THE GARDEN OF EDEN  at some point something must have come from nothing  Sophie Amundsen was on her way home from school. She had walked the first part of the way with Joanna. They had been discussing robots. Joanna thought the human brain was like an advanced computer. Sophie was not certain she agreed. Surely a person was more than a piece of hardware? When they got to the supermarket they went their separate ways. Sophie lived on the outskirts of a sprawling suburb and had almost twice as far to school as Joanna. There were no other houses beyond her garden, which made it seem as if her house lay at the end of the world. This was where the woods began. She turned the corner into Clover Close. At the end of the road there was a sharp bend, known as Captain's Bend. People seldom went that way except on the weekend. It was early May. In some of the gardens the fruit trees were encircled with dense clusters of daffodils. The birches were already in pale green leaf. It was extraordinary how everything burst forth at this time of year! What made this great mass of green vegetation come welling up from the dead earth as soon as it got warm and the last traces of snow disappeared? As Sophie opened her garden gate, she looked in the mailbox. There was usually a lot of junk mail and a few big envelopes for her mother, a pile to dump on the kitchen table before she went up to her room to start her homework. From time to time there would be a few letters from the bank for her father, but then he was not a normal father. Sophie's father was the captain of a big oil tanker, and was away for most of the year. During the few weeks at a time when he was at home, he would shuffle around the house making it nice and cozy for Sophie and her mother. But when he was at sea he could seem very distant. There was only one letter in the mailbox--and it was for Sophie. The white envelope read: "Sophie Amundsen, 3 Clover Close." That was all; it did not say who it was from. There was no stamp on it either. As soon as Sophie had closed the gate behind her she opened the envelope. It contained only a slip of paper no bigger than the envelope. It read: Who are you? Nothing else, only the three words, written by hand, and followed by a large question mark. She looked at the envelope again. The letter was definitely for her. Who could have dropped it in the mailbox? Sophie let herself quickly into the red house. As always, her cat Sherekan managed to slink out of the bushes, jump onto the front step, and slip in through the door before she closed it behind her. Whenever Sophie's mother was in a bad mood, she would call the house they lived in a menagerie. A menagerie was a collection of animals. Sophie certainly had one and was quite happy with it. It had begun with the three goldfish, Goldtop, Red Ridinghood, and Black Jack. Next she got two budgerigars called Smitt and Smule, then Govinda the tortoise, and finally the marmalade cat Sherekan. They had all been given to her to make up for the fact that her mother never got home from work until late in the afternoon and her father was away so much, sailing all over the world. Sophie slung her schoolbag on the floor and put a bowl of cat food out for Sherekan. Then she sat down on a kitchen stool with the mysterious letter in her hand. Who are you? She had no idea. She was Sophie Amundsen, of course, but who was that? She had not really figured that out--yet. What if she had been given a different name? Anne Knutsen, for instance. Would she then have been someone else? She suddenly remembered that Dad had originally wanted her to be called Lillemor. Sophie tried to imagine herself shaking hands and introducing herself as Lillemor Amundsen, but it seemed all wrong. It was someone else who kept introducing herself. She jumped up and went into the bathroom with the strange letter in her hand. She stood in front of the mirror and stared into her own eyes. "I am Sophie Amundsen," she said. The girl in the mirror did not react with as much as a twitch. Whatever Sophie did, she did exactly the same. Sophie tried to beat her reflection to it with a lightning movement but the other girl was just as fast. "Who are you?" Sophie asked. She received no response to this either, but felt a momentary confusion as to whether it was she or her reflection who had asked the question. Sophie pressed her index finger to the nose in the mirror and said, "You are me." As she got no answer to this, she turned the sentence around and said, "I am you." Sophie Amundsen was often dissatisfied with her appearance. She was frequently told that she had beautiful almond-shaped eyes, but that was probably just something people said because her nose was too small and her mouth was a bit too big. And her ears were much too close to her eyes. Worst of all was her straight hair, which it was impossible to do anything with. Sometimes her father would stroke her hair and call her "the girl with the flaxen hair," after a piece of music by Claude Debussy. It was all right for him, he was not condemned to living with this straight dark hair. Neither mousse nor styling gel had the slightest effect on Sophie's hair. Sometimes she thought she was so ugly that she wondered if she was malformed at birth. Her mother always went on about her difficult labor. But was that really what determined how you looked? Wasn't it odd that she didn't know who she was? And wasn't it unreasonable that she hadn't been allowed to have any say in what she would look like? Her looks had just been dumped on her. She could choose her own friends, but she certainly hadn't chosen herself. She had not even chosen to be a human being. What was a human being? Sophie looked up at the girl in the mirror again. "I think I'll go upstairs and do my biology homework," she said, almost apologetically. Once she was out in the hall, she thought, No, I'd rather go out in the garden. "Kitty, kitty, kitty!" Sophie chased the cat out onto the doorstep and closed the front door behind her. As she stood outside on the gravel path with the mysterious letter in her hand, the strangest feeling came over her. She felt like a doll that had suddenly been brought to life by the wave of a magic wand. Wasn't it extraordinary to be in the world right now, wandering around in a wonderful adventure! Sherekan sprang lightly across the gravel and slid into a dense clump of red-currant bushes. A live cat, vibrant with energy from its white whiskers to the twitching tail at the end of its sleek body. It was here in the garden too, but hardly aware of it in the same way as Sophie. As Sophie started to think about being alive, she began to realize that she would not be alive forever. I am in the world now, she thought, but one day I shall be gone. Was there a life after death? This was another question the cat was blissfully unaware of. It was not long since Sophie's grandmother had died. For more than six months Sophie had missed her every single day. How unfair that life had to end! Sophie stood on the gravel path, thinking. She tried to think extra hard about being alive so as to forget that she would not be alive forever. But it was impossible. As soon as she concentrated on being alive now, the thought of dying also came into her mind. The same thing happened the other way around: only by conjuring up an intense feeling of one day being dead could she appreciate how terribly good it was to be alive. It was like two sides of a coin that she kept turning over and over. And the bigger and clearer one side of the coin became, the bigger and clearer the other side became too. You can't experience being alive without realizing that you have to die, she thought. But it's just as impossible to realize you have to die without thinking how incredibly amazing it is to be alive. Sophie remembered Granny saying something like that the day the doctor told her she was ill. "I never realized how rich life was until now," she said. How tragic that most people had to get ill before they understood what a gift it was to be alive. Or else they had to find a mysterious letter in the mailbox! Perhaps she should go and see if any more letters had arrived. Sophie hurried to the gate and looked inside the green mailbox. She was startled to find that it contained another white envelope, exactly like the first. But the mailbox had definitely been empty when she took the first envelope! This envelope had her name on it as well. She tore it open and fished out a note the same size as the first one. Where does the world come from? it said. I don't know, Sophie thought. Surely nobody really knows. And yet--Sophie thought it was a fair question. For the first time in her life she felt it wasn't right to live in the world without at least inquiring where it came from. The mysterious letters had made Sophie's head spin. She decided to go and sit in the den. The den was Sophie's top secret hiding place. It was where she went when she was terribly angry, terribly miserable, or terribly happy. Today she was simply confused. * * * The red house was surrounded by a large garden with lots of flowerbeds, fruit bushes, fruit trees of different kinds, a spacious lawn with a glider and a little gazebo that Granddad had built for Granny when she lost their first child a few weeks after it was born. The child's name was Marie. On her gravestone were the words: "Little Marie to us came, greeted us, and left again." Down in a corner of the garden behind all the raspberry bushes was a dense thicket where neither flowers nor berries would grow. Actually, it was an old hedge that had once marked the boundary to the woods, but because nobody had trimmed it for the last twenty years it had grown into a tangled and impenetrable mass. Granny used to say the hedge made it harder for the foxes to take the chickens during the war, when the chickens had free range of the garden. To everyone but Sophie, the old hedge was just as useless as the rabbit hutches at the other end of the garden. But that was only because they hadn't discovered Sophie's secret. Sophie had known about the little hole in the hedge for as long as she could remember. When she crawled through it she came into a large cavity between the bushes. It was like a little house. She knew nobody would find her there. Clutching the two envelopes in her hand, Sophie ran through the garden, crouched down on all fours, and wormed her way through the hedge. The den was almost high enough for her to stand upright, but today she sat down on a clump of gnarled roots. From there she could look out through tiny peepholes between the twigs and leaves. Although none of the holes was bigger than a small coin, she had a good view of the whole garden. When she was little she used to think it was fun to watch her mother and father searching for her among the trees. Sophie had always thought the garden was a world of its own. Each time she heard about the Garden of Eden in the Bible it reminded her of sitting here in the den, surveying her own little paradise. Where does the world come from? She hadn't the faintest idea. Sophie knew that the world was only a small planet in space. But where did space come from? It was possible that space had always existed, in which case she would not also need to figure out where it came from. But could anything have always existed? Something deep down inside her protested at the idea. Surely everything that exists must have had a beginning? So space must sometime have been created out of something else. But if space had come from something else, then that something else must also have come from something. Sophie felt she was only deferring the problem. At some point, something must have come from nothing. But was that possible? Wasn't that just as impossible as the idea that the world had always existed? They had learned at school that God created the world. Sophie tried to console herself with the thought that this was probably the best solution to the whole problem. But then she started to think again. She could accept that God had created space, but what about God himself? Had he created himself out of nothing? Again there was something deep down inside her that protested. Even though God could create all kinds of things, he could hardly create himself before he had a "self" to create with. So there was only one possibility left: God had always existed. But she had already rejected that possibility! Everything that existed had to have a beginning. Oh, drat! She opened the two envelopes again. Who are you? Where does the world come from? What annoying questions! And anyway where did the letters come from? That was just as mysterious, almost. Who had jolted Sophie out of her everyday existence and suddenly brought her face to face with the great riddles of the universe? For the third time Sophie went to the mailbox. The mailman had just delivered the day's mail. Sophie fished out a bulky pile of junk mail, periodicals, and a couple of letters for her mother. There was also a postcard of a tropical beach. She turned the card over. It had a Nor-wegian stamp on it and was postmarked "UN Battalion." Could it be from Dad? But wasn't he in a completely different place? It wasn't his handwriting either. Sophie felt her pulse quicken a little as she saw who the postcard was addressed to: "Hilde Moller Knag, c/o Sophie Amundsen, 3 Clover Close ..." The rest of the address was correct. The card read: Dear Hilde, Happy 15th birthday! As I'm sure you'll understand, I want to give you a present that will help you grow. Forgive me for sending the card c/o Sophie. It was the easiest way. Love from Dad. Sophie raced back to the house and into the kitchen. Her mind was in a turmoil. Who was this "Hilde," whose fifteenth birthday was just a month before her own? Sophie got out the telephone book. There were a lot of people called Moller, and quite a few called Knag. But there was nobody in the entire directory called Moller Knag. She examined the mysterious card again. It certainly seemed genuine enough; it had a stamp and a postmark. Why would a father send a birthday card to Sophie's address when it was quite obviously intended to go somewhere else? What kind of father would cheat his own daughter of a birthday card by purposely sending it astray? How could it be "the easiest way"? And above all, how was she supposed to trace this Hilde person? So now Sophie had another problem to worry about. She tried to get her thoughts in order: This afternoon, in the space of two short hours, she had been presented with three problems. The first problem was who had put the two white envelopes in her mailbox. The second was the difficult questions these letters contained. The third problem was who Hilde Moller Knag could be, and why Sophie had been sent her birthday card. She was sure that the three problems were interconnected in some way. They had to be, because until today she had lived a perfectly ordinary life. 伊甸园    苏菲放学回家了。有一段路她和乔安同行,她们谈着有关机器人的问题。乔安认为人的脑子就像一部很先进的电脑,这点苏菲并不太赞同。她想:人应该不只是一台机器吧.她们走到超市那儿就分手了。苏菲住在市郊,那一带面积辽阔,花木扶疏。苏菲家位于外围,走到学校的距离是乔安家的一倍,附近除了她家的园子之外,没有其他住家,因此看起来她们仿佛住在世界尽头似的。再过去,就是森林了。 苏菲转了个弯,走到苜蓿巷路上。路尽头有一个急转弯,人们称之为“船长弯”。除了周六、周日的时候,人们很少打这儿经过。 正是五月初的时节。有些人家的园子里,水仙花已经一丛丛开满了果树的四周,赤杨树也已经长出了嫩绿的叶子。 每年到这个时节,万物总是充满了生机。这岂不是一件奇妙的事吗?当天气变暖,积雪融尽时,千千万万的花草树木便陡地自荒枯的大地上生长起来了。这是什么力量造成的呢?苏菲打开花园的门时,看了看信箱。里面通常有许多垃圾邮件和一些写给她妈妈的大信封。她总是把它们堆在厨房的桌子上,然后走上楼到房间做功课。 偶尔,也会有一些银行寄给她爸爸的信。不过,苏菲的爸爸跟别人不太一样。他是一艘大油轮的船长,几乎一年到头都在外面。 难得有几个星期在家时,他会上上下下细心打点,为苏菲母女俩把房子整理得漂亮舒适。不过,当他出海后却显得理他们遥远无比。 今天,信箱里却只有一封信,而且是写给苏菲的。信封上写着:“苜蓿路三号,苏菲收”。只此而已,没有写寄信人的名字,也没贴邮票。 苏菲随手把门带上后,便拆开了信封。里面只有一小张约莫跟信封一样大小的纸,上面写着:你是谁?除此之外,什么也没有。没有问候的话,也没有回信地址,只有这三个手写的字,后面是一个大大的问号。 苏菲再看看信封。没错,信是写给她的。但又是谁把它放在信箱里的呢?苏菲快步走进她家那栋漆成红色的房子里。当她正要把房门带上时,她的猫咪雪儿一如往常般悄悄自树丛中走出,跳到门前的台阶上,一溜烟就钻了进来。 “猫咪,猫咪,猫咪!”你是谁苏菲的妈妈心情不好时,总是把他们家称为“动物园”。事实上,苏菲也的确养了许多心爱的动物。一开始时是三只金鱼:金冠、小红帽和黑水手。然后她又养了两只鹦哥,名叫史密特和史穆尔,然后是名叫葛文的乌龟,最后则是猫咪雪儿。这些都是爸妈买给她作伴的。因为妈妈总是很晚才下班回家,而爸爸又常航行四海,很伊旬田苏菲把书包丢在地板上,为雪儿盛了一碗猫食。然后她便坐在厨房的高脚椅上,手中仍拿着那封神秘的信。 你是谁?她怎么会知道?不用说,她的名字叫苏菲,但那个叫做苏菲的人又是谁呢?她还没有想出来。 如果她取了另外一个名字呢?比方说,如果她叫做安妮的话,她会不会变成别人?这使她想起爸爸原本要将她取名为莉莉。她试着想象自己与别人握手,并且介绍自己名叫莉莉的情景,但却觉得好像很不对劲,像是别人在自我介绍一般。 她跳起来,走进浴室,手里拿着那封奇怪的信。她站在镜子前面,凝视着自己,的眼睛。“我的名字叫莉莉。”她说。 镜中的女孩却连眼睛也不眨一下。无论苏菲做什么,她都依样画葫芦。苏菲飞快地做了一个动作,想使镜中的影像追赶不及,但那个女孩却和她一般的敏捷。 “你是谁?”苏菲问。 镜中人也不回答。有一刹那,她觉得迷惑,弄不清刚才问问题的到底是她,还是镜中的影像。 苏菲用食指点着镜中的鼻子,说:“你是我。”对方依旧没有反应。于是她将句子颠倒过来,说:“我是你。”苏菲对自己的长相常常不太满意。时常有人对她说她那一双杏眼很漂亮,但这可能只是因为她的鼻子太小,嘴巴有点太大的缘故。还有,她的耳朵也太靠近眼睛了。最糟糕的是她有一头直发,简直没办法打扮。有时她的爸爸在听完一首德彪西的曲子之后会摸摸她的头发,叫她:“亚麻色头发的女孩。”(编按:为德彪西钢琴“前奏曲”之曲名)对他来说,这当然没有什么不好,因为这头直板板的深色头发不是长在他的头上,他毋需忍受那种感觉。不管泡沫胶或造型发胶都无济于事。有时她觉得自己好丑,一定是出生时变了形的缘故。以前妈妈总是念叨她当年生苏菲时难产的情况,不过,难道这样就可以决定一个人的长相吗?她居然不知道自己是谁,这不是太奇怪了吗?她也没有一点权利选择自己的长相,这不是太不合理了吗?这些事情都是她不得不接受的。也许她可以选择交什么朋友,但却不能选择自己要成为什么人。她甚至不曾选择要做人。 人是什么?她再度抬起头,看看镜中的女孩。 “我要上楼去做生物课的作业了。”她说,语气中几乎有些歉意。她很快走到了走廊。一到这儿,她想:“不,我还是到花园去好了。”“猫咪!猫咪!猫咪!”苏菲追猫追到门阶上,并且随手关上了前门。•当她拿着那封神秘的信,站在花园中的石子路上时,那种奇怪的感觉又浮现了。她觉得自己好像一个在仙子的魔棒挥舞之下,突然被赋予了生命的玩具娃娃。她现在能够在这个世界上四处漫游,从事奇妙的探险,这不是一件很不寻常的事吗?雪儿轻巧地跳过石子路,滑进了浓密的红醋栗树丛中。它是一只活泼的猫,毛色光滑,全身上下从白色的胡须到左右摇动的尾巴都充满了蓬勃的生气。它此刻也在这园子中,但却未像苏菲一样意识到这件事实。 当苏菲开始思考有关活着这件事时,她也开始意识到她不会永远活着。 她想:“我现在是活在这世上,但有一天我会死去。”人死之后还会有生命吗?这个问题猫咪也不会去想。这倒是它的福气。 苏菲的祖母不久前才去世。有六个多月的时间,苏菲天天都想念她。生命为何要结束呢?这是多么不公平呀!苏菲站在石子路上想着。她努力思考活着的意义,好让自己忘掉她不会永远活着这件事。然而,这实在不太可能。现在,只要她一专心思索活着这件事,脑海中便会马上浮现死亡的念头。反过来说也是如此:唯有清晰地意识到有一天她终将死去,她才能够体会活在世上是多么美好。这两件事就像钱币的正反两面,被她不断翻来转去,当一面变得更大、更清晰时,另外一面也随之变得大而清晰。生与死正是一枚钱币的正反两面。 “如果你没有意识到人终将死去,就不能体会活着的滋味。”她想。然而,同样的,如果你不认为活着是多么奇妙而不可思议的事时,你也无法体认你必须要死去的事实。 苏菲记得那天医生说告诉祖母她生病了时,祖母说过同样的话。她说:“现在我才体认到生命是何等可贵。”大多数人总是要等到生病后才了解,能够活着是何等的福气。 这是多么悲哀的事!或许他们也应该在信箱里发现一封神秘的来信吧!也许她应该去看看是否有别的信。 苏菲匆匆忙忙走到花园门口,查看了一下那绿色的信箱,她很惊讶的发现里面居然有另外一封信,与第一封一模一样。她拿走第一封信时,里面明明是空的呀!这封信上面也写着她的名字。她将它拆开,拿出一张与第一封信一样大小的便条纸。 纸上写着:世界从何而来?苏菲想:“我不知道。”不用说,没有人真正知道。不过苏菲认为这个问题的确是应该问的。她生平第一次觉得生在这世界上却连“世界从何而来”这样的问题也不问一问,实在是很不恭敬。 这两封神秘的信把苏菲弄得脑袋发昏。她决定到她的老地方去坐下来。这个老地方是苏菲最秘密的藏身之处。当她非常愤怒、悲伤或快乐时,她总会来到这儿。而今天,苏菲来此的理由却是因为她感到困惑。 苏菲的困惑这栋红房子坐落在一个很大的园子中。园里有很多花圃、各式各样的果树,以及一片广阔的草坪,上面有一架沙发式的秋千与一座小小的凉亭。这凉亭是奶奶的第一个孩子在出生几周便夭折后,爷爷为奶奶兴建的。孩子的名字叫做玛莉。她的墓碑上写着:“小小玛莉来到人间,惊鸿一瞥魂归高天”。 在花园的一角,那些术莓树丛后面有一片花草果树不生的浓密灌木林。事实上,那儿原本是一行生长多年的树篱,一度是森林的分界线。然而由于过去二十年来未经修剪,如今已经长成一大片,枝叶纠结,难以穿越。奶奶以前常说战争期间这道树篱使得那些在园中放养的鸡比较不容易被狐狸捉去。 如今,除了苏菲以外,大家都认为这行老树篱就像园子另一边那个兔笼子一般,没有什么用处。但这全是因为他们浑然不知苏菲的秘密的缘故。 自从解事以来,苏菲就知道树篱中有个小洞。她爬过那个小洞,就置身于灌木丛中的一个大洞穴中。这个洞穴就像一座小小的房子。她知道当她在那儿时,没有人可以找到•她。 手里紧紧握着那两封信,苏菲跑过花园,而后整个人趴下来,钻进树篱中。里面的高度差不多勉强可以让她站起来,但她今天只是坐在一堆纠结的树根上。她可以从这里透过枝桠与树叶之间的隙缝向外张望。虽然没有一个隙缝比一枚小钱币大,但她仍然可以清楚地看见整座花园。当她还小时,常躲在这儿,看着爸妈在树丛间找她,觉得很好玩。 苏菲一直认为这个花园自成一个世界。每一次她听到圣经上有关伊甸园的事时,她就觉得自己好像坐在她的小天地,观察属于她的小小乐园一般。 世界从何而来?她一点也不知道。她知道这个世界只不过是太空中一个小小的星球。然而,太空又是打哪儿来的呢?很可能太空是早就存在的。如果这样,她就不需要去想它是从哪里来了。但一个东西有可能原来就存在吗?她内心深处并不赞成这样的看法。现存的每一件事物必然都曾经有个开始吧?因此,太空一定是在某个时刻由另外一样东西造成的。 不过,如果太空是由某样东西变成的,那么,那样东西必然也是由另外一样东西变成的。苏菲觉得自己只不过是把问题向后拖延罢了。在某一时刻,事物必然曾经从无到有。然而,这可能吗?这不就像世界一直存在的看法一样不可思议吗?他们在学校曾经读到世界是由上帝创造的。现在苏菲试图安慰自己,心想这也许是整件事最好的答案吧。不过,她又再度开始思索。她可以接受上帝创造太空的说法,不过上帝又是谁创造的呢?是它自己从无中生有,创造出它自己吗?苏菲内心深处并不以为然。即使上帝创造了万物,它也无法创造出它自己,因为那时它自己并不存在呀。因此,只剩下一个可能性了:上帝是一直都存在的。然而苏菲已经否认这种可能性了,已经存在的万事万物必然有个开端的。 哦!这个问题真是烦死人了她再度拆开那两封信。 你是谁?世界从何而来?什么烂问题嘛!再说,这些信又是打哪儿来的呢?这件事几乎和这两个问题一样,是个谜。 是谁给苏菲这样一记当头棒喝,使她突然脱离了日常生活,面对这样一个宇宙的大谜题7.苏菲再度走到信箱前。这已经是第三次了。邮差刚刚送完今天的信。苏菲拿出了一大堆垃圾邮件、期刊以及两三封写给妈妈的信。除此之外,还有一张风景明信片,上面印着热带海滩的景象。她把卡片翻过来,上面贴着挪威的邮票,并盖着“联合国部队”的邮戳。会是爸爸寄来的吗?可是爸爸不在这个地方呀1况且笔迹也当她看到收信人的名字时,不觉心跳微微加速。上面写着:“请苜蓿巷三号苏菲转交席德……”剩下的地址倒是正确的。卡片上写着:亲爱的席德:你满十五岁了,生日快乐!我想你会明白,我希望给你一样能帮助你成长的生日礼物。原谅我请苏菲代转运张卡片,因为这样最方便。’爱你的老爸苏菲快步走回屋子,进入厨房。此刻她的思绪一团混乱。 这个席德是谁?她的十五岁生日居然只比苏菲早了一个月。 她去客厅拿了电话簿来查。有许多人姓袭,也有不少人姓习,但就是没有人姓席。 她再度审视这张神秘的卡片。上面有邮票也有邮戳,因此毫无疑问,这不是一封伪造的信。 怎么会有父亲把生日卡寄到苏菲家?这明明不是给她的呀!什么样的父亲会故意把信寄到别人家,让女儿收不到生日卡呢?为什么他说这是“最方便”的呢?更何况,苏菲要怎样才能找到这个名叫席德的人?现在,苏菲又有问题要烦恼了。她试着将思绪做一番整理:今天下午,在短短的两个小时之内,她面临了三个问题。第一个是谁把那两个白色的信封放在她的信箱内,第二个是那两封信提出的难题,第三个则是这个席德是谁。她的生日卡为何会寄到苏菲家?苏菲相信这三个问题之间必然有所关联。一定是这样没错,因为直到今天以前,她的生活都跟平常人没有两样。 