中国人的精神1.17
方疏桐
“The civilisations of Europe,” says a German writer,“rest upon those of Greece, Rome and Palestine; the Indians and Persians are of the same Aryan stock as the people of Europe, and are therefore related; and the influence of the intercourse with the Arabs during the Middle Ages, upon European culture has not even to this day, altogether disappeared.” But as for the Chinese, the origin and development of their civilisation rest upon foundations altogether foreign to the culture of the people of Europe.The foreign student of Chinese literature, therefore, has all the disadvantages to overcome which must result form the want of community of primary ideas and notions.It will be necessary for him, not only to equip himself with these foreign notions and ideas, but also, first of all, to find their equivalents in the Europe languages, and if these equivalents do not exist, to disintegrate them, and to see to which side of the universal nature of man these ideas and notions may be referred.Take, for instance, those Chinese words of constant recurrence in the Classics, and generally translated into English as “benevolence,” (仁) “justice,” (义) and “propriety” (礼).Now when we come to take these English words together with the context, we feel that they are not adequate: they do not connote all the ideas the Chinese words contain.Again, the word “humanity,” is perhaps the most exact equivalent for the Chinese word translated “benevolence; " but then,“humanity” must be understood in a sense different from its idiomatic use in the English language.A venturesome translator would use the “love” and “righteousness” of the Bible, which are perhaps as exact as any other, having regard both for the sense of the words and the idiom of the language.Now, however, if we disintegrate and refer the primary notions which these words convey, to the universal nature of man, we get, at once, at their full significance: namely,“the good,” “the true,” and “the beautiful.”
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