the press, so much of
them fades between one reading and another. There are occasions on
which a memory of this kind is an affliction, especially if one has a
passion for accuracy. But this is only when life has an object beyond
entertainment. In respect of mere luxury, it may be doubted whether
there is not as much to be said for a bad memory as for a good one.
With a bad memory one can go on reading Plutarch and _The Arabian
Nights_ all one's life. Little shreds and tags, it is probable, will
stick even in the worst memory, just as a succession of sheep cannot
leap through a gap in a hedge without leaving a few wisps of wool on
the thorns. But the sheep themselves escape, and the great authors
leap in the same way out of an idle memory and leave little enough
behind.
And, if we can forget books, it is as easy to forget the months and
what they showed us, when once they are gone. Just for the moment I
tell myself that I know May like the multiplication table and could
pass an examination on its flowers, their appearance and their order.
To-day I can affirm confidently that the buttercup has five petals.
(Or is it six? I knew for certain last week.) But next year I shall
probably have forgotten my arithmetic, and may have to learn once more
not to confuse the buttercup with the celandine. Once more I shall see
the world as a garden through the eyes of a stranger, my breath taken
away with surprise by the painted fields. I shall find myself
wondering whether it is science or ignorance which affirms that the
swift (that black exaggeration of the swallow and yet a kinsman of the
humming-bird) never settles even on a nest, but disappears at night
into the heights of the air. I shall learn with fresh astonishment
that it is the male, and not the female, cuckoo that sings. I may have
to learn again not to call the campion a wild geranium, and to
rediscover whether the ash comes early or late in the etiquette of the
trees. A contemporary English novelist was once asked by a foreigner
what was the most important crop in England. He answered without a
moment's hesitation: "Rye." Ignorance so complete as this seems to me
to be touched with magnificence; but the ignorance even of illiterate
persons is enormous. The average man who uses a telephone could not
explain how a telephone works. He takes for granted the telephone, the
railway train, the linotype, the aeroplane, as our grandfathers took
for granted the miracles of the gospels. He neither questions nor
understands them. It is as though each of us investigated and made his
own only a tiny circle of facts. Knowledge outside the day's work is
regarded by most men as a gewgaw. Still we are constantly in reaction
against our ignorance. We rouse ourselves at intervals and speculate.
We revel in speculations about anything at all--about life after death
or about such questions as that which is said to have puzzled
Aristotle, "why sneezing from noon to midnight was good, but from
night to noon unlucky." One of the greatest joys known to man is to
take such a flight into ignorance in search of knowledge. The great
pleasure of ignorance is, after all, the pleasure of asking questions.
The man who has lost this pleasure or exchanged it for the pleasure of
dogma, which is the pleasure of answering, is already beginning to
stiffen. One envies so inquisitive a man as Jowett, who sat down to
the study of physiology in his sixties. Most of us have lost the sense
of our ignorance long before that age. We even become vain of our
squirrel's hoard of knowledge and regard increasing age itself as a
school of omniscience. We forget that Socrates was famed for wisdom
not because he was omniscient but because he realised at the age of
seventy that he still knew nothing.

yunde

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