The Top Hat  the only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder... Sophie was sure she would hear from the anonymous letter writer again. She decided not to tell anyone about the letters for the time being. At school she had trouble concentrating on what the teachers said. They seemed to talk only about unimportant things. Why couldn't they talk about what a human being is--or about what the world is and how it came into being? For the first time she began to feel that at school as well as everywhere else people were only concerned with trivialities. There were major problems that needed to be solved. Did anybody have answers to these questions? Sophie felt that thinking about them was more important than memorizing irregular verbs. When the bell rang after the last class, she left the school so fast that Joanna had to run to catch up with her. After a while Joanna said, "Do you want to play cards this evening?" Sophie shrugged her shoulders. "I'm not that interested in card games any more." Joanna looked surprised. "You're not? Let's play badminton then." Sophie stared down at the pavement--then up at her friend. "I don't think I'm that interested in badminton either." "You're kidding!" Sophie noticed the touch of bitterness in Joanna's tone. "Do you mind telling me what's suddenly so important?" Sophie just shook her head. "It's ... it's a secret." "Yuck! You're probably in love!" The two girls walked on for a while without saying anything. When they got to the soccer field Joanna said, "I'm going across the field." Across the field! It was the quickest way for Joanna, but she only went that way when she had to hurry home in time for visitors or a dental appointment. Sophie regretted having been mean to her. But what else could she have said? That she had suddenly become so engrossed in who she was and where the world came from that she had no time to play badminton? Would Joanna have understood? Why was it so difficult to be absorbed in the most vital and, in a way, the most natural of all questions? She felt her heart beating faster as she opened the mailbox. At first she found only a letter from the bank and some big brown envelopes for her mother. Darn! Sophie had been looking forward to getting another letter from the unknown sender. As she closed the gate behind her she noticed her own name on one of the big envelopes. Turning it over, she saw written on the back: "Course in Philosophy. Handle with care." Sophie ran up the gravel path and flung her schoolbag onto the step. Stuffing the other letters under the doormat, she ran around into the back garden and sought refuge in the den. This was the only place to open the big letter. Sherekan came jumping after her but Sophie had to put up with that. She knew the cat would not give her away. Inside the envelope there were three typewritten pages held together with a paper clip. Sophie began to read. WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? Dear Sophie, Lots of people have hobbies. Some people collect old coins or foreign stamps, some do needlework, others spend most of their spare time on a particular sport. A lot of people enjoy reading. But reading tastes differ widely. Some people only read newspapers or comics, some like reading novels, while others prefer books on astronomy, wildlife, or technological discoveries. If I happen to be interested in horses or precious stones, I cannot expect everyone else to share my enthusiasm. If I watch all the sports programs on TV with great pleasure, I must put up with the fact that other people find sports boring. Is there nothing that interests us all? Is there nothing that concerns everyone--no matter who they are or where they live in the world? Yes, dear Sophie, there are questions that certainly should interest everyone. They are precisely the questions this course is about. What is the most important thing in life? If we ask someone living on the edge of starvation, the answer is food. If we ask someone dying of cold, the answer is warmth. If we put the same question to someone who feels lonely and isolated, the answer will probably be the company of other people. But when these basic needs have been satisfied--will there still be something that everybody needs? Philosophers think so. They believe that man cannot live by bread alone. Of course everyone needs food. And everyone needs love and care. But there is something else--apart from that--which everyone needs, and that is to figure out who we are and why we are here. Being interested in why we are here is not a "casual" interest like collecting stamps. People who ask such questions are taking part in a debate that has gone on as long as man has lived on this planet. How the universe, the earth, and life came into being is a bigger and more important question than who won the most gold medals in the last Olympics. The best way of approaching philosophy is to ask a few philosophical questions: How was the world created? Is there any will or meaning behind what happens? Is there a life after death? How can we answer these questions? And most important, how ought we to live? People have been asking these questions throughout the ages. We know of no culture which has not concerned itself with what man is and where the world came from. Basically there are not many philosophical questions to ask. We have already asked some of the most important ones. But history presents us with many different answers to each question. So it is easier to ask philosophical questions than to answer them. Today as well each individual has to discover his own answer to these same questions. You cannot find out whether there is a God or whether there is life after death by looking in an encyclopedia. Nor does the encyclopedia tell us how we ought to live. However, reading what other people have believed can help us formulate our own view of life. Philosophers' search for the truth resembles a detective story. Some think Andersen was the murderer, others think it was Nielsen or Jensen. The police are sometimes able to solve a real crime. But it is equally possible that they never get to the bottom of it, although there is a solution somewhere. So even if it is difficult to answer a question, there may be one--and only one--right answer. Either there is a kind of existence after death--or there is not. A lot of age-old enigmas have now been explained by science. What the dark side of the moon looks like was once shrouded in mystery. It was not the kind of thing that could be solved by discussion, it was left to the imagination of the individual. But today we know exactly what the dark side of the moon looks like, and no one can "believe" any longer in the Man in the Moon, or that the moon is made of green cheese. A Greek philosopher who lived more than two thousand years ago believed that philosophy had its origin in man's sense of wonder. Man thought it was so astonishing to be alive that philosophical questions arose of their own accord. It is like watching a magic trick. We cannot understand how it is done. So we ask: how can the magician change a couple of white silk scarves into a live rabbit? A lot of people experience the world with the same incredulity as when a magician suddenly pulls a rabbit out of a hat which has just been shown to them empty. In the case of the rabbit, we know the magician has tricked us. What we would like to know is just how he did it. But when it comes to the world it's somewhat different. We know that the world is not all sleight of hand and deception because here we are in it, we are part of it. Actually, we are the white rabbit being pulled out of the hat. The only difference between us and the white rabbit is that the rabbit does not realize it is taking part in a magic trick. Unlike us. We feel we are part of something mysterious and we would like to know how it all works. P.S. As far as the white rabbit is concerned, it might be better to compare it with the whole universe. We who live here are microscopic insects existing deep down in the rabbit's fur. But philosophers are always trying to climb up the fine hairs of the fur in order to stare right into the magician's eyes. Are you still there, Sophie? To be continued . . . Sophie was completely exhausted. Still there? She could not even remember if she had taken the time to breathe while she read. Who had brought this letter? It couldn't be the same person who had sent the birthday card to Hilde Moller Knag because that card had both a stamp and a postmark. The brown envelope had been delivered by hand to the mailbox exactly like the two white ones. Sophie looked at her watch. It was a quarter to three. Her mother would not be home from work for over two hours. Sophie crawled out into the garden again and ran to the mailbox. Perhaps there was another letter. She found one more brown envelope with her name on it. This time she looked all around but there was nobody in sight. Sophie ran to the edge of the woods and looked down the path. No one was there. Suddenly she thought she heard a twig snap deep in the woods. But she was not completely sure, and anyway it would be pointless to chase after someone who was determined to get away. Sophie let herself into the house. She ran upstairs to her room and took out a big cookie tin full of pretty stones. She emptied the stones onto the floor and put both large envelopes into the tin. Then she hurried out into the garden again, holding the tin securely with both hands. Before she went she put some food out for Sherekan. "Kitty, kitty, kitty!" Once back in the den she opened the second brown envelope and drew out the new typewritten pages. She began to read. A STRANGE CREATURE Hello again! As you see, this short course in philosophy will come in handy-sized portions. Here are a few more introductory remarks: Did I say that the only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder? If I did not, I say it now: THE ONLY THING WE REQUIRE TO BE GOOD PHILOSOPHERS IS THE FACULTY OF WONDER. Babies have this faculty. That is not surprising. After a few short months in the womb they slip out into a brand-new reality. But as they grow up the faculty of wonder seems to diminish. Why is this? Do you know? If a newborn baby could talk, it would probably say something about what an extraordinary world it had come into. We see how it looks around and reaches out in curiosity to everything it sees. As words are gradually acquired, the child looks up and says "Bow-wow" every time it sees a dog. It jumps up and down in its stroller, waving its arms: "Bow-wow! Bow-wow!" We who are older and wiser may feel somewhat exhausted by the child's enthusiasm. "All right, all right, it's a bow-wow," we say, unimpressed. "Please sit still." We are not enthralled. We have seen a dog before. This rapturous performance may repeat itself hundreds of times before the child learns to pass a dog without going crazy. Or an elephant, or a hippopotamus. But long before the child learns to talk properly--and Ion before it learns to think philosophically--the world we have become a habit. A pity, if you ask me. My concern is that you do not grow up to be one of those people who take the world for granted, Sophie dear. So just to make sure, we are going to do a couple of experiments in thought before we begin on the course itself. Imagine that one day you are out for a walk in the woods. Suddenly you see a small spaceship on the path in front of you. A tiny Martian climbs out of the spaceship and stands on the ground looking up at you . . . What would you think? Never mind, it's not important. But have you ever given any thought to the fact that you are a Martian yourself? It is obviously unlikely that you will ever stumble upon a creature from another planet. We do not even know that there is life on other planets. But you might stumble upon yourself one day. You might suddenly stop short and see yourself in a completely new light. On just such a walk in the woods. I am an extraordinary being, you think. I am a mysterious creature. You feel as if you are waking from an enchanted slumber. Who am I? you ask. You know that you are stumbling around on a planet in the universe. But what is the universe? If you discover yourself in this manner you will have discovered something as mysterious as the Martian we just mentioned. You will not only have seen a being from outer space. You will feel deep down that you are yourself an extraordinary being. Do you follow me, Sophie? Let's do another experiment in thought: One morning, Mom, Dad, and little Thomas, aged two or three, are having breakfast in the kitchen. After a while Mom gets up and goes over to the kitchen sink, and Dad--yes, Dad--flies up and floats around under the ceiling while Thomas sits watching. What do you think Thomas says? Perhaps he points up at his father and says: "Daddy's flying!" Thomas will certainly be astonished, but then he very often is. Dad does so many strange things that this business of a little flight over the breakfast table makes no difference to him. Every day Dad shaves with a funny machine, sometimes he climbs onto the roof and turns the TV aerial--or else he sticks his head under the hood of the car and comes up black in the face. Now it's Mom's turn. She hears what Thomas says and turns around abruptly. How do you think she reacts to the sight of Dad floating nonchalantly over the kitchen table? She drops the jam jar on the floor and screams with fright. She may even need medical attention once Dad has returned respectably to his chair. (He should have learned better table manners by now!) Why do you think Thomas and his mother react so differently? It all has to do with habit. (Note this!) Mom has learned that people cannot fly. Thomas has not. He still isn't certain what you can and cannot do in this world. But what about the world itself, Sophie? Do you think it can do what it does? The world is also floating in space. Sadly it is not only the force of gravity we get used to as we grow up. The world itself becomes a habit in no time at all. It seems as if in the process of growing up we lose the ability to wonder about the world. And in doing so, we lose something central--something philosophers try to restore. For somewhere inside ourselves, something tells us that life is a huge mystery. This is something we once experienced, long before we learned to think the thought. To be more precise: Although philosophical questions concern us all, we do not all become philosophers. For various reasons most people get so caught up in everyday affairs that their astonishment at the world gets pushed into the background. (They crawl deep into the rabbit's fur, snuggle down comfortably, and stay there for the rest of their lives.) To children, the world and everything in it is new, something that gives rise to astonishment. It is not like that for adults. Most adults accept the world as a matter of course. This is precisely where philosophers are a notable exception. A philosopher never gets quite used to the world. To him or her, the world continues to seem a bit unreasonable--bewildering, even enigmatic. Philosophers and small children thus have an important faculty in common. You might say that throughout his life a philosopher remains as thin-skinned as a child. So now you must choose, Sophie. Are you a child who has not yet become world-weary? Or are you a philosopher who will vow never to become so? If you just shake your head, not recognizing yourself as either a child or a philosopher, then you have gotten so used to the world that it no longer astonishes you. Watch out! You are on thin ice. And this is why you are receiving this course in philosophy, just in case. I will not allow you, of all people, to join the ranks of the apathetic and the indifferent. I want you to have an inquiring mind. The whole course is free of charge, so you get no money back if you do not complete it. If you choose to break off the course you are free to do so. In that case you must leave a message for me in the mailbox. A live frog would be eminently suitable. Something green, at least, otherwise the mailman might get scared. To summarize briefly: A white rabbit is pulled out of a top hat. Because it is an extremely large rabbit, the trick takes many billions of years. All mortals are born at the very tip of the rabbit's fine hairs, where they are in a position to wonder at the impossibility of the trick. But as they grow older they work themselves ever deeper into the fur. And there they stay. They become so comfortable they never risk crawling back up the fragile hairs again. Only philosophers embark on this perilous expedition to the outermost reaches of language and existence. Some of them fall off, but others cling on desperately and yell at the people nestling deep in the snug softness, stuffing themselves with delicious food and drink. "Ladies and gentlemen," they yell, "we are floating in space!" But none of the people down there care. "What a bunch of troublemakers!" they say. And they keep on chatting: Would you pass the butter, please? How much have our stocks risen today? What is the price of tomatoes? Have you heard that Princess Di is expecting again? When Sophie's mother got home later that afternoon, Sophie was practically in shock. The tin containing the letters from the mysterious philosopher was safely hidden in the den. Sophie had tried to start her homework but could only sit thinking about what she had read. She had never thought so hard before! She was no longer a child--but she wasn't really grown up either. Sophie realized that she had already begun to crawl down into the cozy rabbit's fur, the very same rabbit that had been pulled from the top hat of the universe. But the philosopher had stopped her. He--or was it a she?--had grabbed her by the back of the neck and pulled her up again to the tip of the fur where she had played as a child. And there, on the outermost tips of the fine hairs, she was once again seeing the world as if for the very first time. The philosopher had rescued her. No doubt about it. The unknown letter writer had saved her from the triviality of everyday existence. When Mom got home at five o'clock, Sophie dragged her into the living room and pushed her into an armchair. "Mom--don't you think it's astonishing to be alive?" she began. Her mother was so surprised that she didn't answer at first. Sophie was usually doing her homework when she got home. "I suppose I do--sometimes," she said. "Sometimes? Yes, but--don't you think it's astonishing that the world exists at all?" "Now look, Sophie. Stop talking like that." "Why? Perhaps you think the world is quite normal?" "Well, isn't it? More or less, anyway." Sophie saw that the philosopher was right. Grownups took the world for granted. They had let themselves be lulled into the enchanted sleep of their humdrum existence once and for all. "You've just grown so used to the world that nothing surprises you any more." "What on earth are you talking about?" "I'm talking about you getting so used to everything. Totally dim, in other words." "I will not be spoken to like that, Sophie!" "All right, I'll put it another way. You've made yourself comfortable deep down in the fur of a white rabbit that is being pulled out of the universe's top hat right now. And in a minute you'll put the potatoes on. Then you'll read the paper and after half an hour's nap you'll watch the news on TV!" An anxious expression came over her mother's face. She did indeed go into the kitchen and put the potatoes on. After a while she came back into the living room, and this time it was she who pushed Sophie into an armchair. "There's something I must talk to you about," she began. Sophie could tell by her voice that it was something serious. "You haven't gotten yourself mixed up with drugs, have you, dear?" Sophie was just about to laugh, but she understood why the question was being brought up now. "Are you nuts?" she said. "That only makes you duller'." No more was said that evening about either drugs or white rabbits. 魔术师的礼帽    只有一个条件:要有好奇心…… 苏菲很肯定那位写匿名信的人会再度来信。她决定暂时不要将这件事告诉任何人。 如今,在学校上课时,她变得很难专心听课。他们所说的仿佛都是一些芝麻绿豆的事。他们为何不能谈一些诸如:“人是什么?”或“世界是什么,又何以会存在?”这类的事呢?她生平第一次开始觉得无论在学校或其他地方,人们关心的都只是一些芝麻琐事罢了。世上还有更重要的事有待解答,这些事比学校所上的任何科目都更重要。 世上有人可以解答这些问题吗?无论如何,苏菲觉得思索这些问题要比去死背那些不规则动词更加要紧。 最后一堂课的下课铃响起时,她飞快走出学校,快得乔安必须要跑步才能追上她。 过了一会儿,乔安说:“今天傍晚我们来玩牌好吗?”苏菲耸了耸肩:“我不像从前那么爱玩牌了。”乔安听了仿佛被雷击中一般。 “是吗?那我们来玩羽毛球好了。”苏菲垂下眼睛,看着人行道,而后抬起头看着乔安。 “我对羽毛球也不是很有兴趣了。”“你不是说真的吗?”苏菲察觉到乔安语气中的不满。 “你可不可以告诉我是什么事情突然变得那么重要?”苏菲摇摇头:“嗯……这是一个秘密。”“噢!你大概是谈恋爱了吧她们两个又走了一会儿,谁都没有说话。当她们走到足球场时,乔安说:“我要从斜坡这里走过去。”从斜坡走过去!没错,这是乔安回家最近的一条路,但她通常只有在家里有客人或必须赶到牙医那儿去的时候才从这儿走。 苏菲开始后悔她刚才对乔安的态度不佳。不过她又能对她说些什么呢?说她是因为突然忙着解答自己是谁以及世界从何而来等问题,所以才没有时间玩羽毛球吗?乔安会了解吗?。 这些都是世间最重要,也可以说是最自然的问题。但为何一心想着这些问题会如此累人?苏菲打开信箱时,感觉自己心跳加快。起先她只看到一封银行寄来的信以及几个写着妈妈名字的棕色大信封。该死!她居然开始疯狂地期待那个不知名的人再度来信。 当她关上园门时,发现有一个大信封上写着她的名字。她把它翻过来要拆信时,看到信封背面写着:“哲学课程。请小心轻放。”苏菲飞奔过石子路,将书包甩在台阶上,并将其他信塞在门前的脚垫下,然后跑进后面的园子里,躲进她的密洞。唯有在这里,她才能拆阅这个大信封。 雪儿也跟着跳进来。苏菲无可奈何,因为她知道雪儿是赶也赶不走的。 信封内有三张打好字的纸,用一个纸夹夹住。苏菲开始读信。 哲学是什么?亲爱的苏菲:人的嗜好各有不同。有些人搜集古钱或外国邮票刺绣,有些人则利用大部分的空间时间从事某种运动另外许多人以阅读为乐,但阅读的品位人各不同。有些人只看报纸或漫画,有些人喜欢看小说,有些人则偏好某些特殊题材的书籍,如天文学、自然生物或科技新知等。 如果我自己对马或宝石有兴趣,我也不能期望别人都和我一样。如果我看电视体育节目看得津津有味,就必须忍受有些人认为体育节目很无聊的事实。 可是,天底下是不是没有一件事是我们大家都感兴趣的呢?是不是没有一件事是每一个人都关切的--无论他们是谁或住在何处?是的,亲爱的苏菲,天底下当然有一些问题是每个人都有兴趣的。而这门课程正与这些问题有关。 生命中最重要的事情是什么?如果我们问某一个正生活在饥饿边缘的人,他的答案一定是“食物”。如果我们问一个快要冻死的人,答案一定是“温暖”。如果我们拿同样的问题问一个寂寞孤独的人,那答案可能是“他人的陪伴”了。 然而,当这些基本需求都获得满足后,是否还有些东西是每一个人都需要的呢?哲学家认为,答案是肯定的。他们相信人不能只靠面包过日子。当然,每一个人都需要食物,每一个人都需要爱与关怀。不过除了这些以外,还有一些东西是人人需要的,那就是:明白我们是谁、为何会在这里。 想知道我们为何会在这儿,并不像集邮一样是一种休闲式的兴趣。 那些对这类问题有兴趣的人所要探讨的,乃是自地球有人类以来,人们就辩论不休的问题:宇宙、地球与生命是如何产生的?这个问题比去年奥运会谁得到最多的金牌要更大,也更重要。 探讨哲学最好的方式就是问一些哲学性的问题,如:这世界是如何创造出来的?其背后是否有某种意志或意义?人死后还有生命吗?我们如何能够解答这些问题呢?最重要的是,我们应该如何生活?千百年来,人们不断提出这些问题。据我们所知,没有一种文化不关心“人是谁”、“世界从何而来”这样的问题。 基本上,我们要问的哲学问题并不多。我们刚才已经提出了其中最重要的问题。然而,在历史上,人们对每一个问题提出了不同的答案。因此,提出哲学问题要比回答这些问题更容易。 即使是在今天,每个人仍然必须各自寻求他对这些问题的答案。你无法在百科全书查到有关“上帝是否存在?”与“人死后是否还有生命?”这些问题的答案。百科全书也不会告诉我们应该如何生活。不过,读一读别人的意见倒可以帮助我们建立自己对生命的看法。 哲学家追寻真理的过程很像是一部侦探小说。有人认为安单森是凶手,有人则认为尼尔森或詹生才是。遇到犯罪案件,警方有时可以侦破,但也很可能永远无法查出真相(虽然在某个地方一定有一个破案的办法)。因此,即使要回答一个问题很不容易,但无论如何总会有一个(且仅此一个)正确答案的。人死后要不就是透过某种形式存在,要不就是根本不再存在。 过去许多千百年的谜题如今都有了科学的解释。从前,月亮黑暗的那一面可说是神秘莫测。由于这不是那种可以借讨论来解决的问题,因此当时月亮的真实面目如何全凭个人想象。然而今天我们已经确知月亮黑暗的那一面是何模样。没有人会再“相信”嫦娥的存在或月亮是由绿色的乳酪做成等等说法了。 两千多年前,一位古希腊哲学家认为,哲学之所以产生是因为人有好奇心的缘故。他相信,人对于活着这件事非常惊讶,因此自然而然就提出了一些哲学性的问题。 这就像我们看人家变魔术一样。由于我们不明白其中的奥妙,于是便问道:“魔术师如何能将两三条白色的丝巾变成一只活生生的兔子呢?”许多人对于这世界的种种也同样有不可置信的感觉,就像我们看到魔术师突然从一顶原本空空如也的帽子里拉出一只兔子一般。 关于突然变出兔子的事,我们知道这不过是魔术师耍的把戏罢了。我们只是想知道他如何办到而已。然而,谈到有关世界的事时,情况便有些不同了。我们知道这世界不全然是魔术师妙手一挥、掩人耳目的把戏,因为我们就生活在其中,我们是它的一部分。 事实上,我们就是那只被人从帽子里拉出来的小白兔。我们与小白兔之间唯一的不同是:小白兔并不明白它本身参与了一场魔术表演。我们则相反。我们觉得自己是某种神秘事物的一部分,我们想了解其中的奥秘。 P.S;关于小白兔,最好将它比做整个宇宙,而我们人类则是寄居在兔子毛皮深处的微生虫。不过哲学家总是试图沿着兔子的细毛往上爬,以便将魔术师看个清楚。 苏菲,你还在看吗?未完待续……苏菲真是累极了。“还在看吗?”她甚至不记得她在看信时是否曾停下来喘口气呢!是谁捎来这封信?当然不可能是那位寄生日卡给席德的人,因为卡片上不但有邮票,还有邮戳。但这个棕色的信封却像那两封白色的信一样,是由某人亲自投进信箱的。 苏菲看了看手表,时间是两点四十五分。妈妈还有两个多小时才下班。 苏菲爬出来,回到园子里,跑到信箱旁。也许还有另一封信呢!她发现另一个写着她名字的棕色信封。这回她四下看了看,但却没有见到任何人影。她又跑到树林边,往路的那一头张望。 那边也没有人。 突然间她好像听到树林深处某根枝条“啪!”一声折断的声音。 不过她并不是百分之百确定。何况,如果一个人决心要逃跑,再怎么追他也没有用。 苏菲进入屋里,把书包和给妈妈的信放在厨房的桌子上,然后便跑上楼梯,进入她的房间,拿出一个装满美丽石子的饼干盒。她把那些石头倒在地板上,把两个大信封装进盒子里。然后又匆忙走到花园里,双手紧紧拿着饼干盒。临走时,她拿出一些食物给雪儿吃。 “猫咪!猫咪!猫眯!”回到密洞中后,她打开了第二封棕色的信,取出几页才刚打好字的信纸。她开始看信。 奇怪的生物嗨!苏菲,我们又见面了。诚如你所看见的,这门简短的哲学课程将会以一小段、一小段的形式出现。以下仍然是序言部分:我是否曾经说过,成为一个优秀哲学家的唯一条件是要有好奇心?如果我未曾说过,那么我现在要说:成为一个优秀哲学家的唯一条件是要有好奇心。 婴儿有好奇心,这并不令人意外。在娘胎里短短几个月后,他们便掉进一个崭新的世界。不过当他们慢慢成长时,这种好奇心似乎也逐渐减少。为什么?你知道答案吗,苏菲?苏衣的世界让我们假设,如果一个初生的婴儿会说话,他可能会说他来到的世界是多么奇特。因为,尽管他不能说话,我们可以看到他如何左顾右盼并好奇地伸手想碰触他身边的每一样东西。 小孩子逐渐学会说话后,每一次看见狗,便会抬起头说:“汪!汪!”他会在学步车里跳上跳下,挥舞着双手说:“汪!汪!汪!汪!”我们这些年纪比较大、比较见多识广的人可能会觉得小孩子这种兴奋之情洋溢的样子很累人。我们会无动于衷地说:“对,对,这是汪汪。好了,坐着不要动尸看到狗,我们可不像小孩子那样着迷,因为我们早就看过了。 小孩子这种行为会一再重复,可能要经过数百次之后,他才会在看到狗时不再兴奋异常。在他看到大象或河马时,也会发生同样的情况。远在孩童学会如何讲话得体、如何从事哲学性的思考前,他就早已经习惯这个世界了。 这是很可惜的一件事,如果你问我的看法的话。 亲爱的苏菲,我不希望你长大之后也会成为一个把这世界视为理所当然的人。为了确定起见,在这课程开始之前,我们将做两三个有关思想的测验。 请你想象,有一天你去树林里散步。突然间你看到前面的路上有一艘小小的太空船,有一个很小的火星人从船舱里爬出来,站在路上抬头看着你……你会怎么想?算了,这并不重要。但你是否曾经想过你自己也是个火星人?很明显的,你不太可能突然撞见一个来自其他星球的生物。我们甚至不知道其他星球是否也有生物存在。不过有一天你可能会突然发现自己。你可能会突然停下来,以一种完全不同的眼光来看自己,就在你在树林里散步的时候。 你会想:“我是一个不同凡响的存在。我是一个神秘的生物。”你觉得自己好像刚从一个梦幻中醒来。我是谁?你问道。你知道自己正行走在宇宙的一个星球上。但宇宙又是什么?如果你像这样,突然意识到自己的存在,你会发现自己正像我们刚才提到的火星人那样神秘。你不仅看到一个从外太空来的生命,同时也会打内心深处觉得自己的存在是如此不凡响。.如果你不介意的话,苏菲,现在就让我们来做另一个思想上的测验。 有一天早上,爸、妈和小同正在厨房里吃早餐。过了一会儿,妈妈站起身来,走到水槽边。这时,爸爸飞了起来,在天花板下面飘浮。小同坐在那儿看着。你想小同会说什么?也许他会指着父亲说:“爸爸在飞。”小同当然会觉得吃惊,但是他经常有这样的经验。 爸爸所做的奇妙的事太多了,因此这回他飞到早餐桌上方这件事对小同并没有什么特别,每天爸爸都用一个很滑稽的机器刮胡子,有时他会爬到屋顶上调整电视的天线。或者,他偶尔也会把头伸进汽车的引擎盖里,出来时脸都是黑的。好了,现在轮到妈妈了。她听到小同说的话,转身一瞧。你想她看到爸爸像没事人一般飘浮在餐桌的上方会有什么反应?她吓得把果酱罐子掉在地上,然后开始尖叫。等到爸爸好整以暇地回到座位上时,她可能已经需要急救了。(从现在起,爸爸可真是该注意一下自己的餐桌礼仪了!)为何小同和妈妈有如此不同的反应?你认为呢?这完全与习惯有关。(注意㈠妈妈已经知道人是不能飞的,小周则不然。他仍然不确定在这个世界上人能做些什么或不能做些什么。 然而,苏菲,这世界又是怎么回事呢?它也一样飘浮在太空中呀。你认为这可能吗?遗憾的是,当我们成长时,不仅习惯了有地心引力这回事,同时也很快地习惯了世上的一切。我们在成长的过程当中,似乎失去了对这世界的好奇心。也正因此,我们丧失了某种极为重要的能力(这也是一种哲学家们想要使人们恢复的能力)。因为,在我们内心的某处,有某个声音告诉我们:生命是一种很庞大的、神秘的存在。 这是我们在学会从事这样的思考前都曾经有过的体验。 更明白地说:尽管我们都想过哲学性的问题,却并不一定每个人都会成为哲学家。由于种种理由,大多数人都忙于日常生活的琐事,因此他们对于这世界的好奇心都受到压抑。(就像那些微生虫一般,爬进兔子的毛皮深处,在那儿怡然自得地待上一辈予,从此不再出来。)对于孩子们而言,世上的种种都是新鲜而令人惊奇的。对于大人们则不然。大多数成人都把这世界当成一种理所当然的存在。 这正是哲学家们之所以与众不同的地方。哲学家从来不会过分习惯这个世界。对于他或她而言,这个世界一直都有一些不合理,甚至有些复杂难解、神秘莫测。这是哲学家与小孩子共同具有的一种重要能力。你可以说,哲学家终其一生都像个孩子一般敏感。 所以,苏菲,你现在必须做个选择。你是个还没有被世界磨掉好奇心的孩子?还是一个永远不会如此的哲学家?如果你只是摇摇头,不知道自己究竟是个孩子还是哲学家,那么你已经太过习惯这个世界,以至于不再对它感到惊讶了。果真如此,你得小心,因为你正处于一个危险的阶段,这也是为何你要上这门哲学课的原因。因为我们要以防万一。我不会听任你变得像其他人一样没有感觉、无动于衷。我希望你有一个好奇、充满求知欲的心灵。 这门课程是不收费的,因此即使你没有上完也不能退费。如果你中途不想上了,也没关系,只要在信箱里放个东西做信号就可以了。最好是一只活青蛙,或至少是某种绿色的东西,以免让邮差吓一大跳。 综合我上面所说的话,简而言之,这世界就像魔术师从他的帽子里拉出的一只白兔。只是这白兔的体积极其庞大,因此这场戏法要数十亿年才变得出来。所有的生物都出生于这只兔予的细毛顶端,他们刚开始对于这场令人不可置信的戏法都感到惊奇。然而当他们年纪愈长,也就愈深入兔子的毛皮,并且待了下来。他们在那儿觉得非常安适,因此不愿再冒险爬回脆弱的兔毛顶端。唯有哲学家才会踏上此一危险的旅程,迈向语言与存在所能达到的顶峰。其中有些人掉了下来,但也有些人死命攀住兔毛不放,并对那些窝在舒适柔软的兔毛的深处、尽情吃喝的人们大声吼叫。 他们喊:“各位先生女士们,我们正飘浮在太空中呢!”但下面的人可不管这些哲学家们在嚷些什么。 这些人只会说:“哇!真是一群捣蛋鬼尸然后又继续他们原先的谈话:请你把奶油递过来好吗?我们今天的股价涨了多少?番茄现在是什么价钱?你有没有听说黛安娜王妃又怀孕了?那天下午,苏菲的妈妈回家时,苏菲仍处于震惊状态中。她把那个装着神秘哲学家来信的铁盒子很稳妥地藏在密洞中。然后她试着开始做功课,但是当她坐在那儿时,满脑子想的都是她刚才读的信。 她过去从未这样努力思考过。她已经不再是个孩子了,但也还没有真正长大。苏菲意识到她已经开始朝着兔子(就是从宇宙的帽子中被拉出来的那只)温暖舒适的毛皮深处向下爬,却被这位哲学家中途拦住。他(或者说不定是她)一把抓住她的后脑勺,将她拉回毛尖(她孩提时代戏耍的地方)。就在那儿,在兔毛的最顶端,她再度以仿佛乍见的眼光打量这个世界。 毫无疑问,这位哲学家救了她。写信给她的无名氏将她从琐碎的日常生活拯救出来了。 下午五点,妈妈到家时,苏菲把她拉进起居室,将她推在一张安乐椅上坐下。 一日她开始问:“妈,我们居然有生命,你不觉得这很令人惊讶吗?”她妈妈真是丈二金刚摸不着头脑,不知道该怎么回答。平常她回家时,苏菲多半在做功课。 “我想是吧!有时候。”她说。 “有时候?没错,可是--你不觉得这个世界居然存在是很令人惊讶的事吗?”“听着,苏菲,不要再说这些话。”“为什么?难道你认为这个世界平凡无奇吗?”“不是吗?多少总有一些吧?”苏菲终于明白哲学家说得没错。大人们总是将这个世界视为理所当然的存在,并且就此任自己陷入柴米油盐的生活中而浑然不觉。 “你太习惯这个世界了,才会对任何事情都不感到惊奇。”“你到底在说些什么?”“我是说你对每一件事都太习惯了。换句话说,已经变得非常迟钝了。”“不要这样对我讲话,苏菲!”“好吧,我换一种方式说好了。你已经在这只被拉出宇宙的帽子的白兔毛皮深处待得太舒服了。再过一会儿你就会把马铃薯拿出来,然后就开始看报纸,之后打半个小时的盹,然后看电视新闻。”妈妈的脸上掠过一抹忧虑的神色。她走进厨房把马铃薯拿出来。过了一会儿,她便走回起居室,这次轮到她把苏菲推到安乐椅上坐下了。 “我有事情要跟你谈。”她说。从她的声音听起来,苏菲可以猜到事情一定很严重。 “你没有跑去跟人家喝什么药吧?宝贝!”苏菲差一点笑出来。但她了解妈妈为什么会问她这个问题。 “我又不是神经病,”她说,“那样只会让人变得更钝呀!”那天晚上,谁也没有再提起任何有关喝药或白兔的事情。 The Myths ... a precarious balance between the forces of good and evil  There was no letter for Sophie the next morning. All through the interminable day at school she was bored stiff. She took care to be extra nice to Joanna during the breaks. On the way home they talked about going camping as soon as the woods were dry enough. After what seemed an eternity she was once again at the mailbox. First she opened a letter postmarked in Mexico. It was from her father. He wrote about how much he was longing for home and how for the first time he had managed to beat the Chief Officer at chess. Apart from that he had almost finished the pile of books he had brought aboard with him after his winter leave. And then, there it was--a brown envelope with her name on it! Leaving her schoolbag and the rest of the mail in the house, Sophie ran to the den. She pulled out the new typewritten pages and began to read: THE MYTHOLOGICAL WORLD PICTURE Hello there, Sophie! We have a lot to do, so we'll get started without delay. By philosophy we mean the completely new way of thinking that evolved in Greece about six hundred years before the birth of Christ. Until that time people had found answers to all their questions in various religions. These religious explanations were handed down from generation to generation in the form of myths. A myth is a story about the gods which sets out to explain why life is as it is. Over the millennia a wild profusion of mythological explanations of philosophical questions spread across the world. The Greek philosophers attempted to prove that these explanations were not to be trusted. In order to understand how the early philosophers thought, we have to understand what it was like to have a mythological picture of the world. We can take some Nordic myths as examples. (There is no need to carry coals to Newcastle.) You have probably heard of Thor and his hammer. Before Christianity came to Norway, people believed that Thor rode across the sky in a chariot drawn by two goats. When he swung his hammer it made thunder and lightning. The word "thunder" in Norwegian--"Thor-d0n"--means Thor's roar. In Swedish, the word for thunder is "aska," originally "as-aka," which means "god's journey" over the heavens. When there is thunder and lightning there is also rain, which was vital to the Viking farmers. So Thor was worshipped as the god of fertility. The mythological explanation for rain was therefore that Thor was swinging his hammer. And when it rained the corn germinated and thrived in the fields. How the plants of the field could grow and yield crops was not understood. But it was clearly somehow connected with the rain. And since everybody believed that the rain had something to do with Thor, he was one of the most important of the Norse gods. There was another reason why Thor was important, a reason related to the entire world order. The Vikings believed that the inhabited world was an island under constant threat from outside dangers. They called this part of the world Midgard, which means the kingdom in the middle. Within Midgard lay Asgard, the domain of the gods. Outside Midgard was the kingdom of Utgard, the domain of the treacherous giants, who resorted to all kinds of cunning tricks to try and destroy the world. Evil monsters like these are often referred to as the "forces of chaos." Not only in Norse mythology but in almost all other cultures, people found that there was a precarious balance between the forces of good and evil. One of the ways in which the giants could destroy Midgard was by abducting Freyja, the goddess of fertility. If they could do this, nothing would grow in the fields and the women would no longer have children. So it was vital to hold these giants in check. Thor was a central figure in this battle with the giants. His hammer could do more than make rain; it was a key weapon in the struggle against the dangerous forces of chaos. It gave him almost unlimited power. For example, he could hurl it at the giants and slay them. And he never had to worry about losing it because it always came back to him, just like a boomerang. This was the mythological explanation for how the balance of nature was maintained and why there was a constant struggle between good and evil. And this was precisely the kind of explanation that the philosophers rejected. But it was not a question of explanations alone. Mortals could not just sit idly by and wait for the gods to intervene while catastrophes such as drought or plague loomed. They had to act for themselves in the struggle against evil. This they did by performing various religious ceremonies, or rites. The most significant religious ceremony in Norse times was the offering. Making an offering to a god had the effect of increasing that god's power. For example, mortals had to make offerings to the gods to give them the strength to conquer the forces of chaos. They could do this by sacrificing an animal to the god. The offering to Thor was usually a goat. Offerings to Odin sometimes took the form of human sacrifices. The myth that is best known in the Nordic countries comes from the Eddie poem "The Lay of Thrym." It tells how Thor, rising from sleep, finds that his hammer is gone. This makes him so angry that his hands tremble and his beard shakes. Accompanied by his henchman Loki he goes to Freyja to ask if Loki may borrow her wings so that he can fly to Jotunheim, the land of the giants, and find out if they are the ones who have stolen Thor's hammer. At Jotunheim Loki meets Thrym, the king of the giants, who sure enough begins to boast that he has hidden the hammer seven leagues under the earth. And he adds that the gods will not get the hammer back until Thrym is given Freyja as his bride. Can you picture it, Sophie? Suddenly the good gods find themselves in the midst of a full-blown hostage incident. The giants have seized the gods' most vital defensive weapon. This is an utterly unacceptable situation. As long as the giants have Thor's hammer, they have total control over the world of gods and mortals. In exchange for the hammer they are demanding Freyja. But this is equally unacceptable. If the gods have to give up their goddess of fertility--she who protects all life--the grass will disappear from the fields and all gods and mortals will die. The situation is deadlocked. Loki returns to Asgard, so the myth goes, and tells Freyja to put on her wedding attire for she is (alas!) to wed the king of the giants. Freyja is furious, and says people will think she is absolutely man-crazy if she agrees to marry a giant. Then the god Heimdall has an idea. He suggests that Thor dress up as a bride. With his hair up and two stones under his tunic he will look like a woman. Understandably, Thor is not wildly enthusiastic about the idea, but he finally accepts that this is the only way he will ever get his hammer back. So Thor allows himself to be attired in bridal costume, with Loki as his bridesmaid. To put it in present-day terms, Thor and Loki are the gods' "anti-terrorist squad." Disguised as women, their mission is to breach the giants' stronghold and recapture Thor's hammer. When the gods arrive at Jotunheim, the giants begin to prepare the wedding feast. But during the feast, the bride--Thor, that is--devours an entire ox and eight salmon. He also drinks three barrels of beer. This astonishes Thrym. The true identity of the "commandos" is very nearly revealed. But Loki manages to avert the danger by explaining that Freyja has been looking forward to coming to jotunheim so much that she has not eaten for a week. When Thrym lifts the bridal veil to kiss the bride, he is startled to find himself looking into Thor's burning eyes. Once again Loki saves the situation by explaining that the bride has not slept for a week because she is so excited about the wedding. At this, Thrym commands that the hammer be brought forth and laid in the bride's lap during the wedding ceremony. Thor roars with laughter when he is given the hammer. First he kills Thrym with it, and then he wipes out the giants and all their kin. And thus the gruesome hostage affair has a happy ending. Thor--the Batman or James Bond of the gods--has once again conquered the forces of evil. So much for the myth itself, Sophie. But what is the real meaning behind it? It wasn't made up just for entertainment. The myth also tries to explain something. Here is one possible interpretation: When a drought occurred, people sought an explanation of why there was no rain. Could it be that the giants had stolen Thor's hammer? Perhaps the myth was an attempt to explain the changing seasons of the year: in the winter Nature dies because Thor's hammer is in jotunheim. But in the spring he succeeds in winning it back. So the myth tried to give people an explanation for something they could not understand. But a myth was not only an explanation. People also carried out religious ceremonies related to the myths. We can imagine how people's response to drought or crop failure would be to enact a drama about the events in the myth. Perhaps a man from the village would dress up as a bride--with stones for breasts--in order to steal the hammer back from the giants. By doing this, people were taking some action to make it rain so the crops would grow in their fields. There are a great many examples from other parts of the world of the way people dramatized their myths of the seasons in order to speed up the processes of nature. So far we have only taken a brief glimpse at the world of Norse mythology. But there were countless myths about Thor and Odin, Freyr and Frey a, Hoder and Balder and many other gods. Mythologica notions of this kind flourished all over the world until philosophers began to tamper with them. A mythological world picture also existed in Greece when the first philosophy was evolving. The stories of the Greek gods had been handed down from generation to generation for centuries. In Greece the gods were called Zeus and Apollo, Hera and Athene, Dionysos and Ascle-pios, Heracles and Hephaestos, to mention only a few of them. Around 700 B.C., much of the Greek mythology was written down by Homer and Hesiod. This created a whole new situation. Now that the myths existed in written form, it was possible to discuss them. The earliest Greek philosophers criticized Homer's mythology because the gods resembled mortals too much and were just as egoistic and treacherous. For the first time it was said that the myths were nothing but human notions. One exponent of this view was the philosopher Xe-nophanes, who lived from about 570 B.C. Men have created the gods in their own image, he said. They believe the gods were born and have bodies and clothes and language just as we have. Ethiopians believe that the gods are black and flat-nosed, Thracians imagine them to be blue-eyed and fair-haired. If oxen, horses, and lions could draw, they would depict gods that looked like oxen, horses, and lions! During that period the Greeks founded many city-states, both in Greece itself and in the Greek colonies in Southern Italy and Asia Minor, where all manual work was done by slaves, leaving the citizens free to devote all their time to politics and culture. In these city environments people began to think in a completely new way. Purely on his own behalf, any citizen could question the way society ought to be organized. Individuals could thus also ask philosophical questions without recourse to ancient myths. We call this the development from a mythological mode of thought to one based on experience and reason. The aim of the early Greek philosophers was to find natural, rather than supernatural, explanations for natural processes. Sophie left the den and wandered about in the large garden. She tried to forget what she had learned at school, especially in science classes. If she had grown up in this garden without knowing anything at all about nature, how would she feel about the spring? Would she try to invent some kind of explanation for why it suddenly started to rain one day? Would she work out some fantasy to explain where the snow went and why the sun rose in the morning? Yes, she definitely would. She began to make up a story: Winter held the land in its icy grip because the evil Muriat had imprisoned the beautiful Princess Sikita in a cold prison. But one morning the brave Prince Bravato came and rescued her. Sikita was so happy that she began to dance over the meadows, singing a song she had composed inside the dank prison. The earth and the trees were so moved that all the snow turned into tears. But then the sun came out and dried all the tears away. The birds imitated Sikita's song, and when the beautiful princess let down her golden tresses, a few locks of her hair fell onto the earth and turned into the lilies of the field ... Sophie liked her beautiful story. If she had not known any other explanation for the changing seasons, she felt sure she would have come to believe her own story in the end. She understood that people had always felt a need to explain the processes of nature. Perhaps they could not live without such explanations. And that they made up all those myths in the time before there was anything called science. 神话 第二天早上,苏菲没有接到任何信。一整天在学校里,她觉得如坐针毡,无聊极了。下课时,她特别小心,对乔安比平日更好。放学回家途中,她们讨论相偕露营的计划,只等树林里的地变干时便可以成行。 好不容易终于捱到了开信箱的时刻。首先她拆开一封盖着墨西哥邮戳的信,是爸爸写来的。信上说他非常想家,还有他生平第一遭在棋赛中打败了大副。除此之外,他也几乎看完了他在寒假过后带上船的一批书。之后,苏菲又看到了一个写着她名字的棕色信封。把书包和其他邮件放进屋里后,她便跑进密洞中,把信封内刚打开的信纸抽出来,开始看着: 神话的世界观 嗨,苏菲!今天要讲的东西很多,因此我们就马上开始吧。 所谓哲学,我们指的是耶稣基督降生前六百年左右,在希腊演进的一种崭新的思考方式。在那以前,人们在各种宗教中找到了他们心中问题的答案。这些宗教上的解释透过神话的形式代代流传下来。所谓神话就是有关诸神的故事,其目的在解释为何生命是这一番面貌。 数千年来,世界各地有许多企图解答哲学性问题的神话故事。 希腊哲学家则想证明这些解释是不可信赖的。 为了要了解古代哲学家的想法,我们必须先了解神话中显现的世界是何种面貌。我们可以拿一些北欧神话来做例子。 你也许曾经听过索尔(Thor)与他的铁锤的故事。在基督教传入挪威之前,人们相信索尔时常乘着一辆由两只山羊拉着的战车横越天空。他一挥动斧头便产生闪电与雷声。挪威文中的“雷”(Thor—don)字意指索尔的怒吼。在瑞典文中,“雷”字(aska)原来写成as—ah,意指神(在天上)出游。•当天空雷电交加时,便会下雨,而雨对北欧农民是很重要的。 因此,索尔又被尊为象征肥沃、富饶的神。 因此神话中对雨的解释便是:索尔挥动锤子时,就会下雨。而一旦下雨,田里的玉米便会开始发芽、茁长。 田里的植物如何能够生长并结出果实?这问题令人不解,不过显然与雨水有关。更重要的是,每一个人都相信雨水与索尔有关,因此他便成了古代北欧最重要的神祗之一。 索尔之所以受到重视另外有一个原因,而这个原因与整个世界秩序有关。 北欧人相信人类居住的这部分世界是一个岛屿,时常面临来自外界的危险。他们称此地为“米德加德”(M记gard),就是“中央王国”的意思。在这个中央王国内,有一个地方名叫“阿斯加德”(As—gard),乃是诸神的领地。 中央王国外面有一个叫做“乌特加德”(Utgard)的王国,是狡猾的巨人居住的地方。这些巨人运用各种诡计想要摧毁这个世界。 类似这样的邪恶怪物经常被称为“混乱之力”。事实上,不仅挪威神话,几平所有其他文化都发现善与恶这两种势力之间存在着一种不稳定的平衡。 巨人们摧毁“中央王国”的方法之一就是绑架象征肥沃、多产的女神芙瑞雅(Freyja)。如果他们得逞,田野里将无法长出作物,妇女也将生不出小孩。因此,非得有人来制住这些巨人不可。 这时就要仰赖索尔了。他的铁锤不仅能使天空下雨,也是对抗危险的混乱之力的重要武器。这支锤子几乎给了他无边的法力,他可以用它掷杀巨人,而且毋需担心把它弄丢,因为它总是会自动回到他身边,就像回力球一样。 这就是神话中对于大自然如何维持平衡、为何善与恶之间永远相互对抗等问题的解释,而哲学家们拒绝接受这种解释。 然而,这并不仅仅是解释的问题。 当干旱、瘟疫等灾害发生时,凡人不能光是呆坐在那儿,等着神明来解救。他们必须在这场对抗邪恶的战争中出力,而他们出力的方法则是举行种种宗教仪式。 在古代的北欧,意义最重大的宗教仪式乃是献祭。对神明献祭可以增强神明的法力。举个例子,凡人必须以祭品供奉神明,以给予他们战胜混乱之力的力量。其方法是宰杀牲畜,祭拜神明。古代北欧人祭祀索尔时通常以山羊为祭品,祭拜欧丁(Odin)时有时还会以人为祭品。 北欧国家最著名的神话来自冰岛一首名为《史莱慕之诗》(TheLayo{Thrym)的诗。诗中叙述有一天索尔醒来,发现他的锤子不见了,气得双手发抖,吹胡子瞪眼睛。于是他带着侍僮洛奇去拜访芙瑞雅,问她是否可以将翅膀借他,好让洛奇可以飞到巨人所住的“约腾海”(Jotunheim),以查探那些巨人是否偷了索尔的锤子。 洛奇到了约腾海后,见到了巨人之王史莱慕。后者得意地宣称他已将锤子藏在地下七里格的地方,并说除非诸神将芙瑞雅嫁给他,否则他不会归还锤子。 苏菲,你了解吗?这些善良的神明突然间面临了一个全面的人质危机。巨人们夺走了诸神最有力的防卫武器,这是令人完全无法忍受的情况。只要巨人们拥有索尔的锤子,他们便能够百分之百控制诸神与凡人的世界。他们要求用芙瑞雅来交换锤子的行为也令人无法接受。如果诸神被迫放弃芙瑞雅这位保护天下生灵的丰饶女神,则田野上将看不到绿草,所有的神明与凡人也都将死去。 这真是令人左右为难的困境。假如你能想象一群恐怖分子扬言要在伦敦或巴黎的市中心引爆一枚核子炸弹,除非他们达到他们所提的可怕要求,你马上就可以了解这个情况的严重性了。 据说,洛奇回到阿斯加德后,就叫芙瑞雅穿上她的新娘礼服,准备嫁给巨人之王。(呜呼哀哉!)芙瑞雅非常生气。她说,如果她答应嫁给一个巨人,人们准会以为她想男人想疯了。 这时候,一个名叫海姆达尔(HeimdaU)的天神想出了一个很聪明的办法。他建议索尔扮成新娘,把头发梳起来,在衣服内垫两块石头,装成女人。可想而知,索尔当然很不情愿,不过他终于不得不承认,如果他要取回铁锤,这是唯一的办法。 于是,索尔穿上了新娘礼服,洛奇则扮成伴娘。洛奇说:“现在,就让我们这两个女人前往约腾海吧!”以现代话来说,索尔和洛奇是天神中的反恐怖特勤小组。他们男扮女装,任务是渗透巨人的根据地,夺回索尔的锤子。他们到达约腾海后,巨人们开始筹备婚宴。 然而在筵席中,新娘(就是索尔)一口气吃下一整只牛和八条鲑鱼,并且痛饮了三桶啤酒,把史莱慕吓了一大跳。这个“突击小组”的真实身分几乎就要曝光了。幸好,洛奇及时辩称芙瑞雅是因为期盼到约腾海来,整整一个星期都没有吃饭,才化解了这场危机。 史莱慕掀开新娘面纱要亲吻新娘时,吃惊地看•到一双红彤彤的眼睛。此时洛奇再度出面解围。他说,新娘是因为在婚礼前太过兴奋,才整整一个礼拜都没有阖眼。于是,史莱慕使命手下将锤子取来以便在进行婚礼时放在新娘的怀中。 据说,索尔拿到锤子时,忍不住放声大笑。他先用锤子击杀了史莱慕,然后便将巨人们以及他们所有的亲族杀个精光。就这样,这个可怕的人质事件终于有了一个美满结局。索尔这个天神世界中的蝙蝠侠或OO七又再一次击败了恶势力。 这个神话故事到此结束。然而,其中真正的意义究竟是什么?这不仅是一个有娱乐效果的故事,同时也具有说明的作用。我们也许可以做如下的解释:当旱灾发生时,人们便思索天空之所以不下雨的原因,是因为巨人们偷了索尔的锤予吗?也许这则神话之缘起,是人们试图解释一年中季节更替的现象:冬天时大自然死亡,是因为索尔的铁锤被偷到约腾海,但是到春天时索尔便将它取回。如此这般,神话的作用便是为人们不了解的事物寻求一令解释。 然而,一则神话可不只是一个解释而已。人们同时也进行与神话有关的宗教仪式。我们可以想象当时的人在荒旱或作物歉收时,如何依照神话情节来搬演一出戏剧。也许村里一名男子会打扮成新娘,用石块绑在胸部,以便从巨人那儿偷回铁锤。人们这样做的目的在采取若干行动以促使下雨,好让田地里长出作物来。 除此之外,世界其他各地也有许许多多如何将“季节的神话”编成戏剧,以加速季节更替的例子。 到目前为止,我们只对古代北欧的神话世界有一个粗浅的印象。事实上,关于索尔与欧丁、芙瑞耶(Freyr)、芙瑞雅、霍德尔(Hoder)、波尔德(Balder)与其他多位天神,还有数不清的神话故事。这类神话式的观念遍布全球,直到哲学家们开始提出疑问为止。 当世界上最早的哲学开始寒展之际,希腊人也有一套表达他们世界观的神话。这些有关他们的天神的故事乃是数百年来世代流传下来的,这些神包括主神宙斯、太阳神阿波罗、主神之妻希拉,与司智慧、艺术、学问、战争等的女神雅典娜、酒神戴奥尼索斯、医术之神艾斯克里皮雅斯、大力士海瑞克里斯与海菲思特斯(H印—haestos)等等。 公元前七百年左右,有一大部分希腊神话被荷马与贺西欧德(Hesiod)以文字记录下来。至此情况大不相同,因为神话既然以文字的形式存在,也就可以加以讨论了。 于是,最早的希腊哲学家对于荷马的神话提出批评,理由是神话里的天神与人类太过相似了。他们与人一样自大、狡诈。这是破天荒第一遭有人说神话只不过是人们想象出来的。 批评者当中有一位名叫赞诺芬尼司(Xenophanes)的哲学家,生于公元前五七O年左右。他指出,人类按照自己的形象创造出这些天神,认为他们也是由父母所生,并像凡人一样有身体、穿衣服,也有语言。问题是,衣索比亚人认为天神是扁鼻子的黑人,史瑞思(巴尔干半岛东部的古国)人则认为神有金发蓝眼。假使牛、马、狮子会画图,一定也会把天神画成牛、马、狮子的模样。 在这段期间,希腊人在希腊本土与意大利南部、小亚细亚等希腊殖民地建立了许多城市。在这些城市中,所有的劳力工作都由奴隶担任,因此市民有充分的闲暇,可以将所有时间都投注在政治与文化上。 在这样的城市环境中,人的思考方式开始变得与以前大不相同。任何人都可以发言质疑社会的组成方式,也可毋需借助古代神话而提出一些哲学性的问题。 我们称这样的现象为“从神话的思考模式发展到以经验与理性为基础的思考模式”。早期希腊哲学家的目标乃是为大自然的变化寻找自然的——而非超自然的——解释。 苏菲继续在偌大的园子里信步走着。她试着忘记她在学校——尤其是在科学课上——学到的东西。假使她生长在这花园中,对于大自然一无所知,那么她对春天会有什么感觉呢?她会不会试着为突然下雨的现象找出某种解释?她会不会编造出某种神话来解释雪到哪儿去了,及为何太阳会升起?会的,她一定会的。这是毫无疑问的。她开始编故事:邪恶的穆瑞耶特将美丽的奚琪塔公主囚禁在寒冷的牢房中,于是冬天遂以它冰冷的手掌攫住了大地。然而有一天早上,勇敢的布拉瓦托王子来到这里,将她救出。奚琪塔高兴得在草原上跳舞,并唱起一首她在湿冷的牢房中所作的曲子。大地与树木都受到感动,以至于雪全都化成了眼泪。后来,太阳出来,把所有的眼泪都晒干了。鸟儿们模仿奚琪塔的歌声鸣唱着。当美丽的公主将她金黄色的长发放下来时,几绺发丝落到地上,化为田野中的百合花。 苏菲很喜欢自己编的美丽故事。如果她不知道其他有关季节变换的解释,她一定会相信这个自己编的故事。 她明白人们总是想为大自然的变迁寻求解释。这就是他们何以在科学还没有产生之、前会编造出那些神话故事的原因。 The Natural Philosophers  nothing can come from nothing  When her mother got home from work that afternoon Sophie was sitting in the glider, pondering the possible connection between the philosophy course and Hilde Moller Knag, who would not be getting a birthday card from her father. Her mother called from the other end of the garden, "Sophie! There's a letter for you!" She caught her breath. She had already emptied the mailbox, so the letter had to be from the philosopher. What on earth would she say to her mother? "There's no stamp on it. It's probably a love letter!" Sophie took the letter. "Aren't you going to open it?" She had to find an excuse. "Have you ever heard of anyone opening a love letter with her mother looking over her shoulder?" Let her mother think it was a love letter. Although it was embarrassing enough, it would be even worse if her mother found out that she was doing a correspondence course with a complete stranger, a philosopher who was playing hide-and-seek with her. It was one of the little white envelopes. When Sophie got upstairs to her room, she found three new questions: Is there a basic substance that everything else is made of? Can water turn into wine? How can earth and water produce a live frog! Sophie found the questions pretty stupid, but nevertheless they kept buzzing around in her head all evening. She was still thinking about them at school the next day, examining them one by one. Could there be a "basic substance" that everything was made of? If there was some such substance, how could it suddenly turn into a flower or an elephant? The same objection applied to the question of whether water could turn into wine. Sophie knew the parable of how Jesus turned water into wine, but she had never taken it literally. And if Jesus really had turned water into wine, it was because it was a miracle, something that could not be done normally. Sophie knew there was a lot of water, not only in wine but in all other growing things. But even if a cucumber was 95 percent water, there must be something else in it as well, because a cucumber was a cucumber, not water. And then there was the question about the frog. Her philosophy teacher had this really weird thing about frogs. Sophie could possibly accept that a frog consisted of earth and water, in which case the earth must consist of more than one kind of substance. If the earth consisted of a lot of different substances, it was obviously possible that earth and water together could produce a frog. That is, if the earth and the water went via frog spawn and tadpoles. Because a frog could not just grow out of a cabbage patch, however much you watered it. When she got home from school that day there was a fat envelope waiting for her in the mailbox. Sophie hid in the den just as she had done the other days. THE PHILOSOPHERS' PROJECT Here we are again! We'll go directly to today's lesson without detours around white rabbits and the like. I'll outline very broadly the way people have thought about philosophy, from the ancient Greeks right up to our own day. But we'll take things in their correct order. Since some philosophers lived in a different age--and perhaps in a completely different culture from ours--it is a good idea to try and see what each philosopher's project is. By this I mean that we must try to grasp precisely what it is that each particular philosopher is especially concerned with finding out. One philosopher might want to know how plants and animals came into being. Another might want to know whether there is a God or whether man has an immortal soul. Once we have determined what a particular philosopher's project is, it is easier to follow his line of thought, since no one philosopher concerns himself with the whole of philosophy. I said his line of thought--referring to the philosopher, because this is also a story of men. Women of the past were subjugated both as females and as thinking beings, which is sad because a great deal of very important experience was lost as a result. It was not until this century that women really made their mark on the history of philosophy. I do not intend to give you any homework--no difficult math questions, or anything like that, and conjugating English verbs is outside my sphere of interest. However, from time to time I'll give you a short assignment. If you accept these conditions, we'll begin. THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS The earliest Greek philosophers are sometimes called natural philosophers because they were mainly concerned with the natural world and its processes. We have already asked ourselves where everything comes from. Nowadays a lot of people imagine that at some time something must have come from nothing. This idea was not so widespread among the Greeks. For one reason or another, they assumed that "something" had always existed. How everything could come from nothing was therefore not the all-important question. On the other hand the Greeks marveled at how live fish could come from water, and huge trees and brilliantly colored flowers could come from the dead earth. Not to mention how a baby could come from its mother's womb! The philosophers observed with their own eyes that nature was in a constant state of transformation. But how could such transformations occur? How could something change from being substance to being a living thing, for example? All the earliest philosophers shared the belief that there had to be a certain basic substance at the root of all change. How they arrived at this idea is hard to say. We only know that the notion gradually evolved that there must be a basic substance that was the hidden cause of all changes in nature. There had to be "something" that all things came from and returned to. For us, the most interesting part is actually not what solutions these earliest philosophers arrived at, but which questions they asked and what type of answer they were looking for. We are more interested in how they thought than in exactly what they thought. We know that they posed questions relating to the transformations they could observe in the physical world. They were looking for the underlying laws of nature. They wanted to understand what was happening around them without having to turn to the ancient myths. And most important, they wanted to understand the actual processes by studying nature itself. This was quite different from explaining thunder and lightning or winter and spring by telling stories about the gods. So philosophy gradually liberated itself from religion. We could say that the natural philosophers took the first step in the direction of scientific reasoning, thereby becoming the precursors of what was to become science. Only fragments have survived of what the natural philosophers said and wrote. What little we know is found in the writings of Aristotle, who lived two centuries later. He refers only to the conclusions the philosophers reached. So we do not always know by what paths they reached these conclusions. But what we do know enables us to establish that the earliest Greek philosophers' project concerned the question of a basic constituent substance and the changes in nature. THREE PHILOSOPHERS FROM MILETUS The first philosopher we know of is Thales, who came from Miletus, a Greek colony in Asia Minor. He traveled in many countries, including Egypt, where he is said to have calculated the height of a pyramid by measuring its shadow at the precise moment when the length of his own shadow was equal to his height. He is also said to have accurately predicted a solar eclipse in the year 585 B.C. Thales thought that the source of all things was water. We do not know exactly what he meant by that, he may have believed that all life originated from water--and that all life returns to water again when it dissolves. During his travels in Egypt he must have observed how the crops began to grow as soon as the floods of the Nile receded from the land areas in the Nile Delta. Perhaps he also noticed that frogs and worms appeared wherever it had just been raining. It is likely that Thales thought about the way water turns to ice or vapor--and then turns back into water again. Thales is also supposed to have said that "all things are full of gods." What he meant by that we can only surmise. Perhaps, seeing how the black earth was the source of everything from flowers and crops to insects and cockroaches, he imagined that the earth was filled with tiny invisible "life-germs." One thing is certain--he was not talking about Homer's gods. The next philosopher we hear of is Anaximander, who also lived in Miletus at about the same time as Thales. He thought that our world was only one of a myriad of worlds that evolve and dissolve in something he called the boundless. It is not so easy to explain what he meant by the boundless, but it seems clear that he was not thinking of a known substance in the way that Thales had envisaged. Perhaps he meant that the substance which is the source of all things had to be something other than the things created. Because all created things are limited, that which comes before and after them must be "boundless." It is clear that this basic stuff could not be anything as ordinary as water. A third philosopher from Miletus was Anaximenes (c. 570--526 B.C.). He thought that the source of all things must be "air" or "vapor." Anaximenes was of course familiar with Tholes' theory of water. But where does water come from? Anaximenes thought that water was condensed air. We observe that when it rains, water is pressed from the air. When water is pressed even more, it becomes earth, he thought. He may have seen how earth and sand were pressed out of melting ice. He also thought that fire was rarefied air. According to Anaximenes, air was therefore the origin of earth, water, and fire. It is not a far cry from water to the fruit of the earth. Perhaps Anaximenes thought that earth, air, and fire were all necessary to the creation of life, but that the source of all things was air or vapor. So, like Thales, he thought that there must be an underlying substance that is the source of all natural change. Nothing Can Come from NothingThese three Milesian philosophers all believed in the existence of a single basic substance as the source of all things. But how could one substance suddenly change into something else? We can call this the problem of change. From about 500 B.C., there was a group of philosophers in the Greek colony of Elea in Southern Italy. These "Eleatics" were interested in this question. The most important of these philosophers was Parmenides (c. 540-480 B.C.). Parmenides thought that everything that exists had always existed. This idea was not alien to the Greeks. They took it more or less for granted that everything that existed in the world was everlasting. Nothing can come out of nothing, thought Parmenides. And nothing that exists can become nothing. But Parmenides took the idea further. He thought that there was no such thing as actual change. Nothing could become anything other than it was. Parmenides realized, of course, that nature is in a constant state of flux. He perceived with his senses that things changed. But he could not equate this with what his reason told him. When forced to choose between relying either on his senses or his reason, he chose reason. You know the expression "I'll believe it when I see it." But Parmenides didn't even believe things when he saw them. He believed that our senses give us an incorrect picture of the world, a picture that does not tally with our reason. As a philosopher, he saw it as his task to expose all forms of perceptual illusion. This unshakable faith in human reason is called rationalism. A rationalist is someone who believes that human reason is the primary source of our knowledge of the world. All Things Flow A contemporary of Parmenides was Heraditus (c. 540-480 B.C.), who was from Ephesus in Asia Minor. He thought that constant change, or flow, was in fact the mosf basic characteristic of nature. We could perhaps say that Heraclitus had more faith in what he could perceive than Parmenides did. "Everything flows," said Heraclitus. Everything is in constant flux and movement, nothing is abiding. Therefore we "cannot step twice into the same river." When I step into the river for the second time, neither I nor the river are the same. Heraclitus pointed out that the world is characterized by opposites. If we were never ill, we would not know what it was to be well. If we never knew hunger, we would take no pleasure in being full. If there were never any war, we would not appreciate peace. And if there were no winter, we would never see the spring. Both good and bad have their inevitable place in the order of things, Heraclitus believed. Without this constant interplay of opposites the world would cease to exist. "God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, hunger and satiety," he said. He used the term "God," but he was clearly not referring to the gods of the mythology. To Heraclitus, God--or the Deity--was something that embraced the whole world. Indeed, God can be seen most clearly in the constant transformations and contrasts of nature. Instead of the term "God," Heraclitus often used the Greek word logos, meaning reason. Although we humans do not always think alike or have the same degree of reason, Heraclitus believed that there must be a kind of "universal reason" guiding everything that happens in nature. This "universal reason" or "universal law" is something common to us all, and something that everybody is guided by. And yet most people live by their individual reason, thought Heraclitus. In general, he despised his fellow beings. "The opinions of most people," he said, "are like the playthings of infants." So in the midst of all nature's constant flux and oppo-sites, Heraclitus saw an Entity or one-ness. This "something," which was the source of everything, he called God or logos. Four Basic ElementsIn one way, Parmenides and Heraclitus were the direct opposite of each other. Parmenides' reason made it clear that nothing could change. Heraclitus' sense perceptions made it equally clear that nature was in a constant state of change. Which of them was right? Should we let reason dictate or should we rely on our senses? Parmenides and Heraclitus both say two things: Parmenides says: a) that nothing can change, andb) that our sensory perceptions must therefore be unreliable. Heraclitus, on the other hand, says: a) that everything changes ("all things flow"), andb) that our sensory perceptions are reliable. * * * Philosophers could hardly disagree more than that! But who was right? It fell to Empedocles (c. 490-430 B.C.) from Sicily to lead the way out of the tangle they had gotten themselves into. He thought they were both right in one of their assertions but wrong in the other. Empedocles found that the cause of their basic disagreement was that both philosophers had assumed the presence of only one element. If this were true, the gap between what reason dictates and what "we can see with our own eyes" would be unbridgeable. Water obviously cannot turn into a fish or a butterfly. In fact, water cannot change. Pure water will continue to be pure water. So Parmenides was right in holding that "nothing changes." But at the same time Empedocles agreed with Heraclitus that we must trust the evidence of our senses. We must believe what we see, and what we see is precisely that nature changes. Empedocles concluded that it was the idea of a single basic substance that had to be rejected. Neither water nor air alone can change into a rosebush or a butterfly. The source of nature cannot possibly be one single "element." Empedocles believed that all in all, nature consisted of four elements, or "roots" as he termed them. These four roots were earth, air, fire, and wafer. All natural processes were due to the coming together and separating of these four elements. For all things were a mixture of earth, air, fire, and water, but in varying proportions. When a flower or an animal dies, he said, the four elements separate again. We can register these changes with the naked eye. But earth and air, fire and water remain everlasting, "untouched" by all the compounds of which they are part. So it is not correct to say that "everything" changes. Basically, nothing changes. What happens is that the four elements are combined and separated--only to be combined again. We can make a comparison to painting. If a painter only has one color--red, for instance--he cannot paint green trees. But if he has yellow, red, blue, and black, he can paint in hundreds of different colors because he can mix them in varying proportions. An example from the kitchen illustrates the same thing. If I only have flour, I have to be a wizard to bake a cake. But if I have eggs, flour, milk, and sugar, then I can make any number of different cakes. It was not purely by chance that Empedocles chose earth, air, fire, and water as nature's "roots." Other philosophers before him had tried to show that the primordial substance had to be either water, air, or fire. Thales and Anaximenes had pointed out that both water and air were essential elements in the physical world. The Greeks believed that fire was also essential. They observed, for ex-ample, the importance of the sun to all living things, and they also knew that both animals and humans have body heat. Empedocles might have watched a piece of wood burning. Something disintegrates. We hear it crackle and splutter. That is "water." Something goes up in smoke. That is "air." The "fire" we can see. Something also remains when the fire is extinguished. That is the ashes--or "earth." After Empedocles' clarification of nature's transformations as the combination and dissolution of the four "roots," something still remained to be explained. What makes these elements combine so that new life can occur? And what makes the "mixture" of, say, a flower dissolve again? Empedocles believed that there were two different forces at work in nature. He called them love and strife. Love binds things together, and strife separates them. He distinguishes between "substance" and "force." This is worth noting. Even today, scientists distinguish between elements and natural forces. Modern science holds that all natural processes can be explained as the interaction between different elements and various natural forces. Empedocles also raised the question of what happens when we perceive something. How can I "see" a flower, for example? What is it that happens? Have you ever thought about it, Sophie? Empedocles believed that the eyes consist of earth, air, fire, and water, just like everything else in nature. So the "earth" in my eye perceives what is of the earth in my surroundings, the "air" perceives what is of the air, the "fire" perceives what is of fire, and the "water" what is of water. Had my eyes lacked any of the four substances, I would not have seen all of nature. Something of Everything in EverythingAnaxagoras (500-428 B.C.) was another philosopher who could not agree that one particular basic substance--water, for instance--might be transformed into everything we see in the natural world. Nor could he accept that earth, air, fire, and water can be transformed into blood and bone. Anaxagoras held that nature is built up of an infinite number of minute particles invisible to the eye. Moreover, everything can be divided into even smaller parts, but even in the minutest parts there are fragments of all other things. If skin and bone are not a transformation of something else, there must also be skin and bone, he thought, in the milk we drink and the food we eat. ~~A couple of present-day examples can perhaps illustrate Anaxagoras' line of thinking. Modern laser technology can produce so-called holograms. If one of these holograms depicts a car, for example, and the hologram is fragmented, we will see a picture of the whole car even though we only have the part of the hologram that showed the bumper. This is because the whole subject is present in every tiny part. In a sense, our bodies are built up in the same way. If I loosen a skin cell from my finger, the nucleus will contain not only the characteristics of my skin: the same cell will also reveal what kind of eyes I have, the color of my hair, the number and type of my fingers, and so on. Every cell of the human body carries a blueprint of the way all the other cells are constructed. So there is "something of everything" in every single cell. The whole exists in each tiny part. Anaxagoras called these minuscule particles which have something of everything in them seeds. Remember that Empedocles thought that it was "love" that joined the elements together in whole bodies. Anaxagoras also imagined "order" as a kind of force, creating animals and humans, flowers and trees. He called this force mind or intelligence (nous). Anaxagoras is also interesting because he was the first philosopher we hear of in Athens. He was from Asia Minor but he moved to Athens at the age of forty. He was later accused of atheism and was ultimately forced to leave the city. Among other things, he said that the sun was not a god but a red-hot stone, bigger than the entire Peloponnesian peninsula. Anaxagoras was generally very interested in astronomy. He believed that all heavenly bodies were made of the same substance as Earth. He reached this conclusion after studying a meteorite. This gave him the idea that there could be human life on other planets. He also pointed out that the Moon has no light of its own--its light comes from Earth, he said. He thought up an explanation for solar eclipses as well. P.S. Thank you for your attention, Sophie. It is not unlikely that you will need to read this chapter two or three times before you understand it all. But understanding will always require some effort. You probably wouldn't admire a friend who was good at everything if it cost her no effort. The best solution to the question of basic substance and the transformations in nature must wait until tomorrow, when you will meet Democritus. I'll say no more! Sophie sat in the den looking out into the garden through a little hole in the dense thicket. She had to try and sort out her thoughts after all she had read. It was as clear as daylight that plain water could never turn into anything other than ice or steam. Water couldn't even turn into a watermelon, because even watermelons consisted of more than just water. But she was only sure of that because that's what she had learned. Would she be absolutely certain, for example, that ice was only water if that wasn't what she had learned? At least, she would have to have studied very closely how water froze to ice and melted again. Sophie tried once again to use her own common sense, and not to think about what she had learned from others. Parmenides had refused to accept the idea of change in any form. And the more she thought about it, the more she was convinced that, in a way, he had been right. His intelligence could not accept that "something" could suddenly transform itself into "something completely different." It must have taken quite a bit of courage to come right out and say it, because it meant denying all the natural changes that people could see for themselves. Lots of people must have laughed at him. And Empedocles must have been pretty smart too, when he proved that the world had to consist of more than one single substance. That made all the transformations of nature possible without anything actually changing. The old Greek philosopher had found that out just by reasoning. Of course he had studied nature, but he didn't have the equipment to do chemical analysis the way scientists do nowadays. Sophie was not sure whether she really believed that the source of everything actually was earth, air, fire, and water. But after all, what did that matter? In principle, Empedocles was right. The only way we can accept the transformations we can see with our own eyes--without losing our reason--is to admit the existence of more than one single basic substance. Sophie found philosophy doubly exciting because she was able to follow all the ideas by using her own common sense--without having to remember everything she had learned at school. She decided that philosophy was not something you can learn; but perhaps you can learn to think philosophically. 自然派哲学家 那天下午苏菲的妈妈下班回家时,苏菲正坐在秋千上,想着哲学课程与席德(那位收不到她父亲寄来的生日卡的女孩)之间究竟有什么关系?妈妈在花园另一头喊她:“苏菲,你有一封信!”苏菲吓了一跳。她刚才已经把信箱里的信都拿出来了,因此这封信一定是那位哲学家写来的。她该对妈妈说什么好呢?“信上没有贴邮票,可能是情书哩!”苏菲接过信。 “你不打开吗?”她得编一个借口。 “你听过谁当着自己妈妈的面拆情书的吗?”就让妈妈认为这是一封情书好了。虽然这样挺令人难为情的,但总比让妈妈发现自己接受一个完全陌生的人——一个和她玩捉迷藏的哲学家——的函授教学要好些。 这次,信装在一个白色的小信封里。苏菲上楼回房后,看到信纸上写了三个新的问题: 万事万物是否由一种基本的物质组成? 水能变成酒吗? 泥土与水何以能制造出一只活生生的青蛙? 苏菲觉得这些问题很蠢,但整个晚上它们却在她的脑海里萦绕不去。到了第二天她还在想,把每个问题逐一思索了一番。 世上万物是否’由一种“基本物质”组成的呢?如果是,这种基本物质又怎么可能突然变成一朵花或一只大象呢?同样的疑问也适用于水是否能变成酒的问题。苏菲听过耶稣将水变成酒的故事,但她从未当真。就算耶稣真的将水变成了酒,这也只是个奇迹,不是平常可以做到的。苏菲知道世间有很多水,不仅酒里有水,其他能够生长的事物中也都有水。然而,就拿黄瓜来说好了,即使它的水分含量高达百分之九十五,它里面必然也有其他的物质。因为黄瓜就是黄瓜,不是水。 接下来是有关青蛙的问题。奇怪,她的这位哲学老师好像特别偏爱青蛙。 她或许可以接受青蛙是由泥土与水变成的说法。但果真这样,泥土中必然含有一种以上的物质。如果泥土真的含有多种不同的物质,则它与水混合后说不定真的可以生出青蛙来。当然,它们必须先变成蛙卵与蝌蚪才行。因为,无论再怎么浇水,包心菜园里是长不出青蛙的。 那天她放学回家后,信箱里已经有一封厚厚的信在等着她了。 她像往常一样躲到密洞中去看信。 哲学家的课题 嗨,苏菲,又到上课的时间了。我们今天就不再谈白兔等等,直接上课吧。 在这堂课里,我将大略描述从古希腊时期到现代,人们对哲学的观念。我们将按照应有的次序,逐一道来。 由于这些哲学家生活的年代与我们不同,文化也可能与我们相异,因此也许我们应该先试着了解每+位哲学家给自己的课题,也就是说,明白他们每个人关注、质疑的事项是什么。可能有的哲学家想探索植物与动物是如何产生的,有的则想研究世间是否有上帝或人的灵魂是否不朽等问题。 知道了每一位哲学家的“课题”之后,我们就比较容易了解他的思想的脉络,因为没有任何一位哲学家会企图探讨哲学的所有领域。 我之所以用“他”来代表哲学家是因为在这期间哲学乃是男人的专利。从前的妇女无论做为一个女人或一个有思想的人都只有对男人俯首听命的份。这是很悲哀的事,因为许多宝贵经验就这样丧失了。一直要到本世纪,妇女们才真正在哲学史上留下了足印。 我不想出家庭作业给你,不会让你做很难的算术题目或类似的功课,也不会让你背英文的动词变化。不过我偶尔会给你二些墒短的作业。 如果你接受这些条件,我们就开始吧。 自然派哲学家最早的希腊哲学家有时被称为“自然派哲学家”,因为他们关切的主题是大自然与它的循环与变化。 我们都曾经好奇万物从何而来。现代有许多人认为万物必定是在某个时刻无中生有的。希腊人持有这种想法的并不多,由于某种理由,他们认定有“一种东西”是一直都存在的。因此对于他们而言,万物是如何从无到有并非重要的问题。他们惊叹的是水中如何会有活鱼、瘠土里如何会长出高大的树木与色彩鲜丽的花朵。而更让他们惊异的是女人的子宫居然会生出婴儿?.哲学家用自己的眼睛观察。他们发现大自然的形貌不断改变。 这类变化是怎么发生的呢?举个例子,原来是属于物质的东西何以会变为有生命的物体?早期的哲学家都相信,这些变化必定来自某种基本物质。至于他们何以持此看法,这就很难说清楚。我们只知道,经过一段时间后,他们慢慢形成这样的观念,认为大自然的变化必定是某种基本物质造成的。他们相信,世上必定有某种“东西”,万物皆由此衍生,而且最终仍旧回归于此。 我们最感兴趣的并不是这些早期的哲学家找出了哪些答案,而是他们问了什么问题、寻求何种答案等等。我们对他们的思考方式较感兴趣,而不是他们思考的内容。 我们已经知道他们所提的问题与他们在物质世界观察到的变化有关。他们想寻求其中隐含的自然法则。他们想要从古代神话以外的观点来了解周遭发生的事。最重要的是,他们想要透过对大自然本身的研究来了解实际的变化过程。这与借神话故事来解释雷鸣、闪电或春去冬来的现象大不相同。 就这样,哲学逐渐脱离了宗教的范畴。我们可以说自然派的哲学家朝科学推理的方向迈出了第一步,成为后来科学的先驱。 这些自然派哲学家的论述,至今只留下断简残篇。我们所知的一小部分乃是根据两百多年后亚理斯多德的著作。其中只提到这些哲学家所做的若干结论,因此我们无法确切了解他们是经由何种方式达成这些结论。不过,我们根据已知的资料可以断定这些早期希腊哲学家的“课题”与宇宙的基本组成物质与大自然的变化等问题有关。 米雷特斯的三位哲学家我们所知道的第一位哲学家是泰利斯(Thales)。他来自希腊在小亚细亚的殖民地米雷特斯,曾游历过埃及等许多国家。据说他在埃及时曾计算过金字塔的高度,他的方法是在他自己的影子与身高等长时测量金字塔的影子高度。另外据说他还在公元前五八五年时准确预测过日蚀的时间。 泰利斯认为水是万物之源。我们并不很清楚这希的意思。或许他相信所有的生命源自于水,而所有的生命在消融后也仍旧变成水。 他在埃及旅游时,必定看过尼罗河三角洲上的洪水退去后,陆地上的作物立刻开始生长的现象。他可能也注意到凡是刚下雨的地方一定会出现青蛙与虫子。 更可能的是,泰利斯想到了水结成冰或化为蒸气后又变回水的现象。 此外,据说泰利斯曾宣称:“万物中皆有神在”。此话含义为何,我们同样只能猜测。也许他在看到花朵、作物、昆虫乃至蟑螂全都来自黑色的泥土后,他便想象泥土中必定充满了许多肉眼看不见的微小“生命菌”。但有一件事情是可以肯定的:他所谓的“神”并非指荷马神话中的天神。 我们所知的第二个哲学家是安纳克西曼德(Anaximander)。 他也住在米雷特斯。他认为我们的世界只是他所谓的“无限定者”(注:世界由无限定者元素所构成)中无数个生生灭灭的世界之一。 要解释他所谓“无限”的意思并不容易,但很明显的他并不像泰利斯一样认为世界是由一种物质造成的。 也许他的意思是形成万物的物质不一定不是这些已经被创造出来的事物。因此这种基本物质不可能是像水这样平常的东西,而是某种无以名之的物质。 第三位来自米雷特斯的哲学家是安那西梅尼斯(Anaximenes,约公元前五七O年~公元前五二六年)。他认为万物之源必定是“空气”或“气体”。毫无疑问,安那西梅尼斯必定熟知泰利斯有关水的理论。然而水从何来?安那西梅尼斯认为水是空气凝结后形成的。我们也可看到下雨时,水是从空气中挤出来的。安那西梅尼斯认为当水再进一步受到挤压时,就会变成泥土。他可能曾经注意到冰雪融解时,会有泥土、沙石出现。他并认为火是比较精纯的空气。 因此他主张空气是泥土、水、火的源头。 这与“水是万物生长之源”的理论相去不远。也许安那西梅尼斯认为泥土、空气与火都是创造生命的必要条件,但“空气”或“气体”才是万物之源。因此,他和泰利斯一样,认为自然界的一切事物必定是由一种基本物质造成的。 没有任何事物会来自虚无这三位米雷特斯的哲学家都相信,宇宙间有一种基本物质是所有事物的源头。 然而一种物质又如何会突然变成另外一种东西?我们可以把这个问题称为“变化的问题”。•约莫从公元前五OO年开始,位于意大利南部的希腊殖民地伊利亚(Elea)有一群哲学家也对这个问题很有兴趣。其中最重要的一位是帕梅尼德斯(Parmen记es,约公元前五四O~公元前四八O年)。 帕梅尼德斯认为现有的万物是一直都存在的。这个观念对希腊人并不陌生,他们多少认为世上的万物是亘古长存的。在帕梅尼德斯的想法中,没有任何事物会来自虚无,而已经存在的事物中也不会消失于无形。 不过,帕梅尼德斯的思想比其他大多数人更加深入。他认为世上根本没有真正的变化,没有任何事物可以变成另外一种事物。 当然,帕梅尼德斯也体认到大自然恒常变迁的事实。透过感官,他察觉到事物的确会发生变化,不过他无法将这个现象与他的理智思考画上等号。当他不得不在依赖感官和依赖理智之间做一个选择时,他选择了理智。 你听过“眼见为信”这句话。不过帕梅尼德斯甚至在亲眼见到后仍不相信。他认为我们的感官使我们对世界有不正确的认识,这种认识与我们的理智不符。身为一个哲学家,他认为他的使命就是要揭穿各种形式的“感官幻象”。 这里坚决相信人的理智的态度被称为理性主义。所谓理性主义者就是百分之百相信人类的理智是世间所有知识泉源的人。 所有•事物都是流动的帕梅尼德斯的时代另有一位哲学家叫做赫拉克里特斯(Hera—c1讧us,约公元前五四O~公元前四八O)。当时他从以弗所(Ephesus)来到小亚细亚。他认为恒常变化(或流动)事实上正是大自然的最基本特征。我们也许可以说,赫拉克里特斯对于自己眼见的事物要比帕梅尼德斯更有信心。 赫拉克里特斯说:“所有事物都是流动的。”每一件事物都在不停变化、移动,没有任何事物是静止不变的,因此我们不可能“在同一条河流中涉水两次”。当我第二次涉水时,无论是我还是河流都已经与从前不同了。 赫拉克里特斯指出,世间的事物都是相对的。如果我们从未生病,就不会知道健康的滋味。如果我们从未尝过饥饿的痛苦,我们在饱足时就不会感到愉悦。如果世上从未有过战争,我们就不会珍惜和平。如果没有冬天,春天也不会来临。 赫拉克里特斯相信,在事物的秩序中,好与坏、善与恶都是不可或缺的。如果好坏善恶两极之间没有不停的交互作用,则世界将不再存在。 他说:“神是白天也是黑夜,是冬天也是夏天,是战争也是和平,是饥饿也是饱足。”这里他提到的“神”所指的显然不是神话中的神。对于赫拉克里特斯而言,神是涵盖整个世界的事物。的确,在大自然不停的变化与对比中,我们可以很清楚地看见神的存在。 赫拉克里特斯经常用logos(意为“理性”)这个希腊字来替代“神”一词。他相信,人类虽然思想不见得永远一致,理性也不一定同样发达,但世上一定有一种“普遍的理性”指导大自然所发生的每一件事。 “普遍的理性”或“普遍法则”是所有人都具备,而且以之做为行事准则的。不过,赫拉克里特斯认为,大多数人还是依照个人的理性来生活。总而言之,他瞧不起其他的人。他说;“大多数人的意见就像儿戏一般。”所以,赫拉克里特斯在大自然不断地变迁与对比的现象中看出了一个“一致性”。他认为这就是万物之源,他称之为“上帝”或“理性”。 四种基本元素从某方面来看,帕梅尼德斯和赫拉克里特斯两人的看法正好相反。帕梅尼德斯从理性的角度认为没有一件事物会改变。赫拉克里特斯则从感官认知的观点认为大自然不断在改变。究竟谁对谁错?我们应该听从理性还是依循感官?帕梅尼德斯和赫拉克里特斯各自主张两点。 帕梅尼德斯说:1.没有任何事物会改变。 2.因此我们的感官认知是不可靠的。 赫拉克里特斯则说:1.万物都会改变(“一切事物都是流动的”)2.我们的感官认知是可靠的。 两人的意见可说是南辕北辙。但究竟谁是谁非?这样各执一词、相持不下的局面最后由西西里的哲学家恩培窦可里斯(Empe—docles)解决了。 他认为他们两人各有一点是对的,也各有一点是错的。 他指出,他们两人之所以有这个根本性的差异是因为他们都认定世间只有一种元素存在。他说,果真如此,则由理性引导的事物与“眼睛可见到的”事物之间将永远有无法跨越的鸿沟。 他说,水显然不会变成鱼或蝴蝶。事实上,水永远不会改变。纯粹的水将一直都是纯粹的水。帕梅尼德斯主张“没有任何事物会改变”并没有错。 但同时恩培窦可里斯也同意赫拉克里特斯的说法,认为我们必须相信我们的感官所体验到的。我们必须信任自己亲眼所见的事物,而我们的确亲眼看到大自然的变化。 恩培窦可里斯的结论是:我们不应该接受世间只有一种基本物质的观念;无论水或空气都无法独力变成玫瑰或蝴蝶。大自然不可能只由一种“元素”组成。 恩培窦可里斯相信,整体来说,大自然是由四种元素所组成的,他称之为四个“根”。这四个根就是土、气、火与水。 他指出,大自然所有的变化都是因为这四种元素相互结合或分离的缘故。因为所有事物都是由泥土、空气、火与水混合而成,只是比例各不相同。他说,当一株花或一只动物死亡时,它们体内的这四种元素就再度分离了,这些变化是肉眼可见的。不过土、气、火与水却是永远不灭的,不受他们所组成事物的影响。因此,说“万物”都会改变是不正确的。基本上,没有任何一件事情有变化。世间发生的事不过是这四种元素的分合聚散罢了。 也许我们可以拿绘画来做比喻。假如一位画家只有一种颜料——例如红色——他便无法画出绿树。但假如他有黄、红、蓝、黑四色,他便可以将它们依照不同的比例来调配,得出数百种颜色。 或者也可以拿烹饪来比方。如果我只有面粉,那么我得是个魔法师才能做出蛋糕来。但如果我有鸡蛋、面粉、牛奶与糖,我便可以做出各式各样的蛋糕。 恩培窦可里斯之所以选择土、气、火与水做为大自然的四个“根”并非偶然。在他之前有些哲学家也曾经试图证明宇宙的基本元素不是水,就是空气或火。泰利斯与安那西梅尼斯也曾经指出,水与气都是物质世界中不可或缺的元素。希腊人则相信火也同样重要。举例来说,他们发现阳光对所有生物的重要性,也知道动物与人都有体温。 恩培窦可里斯可能观察过木材燃烧的情形。他看到木材因此分解。木材燃烧时发出“劈啪!劈啪1”的声音,那是“水”,另外也有某些东西随着烟雾往上升,那是“气”,而“火”更是明白可见的。至于火熄灭后所残余的灰烬便是“土”了。 恩培窦可里斯将自然界的变化解释为四个“根”的分合聚散之后,仍有一件事情有待解释。是什么因素使得这些元素聚合在一起,创造了新的生命?又是什么因素使得这些聚合物——例如花——再度分解?•恩培窦可里斯认为自然界有两种力量。他称之为“爱”与“恨”。 爱使得事物聚合,而恨则使他们分散。 他将“物质”与“力量”分开来。这是值得注意的一件事。即使是在今天,科学家们仍将“矿物”与“自然力”分开。现代科学家相信,自然界的一切变化都可说是各种矿物在不同自然力之下相互作用的结果。 恩培窦可里斯并提出“我们何以能看见某物”的问题。例如我们何以能“看见”一株花?其间究竟发生了什么事?苏菲,你有没有想过这个问题?如果没有,你现在可有机会了。 恩培窦可里斯认为,我们的眼睛就像自然界的其他事物一样,也是由土、气、火、水所组成。所以我们眼睛当中的“土”可以看见周遭环境中的土,我们眼中的“气”则看到四周的气,我们眼中的“火”看到四周的火,我们眼中的“水”则看到四周的水。我们的眼睛中如果缺少这四种物质中的任何一种,便无法看到大自然所有的事物了。 万物中皆含有各物的一部分还有一位哲学家也不认为我们在自然界中所看到的每一件事物都是由某一种基本物质——如水——变成的。他的名字叫安纳萨哥拉斯(Anaxagoras,公元前五OO~公元前四二八年)。他也不相信土、气、火、水就能够变成血液与骨头。 安纳萨哥拉斯主张大自然是由无数肉眼看不见的微小粒子所组成,而所有事物都可以被分割成更小的部分。然而,即使是在最小的部分中也有其他每种事物的成分存在。他认为,如果皮肤与骨头不是由其他东西变成,则我们喝的牛奶与吃的食物中也必定有皮肤与骨头的成分。 我们用一些现代的例子也许可以说明安纳萨哥拉斯的思想。 现代的镭射科技可以制造所谓的“镭射摄影图”。如果一张镭射摄影图描绘的是一辆汽车,且这张图被切割成一片一片的,那么我们虽然手中只有显示汽车保险杆的那一张图,也仍旧可以看到整辆汽车的图像。这是因为在每一个微小的部分中都有整体的存在。 从某一方面来说,我们身体的构造也是一样。假如我的指头上掉落了一个皮肤细胞,此一细胞核不仅会包含我皮肤的特征,也会显示我有什么样的眼睛、什么颜色的头发、有几根指头、是什么样的指头等等、人体的每个细胞都带有决定所有其他细胞构造方式的蓝图,因此在每一个细胞中,都含有“各物的一部分”;整体存在于每一个微小的部分中。 安纳萨哥拉斯称呼这些含有“各物的一部分”的“小粒子”为“种子”。 我们还记得恩培寞可里斯认为“爱”凝聚各种元素组成整体的力量。安纳哥拉斯也认为“秩序”是一种力量,可以创造动物与人、花与树等。他称这个力量为“心灵”或“睿智”。 安纳萨哥拉斯之所以引起我们的兴趣,一方面也是因为他是我们所知第一个住在雅典的哲学家。他生长于小亚细亚,但在四十岁时迁居雅典。他后来被责为无神论者,因此最后被迫离开雅典。 他还说过,太阳不是一个神,而是一块红热的石头,比希腊的培洛彭尼索斯半岛还大。 安纳萨哥拉斯对天文学很感兴趣。他相信天上所有物体的成分都与地球相同。这是他研究一块陨石后达成的结论。他因此想到别的星球上可能也有人类。他并指出,月亮自己并不会发光,它的光来自于地球。同时他还解释了日蚀的现象。 P.S:苏菲,谢谢你注意听讲。你可能需要将这一章读个两三遍才能完全理解。不过话说回来,要理解一件事物总是要费一些力气的。你的朋友如果有人一点不费力气就可以样样精通的话,我相信你也不会很欣赏她。 关于宇宙基本组成物质与自然界变化这个问题的最佳答案,必须要等到明天再说了。到时你将会认识德谟克里特斯(Democrltus)。今天就到此为止了。 苏菲坐在密洞中,透过浓密的灌木丛中的小洞向花园张望。在读了这么多东西后,她得理清她的思绪才行。 显然的,白水除了变成冰块或蒸气之外,永远不能变成其他的东西,甚至也不能变成西瓜,因为西瓜里面除了水以外还有别的。 不过她之所以这么肯定,是因为她曾经在学校中上过课。如果她没有上过相关的课,她还会这么肯定冰块的成分完全是水吗?至少她得密切观察水如何结冻成冰块、又如何融解才行。 苏菲再次试着运用自己的常识,而不去想她从别人那儿学到的知识。 帕梅尼德斯不承认世上任何事物会变化。苏菲愈想愈相信从某一方面来说,他是对的。在智性上,他无法接受事物会突然转变成“另外一种完全不同的事物”的说法。要坦白说出这个观念一定需要很大的勇气,因为这必定意味着他必须驳斥人们亲眼所见到的种种自然界的变化。一定有很多人取笑他。 恩培窦可里斯一定也是个聪明的人。因为他证明这世界是由一种以上的物质组成,如此自然界才可能在万事万物实际上皆未曾改变的情况下产生种种变化。 他只凭推理就发现了这个事实。当然他曾经研究过大自然,但他却没有现代科学家的设备来进行化学分析。 苏菲并不一定相信万事万物都是由土、气、火与水所组成。但这又有什么关系呢?就原则上来说,恩培窦可里斯说得没错。如果我们要接受自己亲眼所见的各种大自然的变化而又不致违反自己的理性,唯一的方式就只有承认世间存在着一种以上的基本物质。 现在,苏菲发现哲学这门课程更有趣了,因为她可运用自己的常识来理解这些哲学思想,而毋需凭借她在学校学到的知识。她的结论是:哲学不是一般人能够学到的,但也许我们可以学习如何以哲学的方式思考。 Democritus the most ingenious toy in the world Sophie put all the typed pages from the unknown philosopher back into the cookie tin and put the lid on it. She crawled out of the den and stood for a while looking across the garden. She thought about what happened yesterday. Her mother had teased her about the "love letter" again at breakfast this morning. She walked quickly over to the mailbox to prevent the same thing from happening today. Getting a love letter two days in a row would be doubly embarrassing. There was another little white envelope! Sophie began to discern a pattern in the deliveries: every afternoon she would find a big brown envelope. While she read the contents, the philosopher would sneak up to the mailbox with another little white envelope. So now Sophie would be able to find out who he was. If it was a he! She had a good view of the mailbox from her room. If she stood at the window she would see the mysterious philosopher. White envelopes don't just appear out of thin air! Sophie decided to keep a careful watch the following day. Tomorrow was Friday and she would have the whole weekend ahead of her. She went up to her room and opened the envelope. There was only one question today, but it was even dumber than the previous three: Why is Lego the most ingenious toy in the world? For a start, Sophie was not at all sure she agreed that it was. It was years since she had played with the little plastic blocks. Moreover she could not for the life of her see what Lego could possibly have to do with philosophy. But she was a dutiful student. Rummaging on the top shelf of her closet, she found a bag full of Lego blocks of all shapes and sizes. For the first time in ages she began to build with them. As she worked, some ideas began to occur to her about the blocks. They are easy to assemble, she thought. Even though they are all different, they all fit together. They are also unbreakable. She couldn't ever remember having seen a broken Lego block. All her blocks looked as bright and new as the day they were bought, many years ago. The best thing about them was that with Lego she could construct any kind of object. And then she could separate the blocks and construct something new. What more could one ask of a toy? Sophie decided that Lego really could be called the most ingenious toy in the world. But what it had to do with philosophy was beyond her. She had nearly finished constructing a big doll's house. Much as she hated to admit it, she hadn't had as much fun in ages. Why did people quit playing when they grew up? When her mother got home and saw what Sophie had been doing, she blurted out, "What fun! I'm so glad you're not too grown up to play!" "I'm not playing!" Sophie retorted indignantly, "I'm doing a very complicated philosophical experiment!" Her mother signed deeply. She was probably thinking about the white rabbit and the top hat. When Sophie got home from school the following day, there were several more pages for her in a big brown envelope. She took them upstairs to her room. She could not wait to read them, but she had to keep her eye on the mailbox at the same time. THE ATOM THEORY Here I am again, Sophie. Today you are going to hear about the last of the great natural philosophers. His name is Democritus (c. 460-370 B.C.) and he was from the little town of Abdera on the northern Aegean coast. If you were able to answer the question about Lego blocks without difficulty, you should have no problem understanding what this philosopher's project was. Democritus agreed with his predecessors that transformations in nature could not be due to the fact that anything actually "changed." He therefore assumed that everything was built up of tiny invisible blocks, each of which was eternal and immutable. Democritus called these smallest units atoms. The word "a-tom" means "un-cuttable." For Democritus it was all-important to establish that the constituent parts that everything else was composed of could not be divided indefinitely into smaller parts. If this were possible, they could not be used as blocks. If atoms could eternally be broken down into ever smaller parts, nature would begin to dissolve like constantly diluted soup. Moreover, nature's blocks had to be eternal--because nothing can come from nothing. In this, he agreed with Parmenides and the Eleatics. Also, he believed that all atoms were firm and solid. But they could not all be the same. If all atoms were identical, there would still be no satisfactory explanation of how they could combine to form everything from poppies and olive trees to goatskin and human hair. Democritus believed that nature consisted of an unlimited number and variety of atoms. Some were round and smooth, others were irregular and jagged. And precisely because they were so different they could join together into all kinds of different bodies. But however infinite they might be in number and shape, they were all eternal, immutable, and indivisible. When a body--a tree or an animal, for instance--died and disintegrated, the atoms dispersed and could be used again in new bodies. Atoms moved around in space, but because they had "hooks" and "barbs," they could join together to form all the things we see around us. So now you see what I meant about Lego blocks. They have more or less the same properties as those which Democritus ascribed to atoms. And that is what makes them so much fun to build with. They are first and foremost indivisible. Then they have different shapes and sizes. They are solid and impermeable. They also have "hooks" and "barbs" so that they can be connected to form every conceivable figure. These connections can later be broken again so that new figures can be constructed from the same blocks. The fact that they can be used over and over is what has made Lego so popular. Each single Lego block can be part of a truck one day and part of a castle the day after. We could also say that lego blocks are "eternal." Children of today can play with the same blocks their parents played with when they were little. We can form things out of clay too, but clay cannot be used over and over, because it can be broken up into smaller and smaller pieces. These tiny pieces can never be joined together again to make something else. Today we can establish that Democritus' atom theory was more or less correct. Nature really is built up of different "atoms" that join and separate again. A hydrogen atom in a cell at the end of my nose was once part of an elephant's trunk. A carbon atom in my cardiac muscle was once in the tail of a dinosaur. In our own time, however, scientists have discovered that atoms can be broken into smaller "elemental particles." We call these elemental particles protons, neutrons, and electrons. These will possibly some day be broken into even lesser particles. But physicists agree that somewhere along the line there has to be a limit. There has to be a "minimal part" of which nature consists. Democritus did not have access to modern electronic apparatus. His only proper equipment was his mind. But reason left him no real choice. Once it is accepted that nothing can change, that nothing can come out of nothing, and that nothing is ever lost, then nature must consist of infinitesimal blocks that can join and separate again. Democritus did not believe in any "force" or "soul" that could intervene in natural processes. The only things that existed, he believed, were atoms and the void. Since he believed in nothing but material things, we call him a materialist. According to Democritus, there is no conscious "design" in the movement of atoms. In nature, everything happens quite mechanically. This does not mean that everything happens randomly, for everything obeys the inevitable laws of necessity. Everything that happens has a natural cause, a cause that is inherent in the thing itself. Democritus once said that he would rather discover a new cause of nature than be the King of Persia. The atom theory also explains our sense perception, thought Democritus. When we sense something, it is due to the movement of atoms in space. When I see the moon, it is because "moon atoms" penetrate my eye. But what about the "soul," then? Surely that could not consist of atoms, of material things? Indeed it could. Democritus believed that the soul was made up of special round, smooth "soul atoms." When a human being died, the soul atoms flew in all directions, and could then become part of a new soul formation. This meant that human beings had no immortal soul, another belief that many people share today. They believe, like Democritus, that "soul" is connected with brain, and that we cannot have any form of consciousness once the brain disintegrates. Democritus's atom theory marked the end of Greek natural philosophy for the time being. He agreed with ,Her-aclitus that everything in nature "flowed," since Torms come and go. But behind everything that flowed there were some eternal and immutable things that did not flow. Democritus called them atoms. During her reading Sophie glanced out of the window several times to see whether her mysterious correspondent had turned up at the mailbox. Now she just sat staring down the road, thinking about what she had read. She felt that Democritus's ideas had been so simple and yet so ingenious. He had discovered the real solution to the problem of "basic substance" and "transformation." This problem had been so complicated that philosophers had gone around puzzling over it for generations. And in the end Democritus had solved it on his own by using his common sense. Sophie could hardly help smiling. It had to be true that nature was built up of small parts that never changed. At the same time Heraclitus was obviously right in thinking that all forms in nature "flow." Because everybody dies, animals die, even a mountain range slowly disintegrates. The point was that the mountain range is made up of tiny indivisible parts that never break up. At the same time Democritus had raised some new questions. For example, he had said that everything happened mechanically. He did not accept that there was any spiritual force in life--unlike Empedocles and An-axagoras. Democritus also believed that man had no immortal soul. Could she be sure of that? She didn't know. But then she had only just begun the philosophy course. 德谟克里特斯    苏菲将信纸放回饼干盒,盖上盖子。她爬出密洞,并在花园里站了一会,看着整座园子,想到昨天发生的事。今天吃早饭时,妈妈又拿情书这件事情来取笑她。于是她很快走向信箱,以免又发生类似昨天的事。连续两天接到情书将会使她更难为情。 信箱里又有一个小小的白色信封1她开始察觉哲学家送信的时间有一定的模式:每天下午她会接到一个棕色的大信封。趁着她看信时,哲学家又会神不知鬼不觉地把另一个白色小信封放在她的信箱内。 因此,现在苏菲有办法查出他的身分了。说不定,他还是个女人呢!她可以从楼上的房间清楚看到信箱。如果她站在窗前,就可以看到这位神秘的哲学家了。白信封总不会是从空气里变出来的吧?苏菲决定明天要密切观察。明天是星期五,她有一整个周末可以做这件事。她上楼回到自己的房间,并打开信封。今天只有一个问题,但这个问题,却比她的“情书”里的那三个问题更蠢。 积木为何是世界上最巧妙的玩具首先,苏菲并不认为积木是世界上最巧妙的玩具。她已经有好些年没玩过它了。再说,她实在看不出积木和哲学有什么关联。 不过,她是一个很守本分的学生。于是,她在橱柜的上层翻寻了一遍,找出一个装满各种形状、尺寸的积木的塑胶袋。 她开始玩起积木来,她好久好久没有这样做了。当她动手时,脑中开始出现了一些关于积木的想法。 她想,这些积木很容易组合。虽然它们每一块各不相同,但都可以互相衔接。此外,这些积木也摔不破。印象中她好像没有看过破掉的积木。她手中的这些积木看来就像许多年前刚买时一样,新得发亮。最棒的是她可以用积木组合任何东西,然后又可以把它们拆开,再组合别的东西。 对于这样的玩具你还能有什么要求呢?现在苏菲开始认为积木的确是世界上最巧妙的玩具了。不过她还是不明白这跟哲学有什么关系。她几乎盖好一栋很大的娃娃屋。她虽然不愿意承认,但事实上她很久很久没有玩得这么开心了。 为什么人们长大后就不再玩耍了呢?当妈妈进门时,看到苏菲正在玩积木,忍不住脱口而出:“多好玩哪!我很高兴你还没有长大到不能玩的年纪。”“我不是在玩!”苏菲生气地说。“我在做一项非常复杂的哲学实验。”妈妈深深叹了口气,苏菲大概又在想白兔与帽子的事了。 第二天苏菲放学回家后,放着好几页信纸的棕色大信封已经在等着她了。她把信拿到楼上的房间内,迫不及待要看信,但同时她也告诉自己必须要注意信箱附近的动静才行。 原子理论 苏菲,我又来了!今天我们将谈到最后一位伟大的自然派哲学他的名字叫德谟克里特斯(约公元前四六O~公元前三七O)来自爱琴海北部海岸一个叫阿布德拉的小镇。 如果你能够毫无困难地回答有关积木的问题,你将可以了解这位哲学家的课题。 德谟克里特斯同意前面几位哲学家的看法,认为自然界的转变不是因为任何事物真的有所“改变”。他相信每一种事物都是由微小的积木所组成,而每一块积木都是永恒不变的。德谟克里特斯把这些最小的单位称为原予。 原子(atom)这个字的本意是“不可分割的”。德谟克里特斯认为,证明组成各种事物的单位不可能被无限制分割咸更小的单位是很重要的。因为如果每一个组成各种事物的单位都可以被分割咸更小的单位,则大自然将开始像不断被稀释的汤一般消失了。 更重要的是,大自然的积木必须是永恒的,因为没有一件事物会来自虚无。在这方面,他同意帕梅尼德斯与伊利亚地区那些哲学家的看法,也认为所有的原予都是坚硬结实的,但却非完全一样。 他说,如果所有原予都一模一样,则我们将无法圆满解释它们何以能够聚合成像罂粟花、橄榄树、羊皮、人发等各种不同的东西。 德谟克里特斯相信,大自然是由无数形状各异的原子组成的。 其中有些是平滑的圆形,有些是不规则的锯齿形。正因为它们形状如此不同,才可以组合在一起,成为各种不同的物体。然而,无论它们的数量和形状多么无穷无尽,它们都是永恒不变、不可被分割的。 当一个物体——如一棵树或一只动物——死亡并分解时,原子就分散各处并可用来组成新的物体。这些原予在空间中到处移动,但因为它们有“钩”与“刺”,因此可以组成我们周遭所见的事物。 因此,现在你明白我问你积木问题的用意了吧?积木的性质多少与德谟克里特斯所说的原子相似’,这也是为何积木如此好玩的原因。首先它们是不可分割的,其次它们有各种不同的形状与尺寸,它们是硬而且不可渗透的。它们也有“钩”与“刺”,使得它们可以组合在一起,形成任何你想象得到的形状。组合完成后,你也可以将它们拆掉,用同一批积木再组成新的东西。 它们可以一再重复使用,这也是积木为何如此受到欢迎的原因。同一块积木今天可以用来造卡车,明天可以用来造城堡。我们也可以说积木是“永恒”的玩具,因为父母小时玩的积木可以拿给下一代玩。 我们也可以用黏土来做东西,不过黏土不可以重复使用,因为它可以不断被分割成更小的单位。这些微小的单位不能够再度组合,做成别的东西。 今天我们可以确定,德谟克里特斯的原子理论或多或少是A确的。大自然的确是由聚散不定的不同“原子”所组成。我鼻头细胞里的一个氢原子以前可能属于某只大象的鼻子;我d脏肌肉里的一个碳原子从前可能在恐龙的尾巴上。 不过,现代科学家已经发现原子可以分裂为更小的“基本粒子”。我们称之为质子、中子与电子。也许这些粒子有一天也可以被分裂成更小的粒子。但物理学家一致认为这样分裂下去,一定会有一个极限。一定有一个组成大自然的“最小单位”。 德谟克里特斯当年并没有现代的电子设备可以利用。他唯一的工具就是他的心灵。不过在运用他的理性思考之后,他其实也只能提出这样的答案。他既然接受没有任何事物会改变、没有任何事物来自虚无、没有任何事物会消失的说法,那么大自然必定是由可以一再聚散的无限小单位组成的。 德谟克里特斯并不相信有任何“力量”或“灵魂”介入大自然的变化过程。他认为世间唯一存在的东西就只有原子与虚空。由于只相信物质的东西,因此我们称他为唯物论者。 根据德谟克里特斯的说法,原子的移动并没有任何刻意的“设计”。在自然界中,每一件事物的发生都是相当机械化的。这并不是说每一件事都是偶然发生的,因为万事万物都遵从必要的“必然法则”。每一件事之所以发生都有一个自然的原因,这个原因原本即存在于事物的本身。德谟克里特斯曾经说过,他对发现新的自然法则比当波斯国王更有兴趣。•德谟克里特斯认为,原予理论同时也解释了我们的感官何以会有知觉。我们之所以会感觉到某样东西,是因为原子在空间中移动的缘故,我们之所以能看到月亮,是因为“月亮原子”穿透了我们的眼睛。 然而,有关“灵魂”这档事又怎么说呢?它一定不可能是由原子、由物质组成的吧?事实上,那是可能的。德谟克里特斯认为,灵魂是由一种既圆又平滑的特别的“灵魂原子”组成。人死时,灵魂原子四处飞散,然后可能变成另一个新灵魂的一部分。 这表示人类并没有不朽的灵魂。今天许多人都持有这种想法。 他们像德谟克里特斯一样,相信“灵魂”与脑子连在一起,脑子分解之后,我们就没有任何知觉意识了。 关于希腊的自然派哲学,我们暂时就讨论到德谟克里特斯的原子理论为止。他赞成赫拉克里特斯的看法,认为各种物体出现、消失、出现、消失,因此自然界的一切事物都是“流动”的。不过每一件“流动”的事物背后,有某种永恒不变、不会流动的东西,德谟克里特斯称之为原子。 在看信的当儿,苏非向窗外瞥过好几眼,想看那位神秘的哲学家是否会出现在信箱旁。现在她却只是坐着,看着路的那一头,想着刚才信里的内容。 她觉得德谟克里特斯的概念虽然简单,但却非常巧妙。他发现了“基本物质”与“变化”这个问题的真正答案。这个问题非常复杂,历代的哲学家都为它绞尽脑汁。最后德谟克里特斯却单凭常识就解决了这个问题。 苏菲忍不住要微笑起来。大自然必定是由许多不变的微小单位组成的。另外一方面,赫拉克里特斯认为自然界所有形体都在“流动”的想法显然也是对的,因为每一个人都会死,动物也会死,就连山脉也会慢慢瓦解。重点是山脉是由微小的、不可分割的单位组成的,而这些单位永远不会分解。 同时,德谟克里特斯也提出了一些新的问题。例如,他说每一件事物的发生都是机械化的。就像恩培窦可里斯与安纳萨哥拉斯一样,他并不认为生命中有任何精神力量存在。他也相信人没有不朽的灵魂。 她是否赞成这种想法呢?她不知道。不过毕竟她才开始上这门哲学课呀! Fate  the "fortune-teller" is trying to foresee something that is really quite unforeseeable ... Sophie had been keeping her eye on the mailbox while she read about Democritus. But just in case, she decided nevertheless to take a stroll down to the garden gate. When she opened the front door she saw a small envelope on the front step. And sure enough--it was addressed to Sophie Amundsen. So he had tricked her! Today of all days, when she had kept such careful watch on the mailbox, the mystery man had sneaked up to the house from a different angle and just laid the letter on the step before making off into the woods again. Drat! How did he know that Sophie was watching the mailbox today? Had he seen her at the window? Anyway, she was glad to find the letter before her mother arrived. Sophie went back to her room and opened the letter. The white envelope was a bit wet around the edges, and had two little holes in it. Why was that? It had not rained for several days. The little note inside read: Do you believe in Fate? Is sickness the punishment of the gods? What forces govern the course of history? Did she believe in Fate? She was not at all sure. But she knew a lot of people who did. There was a girl in her class who read horoscopes in magazines. But if they believed in astrology, they probably believed in Fate as well, because astrologers claimed that the position of the stars influenced people's lives on Earth. If you believed that a black cat crossing your path meant bad luck--well, then you believed in Fate, didn't you? As she thought about it, several more examples of fatalism occurred to her. Why do so many people knock on wood, for example? And why was Friday the thirteenth an unlucky day? Sophie had heard that lots of hotels had no room number 13. It had to be because so many people were superstitious. "Superstitious." What a strange word. If you believed in Christianity or Islam, it was called "faith." But if you believed in astrology or Friday the thirteenth it was superstition! Who had the right to call other people's belief superstition? Sophie was sure of one thing, though. Democritus had not believed in fate. He was a materialist. He had only believed in atoms and empty space. Sophie tried to think about the other questions on the note. "Is sickness the punishment of the gods?" Surely nobody believed that nowadays? But it occurred to her that many people thought it helped to pray for recovery, so at any rate they must believe that God had some power over people's health. The last question was harder to answer. Sophie had never given much thought to what governed the course of history. It had to be people, surely? If it was God or Fate, people had no free will. The idea of free will made Sophie think of something else. Why should she put up with this mysterious philosopher playing cat and mouse with her? Why couldn't she write a letter to him. He (or she) would quite probably put another big envelope in the mailbox during the night or sometime tomorrow morning. She would see to it that there was a letter ready for this person. Sophie began right away. It was difficult to write to someone she had never seen. She didn't even know if it was a man or a woman. Or if he or she was old or young. For that matter, the mysterious philosopher could even be someone she already knew. She wrote: Most respected philosopher, Your generous correspondence course in philosophy is greatly appreciated by us here. But it bothers us not to know who you are. We therefore request you to use your full name. In return we would like to extend our hospitality should you care to corne and have coffee with us, but preferably when my mother is at home. She is at work from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day from Monday to Friday. I am at school during these days, but I am always home by 2:15 p.m., except on Thursdays. I am also very good at making coffee. Thanking you in advance, I remainYour attentive student,Sophie Amundsen (aged 14) At the bottom of the page she wrote RSVP. Sophie felt that the letter had turned out much too formal. But it was hard to know which words to choose when writing to a person without a face. She put the letter in a pink envelope and addressed it "To the philosopher." The problem was where to put it so her mother didn't find it. She would have to wait for her to get home before putting it in the mailbox. And she would also have to remember to look in the mailbox early the next morning before the newspaper arrived. If no new letter came for her this evening or during the night, she would have to take the pink envelope in again. Why did it all have to be so complicated? That evening Sophie went up to her room early, even though it was Friday. Her mother tried to tempt her with pizza and a thriller on TV, but Sophie said she was tired and wanted to go to bed and read. While her mother sat watching TV, she sneaked out to the mailbox with her letter. Her mother was clearly worried. She had started speaking to Sophie in a different tone since the business with the white rabbit and the top hat. Sophie hated to be a worry to her mother, but she just had to go upstairs and keep an eye on the mailbox. When her mother came up at about eleven o'clock, Sophie was sitting at the window staring down the road. "You're not still sitting there staring at the mailbox!" she said. "I can look at whatever I like." "I really think you must be in love, Sophie. But if he is going to bring you another letter, he certainly won't come in the middle of the night." Yuck! Sophie loathed all that soppy talk about love. But she had to let her mother go on believing it was true. "Is he the one who told you about the rabbit and the top hat?" her mother asked. Sophie nodded. "He--he doesn't do drugs, does he?" Now Sophie felt really sorry for her mother. She couldn't go on letting her worry this way, although it was completely nutty of her to think that just because someone had a slightly bizarre idea he must be on something. Grownups really were idiotic sometimes. She said, "Mom, I promise you once and for all I'll never do any of that stuff... and he doesn't either. But he is very interested in philosophy." "Is he older than you?" Sophie shook her head. "The same age?" Sophie nodded. "Well, I'm sure he's very sweet, darling. Now I think you should try and get some sleep." But Sophie stayed sitting by the window for what seemed like hours. At last she could hardly keep her eyes open. It was one o'clock. She was just about to go to bed when she suddenly caught sight of a shadow emerging from the woods. Although it was almost dark outside, she could make out the shape of a human figure. It was a man, and Sophie thought he looked quite old. He was certainly not her age! He was wearing a beret of some kind. She could have sworn he glanced up at the house, but Sophie's light was not on. The man went straight up to the mailbox and dropped a big envelope into it. As he let go of it, he caught sight of Sophie's letter. He reached down into the mailbox and fished it up. The next minute he was walking swiftly back toward the woods. He hurried down the woodland path and was gone. Sophie felt her heart pounding. Her first instinct was to run after him in her pajamas but she didn't dare run after a stranger in the middle of the night. But she did have to go out and fetch the envelope. After a minute or two she crept down the stairs, opened the front door quietly, and ran to the mailbox. In a flash she was back in her room with the envelope in her hand. She sat on her bed, holding her breath. After a few minutes had passed and all was still quiet in the house, she opened the letter and began to read. She knew this would not be an answer to her own letter. That could not arrive until tomorrow. FATE Good morning once again, my dear Sophie. In case you should get any ideas, let me make it quite clear that you must never attempt to check up on me. One day we will meet, but I shall be the one to decide when and where. And that's final. You are not going to disobey me, are you? But to return to the philosophers. We have seen how they tried to find natural explanations for the transformations in Nature. Previously these things had been ex-plained through myths. Old superstitions had to be cleared away in other areas as well. We see them at work in matters of sickness and health as well as in political events. In both these areas the Greeks were great believers in fatalism. Fatalism is the belief that whatever happens is predestined. We find this belief all over the world, not only throughout history but in our own day as welt. Here in the Nordic countries we find a strong belief in "lagnadan," or fate, in the old Icelandic sagas of the Edda. We also find the belief, both in Ancient Greece and in other parts of the world, that people could learn their fate from some form of oracle. In other words, that the fate of a person or a country could be foreseen in various ways. There are still a lot of people who believe that they can tell your fortune in the cards, read your palm, or predict your future in the stars. A special Norwegian version of this is telling your fortune in coffee cups. When a coffee cup is empty there are usually some traces of coffee grounds left. These might form a certain image or pattern--at least, if we give our imagination free rein. If the grounds resemble a car, it might mean that the person who drank from the cup is going for a long drive. Thus the "fortune-teller" is trying to foresee something that is really quite unforeseeable. This is characteristic of all forms of foreseeing. And precisely because what they "see" is so vague, it is hard to repudiate fortune-tellers' claims. When we gaze up at the stars, we see a veritable chaos of twinkling dots. Nevertheless, throughout the ages there have always been people who believed that the stars could tell us something about our life on Earth. Even today there are political leaders who seek the advice of astrologers before they make any important decisions. The Oracle at Delphi The ancient Greeks believed that they could consult the famous oracle at Delphi about their fate. Apollo, the god of the oracle, spoke through his priestess Pythia, who sat on a stool over a fissure in the earth, from which arose hypnotic vapors that put Pythia in a trance. This enabled her to be Apollo's mouthpiece. When people came to Delphi they had to present their question to the priests of the oracle, who passed it on to Pythia. Her answer would be so obscure or ambiguous that the priests would have to interpret it. In that way, the ieople got the benefit of Apollo's wisdom, believing that e knew everything, even about the future. There were many heads of state who dared not go to war or take other decisive steps until they had consulted the oracle at Delphi. The priests of Apollo thus functioned more or less as diplomats, or advisers. They were experts with an intimate knowledge of the people and the country. Over the entrance to the temple at Delphi was a famous inscription: KNOW THYSELF! It reminded visitors that man must never believe himself to be more than mortal--and that no man can escape his destiny. The Greeks had many stories of people whose destiny catches up with them. As time went by, a number of plays--tragedies--were written about these "tragic" people. The most famous one is the tragedy of King Oedipus. History and Medicine But Fate did not just govern the lives of individuals. The Greeks believed that even world history was governed by Fate, and that the fortunes of war could be swayed by the intervention of the gods. Today there are still many people who believe that God or some other mysterious power is steering the course of history. But at the same time as Greek philosophers were trying to find natural explanations for the processes of nature, the first historians were beginning to search for natural explanations for the course of history. When a country lost a war, the vengeance of the gods was no longer an acceptable explanation to them. The best known Greek historians were Herodotus (484-424 B.C.) and Thucydides (460-400 B.C.). The Greeks also believed that sickness could be ascribed to divine intervention. On the other hand, the gods could make people well again if they made the appropriate sacrifices. This idea was in no way unique to the Greeks. Before the development of modern medicine, the most widely accepted view was that sickness was due to supernatural causes. The word "influenza" actually means a malign influence from the stars. Even today, there are a lot of people who believe that some diseases--AIDS, for example--are God's punishment. Many also believe that sick people can be cured with the help of the supernatural. Concurrently with the new directions in Greek philosophy, a Greek medical science arose which tried to find natural explanations for sickness and health. The founder of Greek medicine is said to have been Hippocrates, who was born on the island of Cos around 460 B.C. The most essential safeguards against sickness, according to the Hippocratic medical tradition, were moderation and a healthy lifestyle. Health is the natural condition. When sickness occurs, it is a sign that Nature has gone off course because of physical or mental imbalance. The road to health for everyone is through moderation, harmony, and a "sound mind in a sound body." There is a lot of talk today about "medical ethics," which is another way of saying that a doctor must practice medicine according to certain ethical rules. For instance, a doctor may not give healthy people a prescription for narcotics. A doctor must also maintain professional secrecy, which means that he is not allowed to reveal anything a patient has told him about his illness. These ideas go back to Hippocrates. He required his pupils to take the following oath: I will follow that system or regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider to be for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. 1 will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked nor suggest any such counsel, and in like manner I will not give to a woman the means to produce an abortion. Whenever I go into a house, I will go for the benefit of the sick and will abstain from every voluntary act of mischief and corruption, and further, from the seduction of females or males, whether freemen or slaves. Whatever, in connection with my professional practice, I see or hear which ought not to be spoken abroad, I will keep secret. So long as I continue to carry out this oath unviolated, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and the practice of the art, respected by all men in all times, but should I violate this oath, may the reverse be my lot. Sophie awoke with a start on Saturday morning. Was it a dream or had she really seen the philosopher? She felt under the bed with one hand. Yes--there lay the letter that had come during the night. It wasn't only a dream. She had definitely seen the philosopher! And what's more, with her own eyes she had seen him take her letter! She crouched down on the floor and pulled out all the typewritten pages from under the bed. But what was that? Right by the wall there was something red. A scarf, perhaps? Sophie edged herself in under the bed and pulled out a red silk scarf. It wasn't hers, that was for sure! She examined it more closely and gasped when she saw HILDE written in ink along the seam. Hilde! But who was Hilde? How could their paths keep crossing like this? 命运    ……算命者试图预测某些事实上 极不可测的事物……    苏菲刚才读着德谟克里特斯的理论时,已经留神查看过信箱附近的动静。不过为了保险起见,她决定还是走到花园门口去看看。 当她打开前门时,看到门前的阶梯上放着一个小信封。不用说,是写给苏菲的。 这么说,他已经知道了。今天她特地留意信箱附近的动静,但这个神秘客却悄悄从另外一个角度溜到屋前,把信放在台阶上,然后又匆匆躲进树林中。真是的! 他怎么知道苏菲今天会注意观察信箱?也许他看到她站在窗口了?无论如何,苏菲还是很高兴能在妈妈回家前拿到这封信。 苏菲回到房里,打开信。信封的边缘有一点潮湿,并且有两个小洞。为何会这样呢?有好几天都没有下雨了呀! 信封里的纸条写着: 你相信命运吗? 疾病是诸神对人类的惩罚吗? 是什么力量影响历史的走向? 她相信命运吗?她可不敢说,不过她知道有很多人相信。她班上有一个女生常常看杂志上的星座栏。如果人们相信占星术,他们大概也相信命运,因为占星学家宣称星座的位置会影响地球人类的生活。 如果你相信在路上遇见黑猫表示运气不好,那么就表示你相信命运,是不是?她思考这个问题时,想到另外几个宿命论的例子。 举例来说,为什么那么多人会在自夸或谈论好运时,敲一敲木头做的东西以避免带来厄运呢?为什么十三号星期五不吉利?苏菲听说有很多旅馆没有第十三号房。这一定是因为有很多人迷信的缘故。 “迷信”,多么奇怪的一个名词。如果你信基督教或伊斯兰教,这就叫“信仰”,但如果你相信占星术或十三号星期五不吉利,就是迷信]谁有权利说别人相信的东西就是“迷信”呢? 不过,苏菲倒可以肯定的一件事:德谟克里特斯并不相信命运,他是个唯物论者,他只相信原子与虚空。 苏菲又试着思索纸条上的其他问题。 “疾病是诸神对人类的惩罚吗?”今天一定不会有人相信这种说法吧?不过她又想到很多人认为祈祷会帮助疾病痊愈。所以无论如何,他们一定相信上帝有某种力量可以左右哪些人生病、哪些人痊愈。 至于最后一个问题就更难回答了。苏菲以前从未深思过什么力量会影响历史走向的问题。一定是人类吧?如果是上帝或命运的话,那人类就没有自由意志了。 自由意志这个观念使苏菲想到别的东西。她为什么要忍受这个神秘的哲学家跟她玩捉迷藏的游戏呢?她为什么不写一封信给他呢?他(或她)非常可能又会在晚上或明天早晨在信箱里放一个大信封。到时她要写好一封信给这个人。 苏菲立刻下楼。她心想,要写信给一位她从未见过的人可真难呀!她连那人是男是女都不知道呢!也不知道他(她)是老是少。 讲到这点,说不定这位神秘的哲学家还是她认识的人呢! 很快的,她已经写好了一封短信。 可敬的哲学家: 我很欣赏您所函授的哲学课程,但对于不知您的身分一事甚感困扰。因此请求您具上全名。为了回报,欢迎您前来寒舍小坐并共进咖啡,不过最好利用我母亲不在家时。她的上班时间为周一到周五每天上午七点半到下午五点。同一段时间我也在校上课,但除周四之外,总是在下午两点十五分回到家门。还有,我很擅于煮咖啡, 在此先谢谢您。 学生 苏菲(十四岁)敬上 在信纸的最下面,她写上“烦请回函”这几个字。 苏菲觉得这封信写得太正式了。不过当你写给一个从未谋面的人时,很难决定要使用什么样的字眼。 她把信放在一个粉红色的信封里,并塞进去。信封上写着:“哲学家启”。 问题是:她应该把信放在哪里才不会被妈妈看到呢?她得等到妈妈回家后才能把它放在信箱里。还有,她也必须记得在第二天清晨报纸送来前,查看信箱。如果今天傍晚或深夜她没有收到新的信,她就得把那封粉红色的信拿回来。 事情为什么一定要弄得这么复杂呢? 那天晚上,虽然是星期五,苏菲还是早早就回房。妈妈拿意大利脆饼和电视恐怖剧引诱她留下来,但苏菲说累了,想上床看书。 趁妈妈坐在那儿看电视时,她偷偷拿了信溜到信箱那儿。 妈妈显然很担心她。自从苏菲上次讲过白兔与帽子的事后,妈妈对苏菲讲话的语气都不一样了。苏菲不想让妈妈担心,但她必须上楼观察信箱旁边的动静。 十一点钟左右,妈妈上楼来时,苏菲正坐在窗子旁,看着下面那条路。 • 妈妈说:“你可不是坐在这儿盯着信箱看吧?” “我高兴!” “我看你一定是谈恋爱了,苏菲。可是就算他会再送信来,也不会挑三更半夜呀!” 真讨厌,干嘛老讲这些肉麻的事情?不过苏菲只好让妈妈继续这样想了。 妈妈又说:“他就是告诉你兔子与帽子那些事的人吗?” 苏菲点点头。 “他——他没有喝药吧?” 现在苏菲真是替妈妈感到难过了。她不能继续让她这样担心下去。虽说妈妈只要听到谁有一些古怪念头,就认为他有喝药的嫌疑,那也是够神经了。大人有时还真白痴呢! 她转身看着妈妈,说:“妈妈,我答应你永远不会做那类的事情……‘他’也不会。不过他对哲学非常有兴趣。” “他年纪比你大吗?” 苏菲摇摇头。 “跟你同年?” 苏菲点点头。 “嗯,我相信他一定很可爱。现在你应该睡觉了吧?” 不过苏菲还是继续坐在窗边。时间好像过了好几小时,最后她的眼睛实在睁不开了,已经是半夜一点了。 她正要上床时,突然看到有一个影子从树林中闪出来。 虽然外头很黑,但苏菲还是看得出来那是个人,而且是个男人。苏菲心想他看来年纪颇大的,一定不是跟她同年。他头上好像戴着一顶扁帽。 她发誓他曾经向楼上望了一眼,不过苏菲房间的灯没开。那个男人一直走到信箱旁,将一个大信封丢进里面。这时他突然看到苏菲写的信,他把手伸进信箱,把信拿出来,然后便快步走回树林,沿着树林中的小径慢跑,然后就消失不见了。 苏菲觉得自己的心“咚!咚!地跳。她的第一个直觉反应是想穿着睡衣出去追他,但她又不敢半夜去追一个陌生人。不过她显然必须出去拿那封信。 一两分钟后,她蹑手蹑脚地走下楼梯,悄悄打开前门,跑到信箱那儿。一转眼她已经回房,手中拿着那封信。她坐在床上,屏声静气。直到几分钟后屋里仍然静悄悄时,她才打开信封,开始看信。 她知道这封信不是针对她那封信的回函。那封信要明天才会到。 命运 早安,亲爱的苏菲。为了避免你产生任何念头,我先声明:你绝对不可以探查我的身分。有一天我们会见面的,不过要让我来决定时间和地点。就这样说定了,你不会不听话吧? 现在让我们再谈那些哲学家的理论吧。我们已经看到他们如何试图为大自然的变化寻求自然的解释。在过去,这些现象都是透过神话来解释的。 然而,其他方面的古老迷信也必须加以破除。我们将谈到他们如何思考疾病与健康以及政治问题。在这些方面,希腊人非常相信宿命论。 宿命论的意思就是相信所有发生的事都是命中注定的。我们可以发现这种思想遍布全世界,不仅古人这样想,现代人也一样。 北欧这里的人同样非常相信命运,相信冰岛诗集中的各种神话与传说。 我们也可以发现,无论是在古希腊或其他地方,人们都相信他们可以借由神谕来得知自己的命运。换句话说,他们相信一个人或一个国家的命运可以用一些方式预算出来。 现代仍有许多人相信纸牌算命、看手相或观察星座以预知未来等。挪威人有一个用咖啡杯来算命的特别方法。当咖啡喝完后,杯底通常会有一些咖啡粉的残渣。这些渣子可能会形成某种图案 ——如果我们运用我们天马行空的想象力的话。假使杯底的渣子看来像是一辆车子,那也许就表示喝这杯咖啡的人将驾车远行。 就这样,“算命仙”试图预测一些非常不可能预测的事情,这是所有预言共同的特征。而正因算命仙所“看”到的是如此模糊,你很难去驳斥他的话。 当我们抬头看着天上的星星时,我们只能看到许多呈不规则分布状的闪亮小点。尽管如此,千百年来仍有不少人相信可以从星星里看出人类的命运。即使在今天,仍有一些政治领袖在做重要决策前会征求占星学家的意见。  戴尔菲的神论    古代希腊人相信人们可以透过著名的戴尔菲(Delphi)神论知道自己的命运。负责神论的神是阿波罗。他透过他的女祭司琵西雅(Pythia)发言。琵西雅坐在土地裂缝上方的一张凳子上,裂缝中会冒出一股催眠般的蒸气,使她进入恍惚的状态,而成为阿波罗的代言人。 人们来到戴尔菲后,必须将他们的问题呈现给负责神论的祭司,再由祭司将问题转达给琵西雅。而她的回答往往含糊不清、模棱两可,因此必须由祭司加以解释。人们就如此这般得着了阿波罗智慧的恩赐,并相信他无所不知,甚至可以预见未来。 当时,有许多国家元首要等到求教于戴尔菲的神谕后,才敢打仗或采取一些决定性的步骤。因此阿波罗的祭司们或多或少具有一些外交家的功能,也可以说他们是熟悉人民与国家事务的顾问。 在戴尔菲神庙的入口处上方有一行著名的铭文:“了解自己!” 意思是人类绝不可自以为不朽,同时也没有人可以逃避命运。 希腊有许多故事叙述人们如何逃不过命运的捉弄。久而久之,这些“可怜”人物的故事被写成若干出悲剧。其中最有名的一出是有关伊迪帕斯国王的悲惨故事。 历史与医学 古希腊人相信命运不仅操纵个人的生活,也左右世界的历史。 他们并且相信战争的结局可能因诸神的介入而改变。同样的,在我们这个时代,也有许多人相信上帝或某种神秘的力量会影响历史的走向。 然而,就在希腊哲学家努力为大自然的变化寻求符合自然的解释时,历史上最早的一批历史学家也开始为历史事件寻求合理的解释。他们不再认为一个国家之所以打败仗是因为神向他们报复。最著名的两位希腊历史学家是贺若多陀斯(Herodotus,公元前四八四年~公元前四二四年)与修西德底斯(Thucydides,公元前四六O~公元前四OO年)。 古希腊人相信疾病可能是神降的灾祸,也相信只要人以适当的方式向神献祭,神就可能使生病的人痊愈。 这个观念并非希腊人独有。在现代医学发达以前,人们普遍认为疾病是由某些超自然的原因所造成。英文influenza(流行性感冒)一词实际上的意思是“受到星星的不良影响”。 即使是在今天,仍有很多人相信某些疾病——如艾滋病——是上帝对人类的惩罚,也有许多人相信可以用超自然的力量痊愈。 在希腊哲学朝新方向迈进之际,希腊的医学也开始兴起。这种学问的目的是为疾病与健康寻求合乎自然的解释。据说希腊医学的始祖是大约公元前四六O年时,在寇斯岛诞生的希波克拉底(H中pOcrates)。 根据希波克拉底派的医学传统,要预防疾病,最重要的就是饮食起居要节制,同时要有健康的生活方式。他们认为健康是人的自然状态。人之所以生病,是因为身体或心灵不平衡,因而使大自然“出轨”所致。保持健康的方法就是节制饮食、保持和谐,并拥有“健康的身体与健康的心灵”。 现代人常常谈到“医学伦理”,也就是说医生为人治病时必须遵守若干伦理规范,例如不能开麻醉药品的处方给健康人,同时必须保守职业上的秘密,也就是说,不可以泄漏病人的病情。这些概念都是希波克拉底提出来的。他要求他的学生宣读下列的誓言: 我将依照自身的能力与判断,采用对病人有利的疗法与处方,绝不施以有害或有毒之物。无论应何人之请,我也绝不给予致命药物或做此类之建议,也绝不协助妇女堕胎。进入病家访视时,我将以病人的福祉为念,不做任何贪渎害人之事,不受男女奴仆之引诱。我在执业时之所见所闻,凡不应泄漏者,我将严予保密。若我遵行此一誓言,不懈不怠,愿上苍使我乐享生命、精进医事并受世人敬重。若我违反誓言,愿我遭相反之命运。 星期六早上,苏菲醒来时从床上跳了起来。她是在作梦还是她真的见到了那位哲学家? 她用一只手摸了摸床底下,没错,昨晚收到的信还在那里。不是梦。 她准是见到那个哲学家了。更重要的是,她亲眼看到他拿走了她写的信。 她蹲在地板上,把所有的信都从床底下拉出来,咦,那是什么? 就在墙边,有一样红色的东西,好像是一条围巾吧? 苏菲钻到床底下,拉出一条红色的丝巾。她肯定这不是她的。 她仔细加以检查。当她看到丝巾的线缝旁有墨水写的“席德”字样时,不禁目瞪口呆。 席德!谁又是这个席德呢?她们走的路怎么会如此交错不已呢? Socrates wisest is she who knows she does not know Sophie put on a summer dress and hurried down to the kitchen. Her mother was standing by the kitchen table. Sophie decided not to say anything about the silk scarf. "Did you bring in the newspaper?" she asked. Her mother turned. "Would you get it for me?" Sophie was out of the door in a flash, down the gravel path to the mailbox. Only the newspaper. She couldn't expect an answer so soon, she supposed. On the front page of the paper she read something about the Norwegian UN battalion in Lebanon. The UN battalion ... wasn't that the postmark on the card from Hilde's father? But the postage stamp had been Norwegian. Maybe the Norwegian UN soldiers had their own post office with them. "You've become very interested in the newspaper," said her mother drily when Sophie returned to the kitchen. Luckily her mother said no more about mailboxes and stuff, either during breakfast or later on that day. When she went shopping, Sophie took her letter about Fate down to the den. She was surprised to see a little white envelope beside the cookie tin with the other letters from the philosopher. Sophie was quite sure she had not put it there. This envelope was also wet around the edges. And it had a couple of deep holes in it, just like the one she had received yesterday. Had the philosopher been here? Did he know about her secret hiding place? Why was the envelope wet? All these questions made her head spin. She opened the letter and read the note: Dear Sophie, I read your letter with great interest-- and not without some regret. I must unfortunately disappoint you with regard to the invitation. We shall meet one day, but it will probably be quite a while before I can come in person to Captain's Bend. I must add that from now on I will no longer be able to deliver the letters personally. It would be much too risky in the long run. In the future, letters will be delivered by my little messenger. On the other hand, they will be brought directly to the secret place in the garden. You may continue to contact me whenever you feel the need. When you do, put a pink envelope out with a cookie or a lump of sugar in it. When the messenger finds it, he will bring it straight to me. P.S. It is not pleasant to decline a young lady's invitation to coffee, but sometimes it is a matter of necessity. P.P.S. If you should come across a red silk scarf anywhere, please take care of it. Sometimes personal property gets mixed up. Especially at school and places like that, and this is a philosophy school. Yours, Alberto Knox Sophie had lived for almost fifteen years, and had received quite a lot of letters in her young life, at least at Christmas and on birthdays. But this letter was the strangest one she had ever received. It had no postage stamp. It hadn't even been put in the mailbox. It had been brought straight to Sophie's top-secret hideout in the old hedge. The fact that it was wet in the dry spring weather was also most mystifying. The strangest thing of all was the silk scarf, of course. The philosopher must have another pupil. That was it. And this other pupil had lost a red silk scarf. Right. But how had she managed to lose it under Sophie's bed? And Alberto Knox  what kind of a name was that? One thing was confirmed--the connection between the philosopher and Hilde Moller Knag. But that Hilde's own father was now confusing their addresses--that was completely incomprehensible. Sophie sat for a long time thinking about what connection there could possibly be between Hilde and herself. Finally she gave up. The philosopher had written that she would meet him one day. Perhaps she would meet Hilde too. She turned the letter over. She now saw that there were some sentences written on the back as well: Is there such a thing as natural modesty? Wisest is she who knows she does not know... True insight comes from within. He who knows what is right will do right. Sophie knew that the short sentences that came in the white envelopes were intended to prepare her for the next big envelope, which would arrive shortly thereafter. She suddenly had an idea. If the "messenger" came to the den to deliver a brown envelope, Sophie could simply sit and wait for him. Or was it a her? She would definitely hang on to whoever it was until he or she told her more about the philosopher! The letter said that the "messenger" was little. Could it be a child? "Is there such a thing as natural modesty?" Sophie knew that "modesty" was an old-fashioned word for shyness--for example, about being seen naked. But was it really natural to be embarrassed about that? If something was natural, she supposed, it was the same for everybody. In many parts of the world it was completely natural to be naked. So it must be society that decides what you can and can't do. When Grandma was young you certainly couldn't sunbathe topless. But today, most people think it is "natural," even though it is still strictly forbidden in lots of countries. Was this philosophy? Sophie wondered. The next sentence was: "Wisest is she who knows she does not know." Wiser than who? If the philosopher meant that someone who realized that she didn't know everything under the sun was wiser than someone who knew just a little, but who thought she knew a whole lot--well, that wasn't so difficult to agree with. Sophie had never thought about it before. But the more she did, the more clearly she saw that knowing what you don't know is also a kind of knowledge. The stupidest thing she knew was for people to act like they knew all about things they knew absolutely nothing about. The next sentence was about true insight coming from within. But didn't all knowledge come into people's heads from the outside? On the other hand, Sophie could remember situations when her mother or the teachers at school had tried to teach her something that she hadn't been receptive to. And whenever she had really learned something, it was when she had somehow contributed to it herself. Now and then, even, she would suddenly understand a thing she'd drawn a total blank on before. That was probably what people meant by "insight." So far, so good. Sophie thought she had done reasonably well on the first three questions. But the next statement was so odd she couldn't help smiling: "He who knows what is right will do right." Did that mean that when a bank robber robbed a bank it was because he didn't know any better? Sophie didn't think so. On the contrary, she thought that both children and adults did stupid things that they probably regretted afterwards, precisely because they had done them against their better judgment. While she sat thinking, she heard something rustling in the dry undergrowth on the other side of the hedge nearest the woods. Could it be the messenger? Her heart started beating faster. It sounded like a panting animal was coming. The next moment a big Labrador pushed its way into the den. In its mouth it held a big brown envelope which it dropped at Sophie's feet. It all happened so quickly that Sophie had no time to react. A second later she was sitting with the big envelope in her hands--and the golden Labrador had scampered off into the woods again. Once it was all over she reacted. She started to cry. She sat like that for a while, losing all sense of time. Then she looked up suddenly. So that was his famous messenger! Sophie breathed a sigh of relief. Of course that was why the white envelopes were wet around the edges and had holes in them. Why hadn't she thought of it? Now it made sense to put a cookie or a lump of sugar in the envelope when she wrote to the philosopher. She may not always have been as smart as she would like, but who could have guessed that the messenger was a trained dog! It was a bit out of the ordinary, to put it mildly! She could certainly forget all about forcing the messenger to reveal Alberto Knox's whereabouts. Sophie opened the big envelope and began to read. THE PHILOSOPHY OF ATHENS Dear Sophie, When you read this you may already have met Hermes. In case you haven't, I'll add that he is a dog. But don't worry. He is very good-tempered--and moreover, a good deal more intelligent than a lot of people. In any event he never tries to give the impression of being cleverer than he is. You may also note that his name is not without significance. In Greek mythology, Hermes was the messenger of the gods. He was also the god of seafarers, but we shall not bother about that, at least not for the moment. It is more important that Hermes also gave his name to the word "hermetic," which means hidden or inaccessible--not inappropriate for the way Hermes takes care to keep the two of us hidden from each other. So the messenger has herewith been introduced. Naturally he answers to his name and is altogether very well behaved. But to return to philosophy. We have already completed the first part of the course. I refer to the natural philosophers and their decisive break with the mytholog-ical world picture. Now we are going to meet the three great classical philosophers, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Each in his own way, these philosophers influenced the whole of European civilization. The natural philosophers are also called the pre-Socratics, because they lived before Socrates. Although Democritus died some years after Socrates, all his ideas belong to pre-Socratic natural philosophy. Socrates represents a new era, geographically as well as temporally. He was the first of the great philosophers to be born in Athens, and both he and his two successors lived and worked there. You may recall that Anaxagoras also lived in Athens for a while but was hounded out because he said the sun was a red-hot stone. (Socrates fared no better!) From the time of Socrates, Athens was the center of Greek culture. It is also important to note the change of character in the philosophical project itself as it pro-gresses from natural philosophy to Socrates. But before we meet Socrates, let us hear a little about the so-called Sophists, who dominated the Athenian scene at the time of Socrates. Curtain up, Sophie! The history of ideas is like a drama in many acts. Man at the CenterAfter about 450 B.C., Athens was the cultural center of the Greek world. From this time on, philosophy took a new direction. The natural philosophers had been mainly concerned with the nature of the physical world. This gives them a central position in the history of science. In Athens, interest was now focused on the individual and the individual's place in society. Gradually a democracy evolved, with popular assemblies and courts of law. In order for democracy to work, people had to be educated enough to take part in the democratic process. We have seen in our own time how a young democracy needs popular enlightenment. For the Athenians, it was first and foremost essential to master the art of rhetoric, which means saying things in a convincing manner. A group of itinerant teachers and philosophers from the Greek colonies flocked to Athens. They called themselves Sophists. The word "sophist" means a wise and informed person. In Athens, the Sophists made a living out of teaching the citizens for money. The Sophists had one characteristic in common with the natural philosophers: they were critical of the traditional mythology. But at the same time the Sophists rejected what they regarded as fruitless philosophical speculation. Their opinion was that although answers to philosophical questions may exist, man cannot know the truth about the riddles of nature and of the universe. In philosophy a view like this is called skepticism. But even if we cannot know the answers to all of nature's riddles, we know that people have to learn to live together. The Sophists chose to concern themselves with man and his place in society. "Man is the measure of all things," said the Sophist Protagoras (c. 485-410 B.C.). By that he meant that the question of whether a thing is right or wrong, good or bad, must always be considered in relation to a person's needs. On being asked whether he believed in the Greek gods, he answered, "The question is complex and life is short." A person who is unable to say categorically whether or not the gods or God exists is called an agnostic. The Sophists were as a rule men who had traveled widely and seen different forms of government. Both conventions and local laws in the city-states could vary widely. This led the Sophists to raise the question of what was natural and what was socially induced. By doing this, they paved the way for social criticism in the city-state of Athens. They could for example point out that the use of an expression like "natural modesty" is not always defensible, for if it is "natural" to be modest, it must be something you are born with, something innate. But is it really innate, Sophie--or is it socially induced? To someone who has traveled the world, the answer should be simple: It is not "natural"--or innate--to be afraid to show yourself naked. Modesty--or the lack of it--is first and foremost a matter of social convention. As you can imagine, the wandering Sophists created bitter wrangling in Athens by pointing out that there were no absolute norms for what was right or wrong. Socrates, on the other hand, tried to show that some such norms are in fact absolute and universally valid. Who Was Socrates? Socrates (470-399 B.C.) is possibly the most enigmatic figure in the entire history of philosophy. He never wrote a single line. Yet he is one of the philosophers who has had the greatest influence on European thought, not least because of the dramatic manner of his death. We know he was born in Athens, and that he spent most of his life in the city squares and marketplaces talking with the people he met there. "The trees in the countryside can teach me nothing," he said. He could also stand lost in thought for hours on end. Even during his lifetime he was considered somewhat enigmatic, and fairly soon after his death he was held to be the founder of any number of different philosophical schools of thought. The very fact that he was so enigmatic and ambiguous made it possible for widely differing schools of thought to claim him as their own. We know for a certainty that he was extremely ugly. He was potbellied, and had bulging eyes and a snub nose. But inside he was said to be "perfectly delightful." It was also said of him that "You can seek him in the present, you can seek him in the past, but you will never find his equal." Nevertheless he was sentenced to death for his philosophical activities. The life of Socrates is mainly known to us through the writings of Plato, who was one of his pupils and who became one of the greatest philosophers of all time. Plato wrote a number of Dialogues, or dramatized discussions on philosophy, in which he uses Socrates as his principal character and mouthpiece. Since Plato is putting his own philosophy in Socrates' mouth, we cannot be sure that the words he speaks in the dialogues were ever actually uttered by him. So it is no easy matter to distinguish between the teachings of Socrates and the philosophy of Plato. Exactly the same problem applies to many other historical persons who left no written accounts. The classic example, of course, is Jesus. We cannot be certain that the "historical" Jesus actually spoke the words that Matthew or Luke ascribed to him. Similarly, what the "historical" Socrates actually said will always be shrouded in mystery. But who Socrates "really" was is relatively unimportant. It is Plato's portrait of Socrates that has inspired thinkers in the Western world for nearly 2,500 years. The Art of Discourse The essential nature of Socrates' art lay in the fact that he did not appear to want to instruct people. On the contrary he gave the impression of one desiring to learn from those he spoke with. So instead of lecturing like a traditional schoolmaster, he discussed. Obviously he would not have become a famous philosopher had he confined himself purely to listening to others. Nor would he have been sentenced to death. But he just asked questions, especially to begin a conversation, as if he knew nothing. In the course of the discussion he would generally get his opponents to recognize the weakness of their arguments, and, forced into a corner, they would finally be obliged to realize what was right and what was wrong. Socrates, whose mother was a midwife, used to say that his art was like the art of the midwife. She does not herself give birth to the child, but she is there to help during its delivery. Similarly, Socrates saw his task as helping people to "give birth" to the correct insight, since real understanding must come from within. It cannot be imparted by someone else. And only the understanding that comes from within can lead to true insight. Let me put it more precisely: The ability to give birth is a natural characteristic. In the same way, everybody can grasp philosophical truths if they just use their innate reason. Using your innate reason means reaching down inside yourself and using what is there. By playing ignorant, Socrates forced the people he met to use their common sense. Socrates could feign ignorance--or pretend to be dumber than he was. We call this Socratic irony. This enabled him to continually expose the weaknesses in people's thinking. He was not averse to doing this in the middle of the city square. If you met Socrates, you thus might end up being made a fool of publicly. So it is not surprising that, as time went by, people found him increasingly exasperating, especially people who had status in the community. "Athens is like a sluggish horse," he is reputed to have said, "and I am the gadfly trying to sting it into life." (What do we do with gadflies, Sophie?) A Divine Voice It was not in order to torment his fellow beings that Socrates kept on stinging them. Something within him left him no choice. He always said that he had a "divine voice" inside him. Socrates protested, for example, against having any part in condemning people to death. He moreover refused to inform on his political enemies. This was eventually to cost him his life. In the year 399 B.C. he was accused of "introducing new gods and corrupting the youth," as well as not believing in the accepted gods. With a slender majority, a jury of five hundred found him guilty. He could very likely have appealed for leniency. At least he could have saved his life by agreeing to leave Athens. But had he done this he would not have been Socrates. He valued his conscience--and the truth-- higher than life. He assured the jury that he had only acted in the best interests of the state. He was nevertheless condemned to drink hemlock. Shortly thereafter, he drank the poison in the presence of his friends, and died. Why, Sophie? Why did Socrates have to die? People have been asking this question for 2,400 years. However, he was not the only person in history to have seen things through to the bitter end and suffered death for the sake of their convictions. I have mentioned Jesus already, and in fact there are several striking parallels between them. Both Jesus and Socrates were enigmatic personalities, also to their contemporaries. Neither of them wrote down their teachings, so we are forced to rely on the picture we have of them from their disciples. But we do know that they were both masters of the art of discourse. They both spoke with a characteristic self-assuredness that could fascinate as well as exasperate. And not least, they both believed that they spoke on behalf of something greater than themselves. They challenged the power of the community by criticizing all forms of injustice and corruption. And finally--their activities cost them their lives. The trials of Jesus and Socrates also exhibit clear parallels. They could certainly both have saved themselves by appealing for mercy, but they both felt they had a mission that would have been betrayed unless they kept faith to the bitter end. And by meeting their death so bravely they commanded an enormous following, also after they had died. I do not mean to suggest that Jesus and Socrates were alike. I am merely drawing attention to the fact that they both had a message that was inseparably linked to their personal courage. A Joker in Athens Socrates, Sophie! We aren't done with him yet. We have talked about his method. But what was his philosophical project? Socrates lived at the same time as the Sophists. Like them, he was more concerned with man and his place in society than with the forces of nature. As a Roman philosopher, Cicero, said of him a few hundred years later, Socrates "called philosophy down from the sky and established her in the towns and introduced her into homes and forced her to investigate life, ethics, good and evil." But Socrates differed from the Sophists in one significant way. He did not consider himself to be a "sophist"--that is, a learned or wise person. Unlike the Sophists, he did not teach for money. No, Socrates called himself a philosopher in the true sense of the word. A "philosopher" really means "one who loves wisdom." Are you sitting comfortably, Sophie? Because it is central to the rest of this course that you fully understand the difference between a sophist and a philosopher. The Sophists took money for their more or less hairsplitting expoundings, and sophists of this kind have come and gone from time immemorial. I am referring to all the schoolmasters and self-opinionated know-it-alls who are satisfied with what little they know, or who boast of knowing a whole lot about subjects they haven't the faintest notion of. You have probably come across a few of these sophists in your young life. A real philosopher, Sophie, is a completely different kettle of fish--the direct opposite, in fact. A philosopher knows that in reality he knows very little. That is why he constantly strives to achieve true insight. Socrates was one of these rare people. He knew that he knew nothing about life and about the world. And now comes the important part: it troubled him that he knew so little. A philosopher is therefore someone who recognizes that there is a lot he does not understand, and is troubled by it. In that sense, he is still wiser than all those who brag about their knowledge of things they know nothing about. "Wisest is she who knows she does not know," I said previously. Socrates himself said, "One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing." Remember this statement, because it is an admission that is rare, even among philosophers. Moreover, it can be so dangerous to say it in public that it can cost you your life. The most subversive people are those who ask questions. Giving answers is not nearly as threatening. Any one question can be more explosive than a thousand answers. You remember the story of the emperor's new clothes? The emperor was actually stark naked but none of his subjects dared say so. Suddenly a child burst out, "But he's got nothing on!" That was a courageous child, Sophie. Like Socrates, who dared tell people how little we humans know. The similarity between children and philosophers is something we have already talked about. To be precise: Mankind is faced with a number of difficult questions that we have no satisfactory answers to. So now two possibilities present themselves: We can either fool ourselves and the rest of the world by pretending that we know all there is to know, or we can shut our eyes to the central issues once and for all and abandon all progress. In this sense, humanity is divided. People are, generally speaking, either dead certain or totally indifferent. (Both types are crawling around deep down in the rabbit's fur!) It is like dividing a deck of cards into two piles, Sophie. You lay the black cards in one pile and the red in the other. But from time to time a joker turns up that is neither heart nor club, neither diamond nor spade. Socrates was this joker in Athens. He was neither certain nor indifferent. All he knew was that he knew nothing--and it troubled him. So he became a philosopher--someone who does not give up but tirelessly pursues his quest for truth. An Athenian is said to have asked the oracle at Delphi who the wisest man in Athens was. The oracle answered that Socrates of all mortals was the wisest. When Socrates heard this he was astounded, to put it mildly. (He must have laughed, Sophie!) He went straight to the person in the city whom he, and everyone else, thought was excessively wise. But when it turned out that this person was unable to give Socrates satisfactory answers to his questions, Socrates realized that the oracle had been right. Socrates felt that it was necessary to establish a solid foundation for our knowledge. He believed that this foundation lay in man's reason. With his unshakable faith in human reason he was decidedly a rationalist. The Right Insight Leads to the Right Action As I have mentioned earlier, Socrates claimed that he was guided by a divine inner voice, and that this "conscience" told him what was right. "He who knows what good is will do good," he said. By this he meant that the right insight leads to the right action. And only he who does right can be a "virtuous man." When we do wrong it is because we don't know any better. That is why it is so important to go on learning. Socrates was concerned with finding clear and universally valid definitions of right and wrong. Unlike the Sophists, he believed that the ability to distinguish between right and wrong lies in people's reason and not in society. You may perhaps think this last part is a bit too obscure, Sophie. Let me put it like this: Socrates thought that no one could possibly be happy if they acted against their better judgment. And he who knows how to achieve happiness will do so. Therefore, he who knows what is right will do right. Because why would anybody choose to be unhappy? What do you think, Sophie? Can you live a happy life if you continually do things you know deep down are wrong? There are lots of people who lie and cheat and speak ill of others. Are they aware that these things are not right--or fair, if you prefer? Do you think these people are happy? Socrates didn't. When Sophie had read the letter, she quickly put it in the cookie tin and crawled out into the garden. She wanted to go indoors before her mother got back with the shopping in order to avoid any questions about where she had been. And she had promised to do the dishes. She had just filled the sink with water when her mother came staggering in with two huge shopping bags. Perhaps that was why her mother said, "You are rather preoccupied these days, Sophie." Sophie didn't know why she said it; the words just tumbled out of her mouth: "So was Socrates." "Socrates?" Her mother stared at her, wide-eyed. "It was just so sad that he had to die as a result," Sophie went on thoughtfully. "My goodness! Sophie! I don't know what I'm to do!" "Neither did Socrates. All he knew was that he knew nothing. And yet he was the cleverest person in Athens." Her mother was speechless. Finally she said, "Is this something you've learned at school?" Sophie shook her head energetically. "We don't learn anything there. The difference between schoolteachers and philosophers is that school-teachers think they know a lot of stuff that they try to force down our throats. Philosophers try to figure things out together with the pupils." "Now we're back to white rabbits again! You know something? I demand to know who your boyfriend really is. Otherwise I'll begin to think he is a bit disturbed." Sophie turned her back on the dishes and pointed at her mother with the dish mop. "It's not him who's disturbed. But he likes to disturb others--to shake them out of their rut." "That's enough of that! I think he sounds a bit too impertinent." Sophie turned back to the dishes. "He is neither impertinent nor pertinent," said Sophie. "But he is trying to reach real wisdom. That's the great difference between a real joker and all the other cards in the deck." "Did you say joker?" Sophie nodded. "Have you ever thought about the fact that there are a lot of hearts and diamonds in a pack of cards? And a lot of spades and clubs. But there's only one joker." "Good grief, how you talk back, Sophie!" "And how you ask!" Her mother had put all the groceries away. Now she took the newspaper and went into the living room. Sophie thought she closed the door more loudly than usual. Sophie finished doing the dishes and went upstairs to her room. She had put the red silk scarf on the top shelf of the closet with the Lego blocks. She took it down and examined it carefully. Hilde ... 苏格拉底    ……最聪明的是明白自己无知的人…… 苏菲穿上一件夏衣,匆匆下楼走进厨房。妈妈正站在桌子旁边。苏菲决定不提任何有关丝巾的事。 她脱口而出:“你去拿报纸了吗?” 妈妈转过身来。 “你去帮我拿好吗?” 苏菲飞也似地出了门,从石子路走到信箱旁。 信箱里只有报纸。她想他大概不会这么快回信吧。在报纸的头版,她看到有关挪威联合国部队在黎巴嫩的消息。 联合国部队。。。这不是席德的父亲寄来的卡片邮戳上盖的字样吗?但信上贴的却是挪威的邮票。也许挪威联合国部队的士兵拥有自己的邮局。 苏菲回到厨房时,妈妈声音干涩地说:“你现在对报纸好像很有兴趣。” 幸好当天吃早餐时及早餐过后,妈妈都没有再提到有关信箱的事情。当妈妈出去买东西时,苏菲将那封关于命运的信拿到密洞去。 当她看到她存放哲学家来信的饼干盒旁边放着一个白色的小信封时,不禁吓了一跳。她很肯定不是她放的。 这封信的边缘同样有点潮湿,此外信封上还有两三个很深的洞,就像她昨天收到的那封一样。 难道哲学家来过了吗?他知道她的密洞吗?这封信为什么湿湿的?这些问题把她弄得头昏脑胀。她打开信封来看: 亲爱的苏菲: 我读你的信读得津津有味,不过却有些后悔。遗憾的是,有关共进咖啡的事,我恐怕要让你失望了。总有一天我们会见面的,但可能要等很久我才能亲自到船长弯来。 我必须加上一点,从今以后,我将不能亲自送信了。因为长此下去,风险太大。以后这些信将由我的小小使者送来,同时将会直接送到花园的密洞中。 有必要时,你可以再和我联络。当你想这样做时,请把一块饼干或糖放在一个粉红色的信封里。我的使者拿到后,会直接送来给我。 P.S:拒绝一个小淑女共进咖啡的邀请并不是一件令人很愉快的事,但有时我不得不这样做。 又,如果你在某处看到一条红色的丝巾,请加以保管。那样的东西常常会被人拿错,尤其是在学校等地,而我们这儿又是一所哲学学校。 艾伯特敬上 苏菲今年十四岁。这十四年间她曾接过许多的信,尤其是在圣诞节以及她的生日时。但这封信恐怕是其中最奇怪的一封了。 信上没贴邮票,甚至也不曾放进信箱中,而是直接送到苏菲在老树篱中最秘密藏身之处的。还有,在这样一个干爽的春日里,这封信何以会弄湿,也很令人费解。 当然,最奇怪的还是有关那条丝巾的事。这位哲学家一定还有另外一个学生,而这个学生掉了一条红色的丝巾,一定是这样。不过她怎么会把它掉在苏菲的床底下呢? 还有,艾伯特是一个名字吗? 不过有一件事是可以肯定的;这位哲学家与席德之间有某种关系,不过席德的父亲却把她们两人的地址搞错了,这实在是令人难以理解的事。 苏菲坐了很久,想着席德和她之间到底有什么关系。最后,她叹了口气,决定放弃。哲学家曾经说过有一天他会跟她见面。也许她也会见到席德。 她把信纸翻过来,发现背后也写了几行字: 是否有人天生就很害羞呢? 最聪明的是明白自己无知的人。 真正的智慧来自内心。 明辨是非者必能进退合宜。 苏菲已经知道白信封内的这些短句是哲学家给她的功课,目的要让她做好准备,以便阅读不久后会送来的大信封。这时她突然想起了一件事。如果那位“使者”会把棕色的大信封送到密洞这儿来,她大可以坐在这里等他。(也许是“她”?)她一定会缠着那人,要 他(或她)透露哲学家的一些底细。信上说,这个使者很小。会是个孩子吗? “是否有人天生就很害羞呢?” 苏菲知道害羞就是难为情,例如因为光着身子被人瞧见而不好意思。但因为这样的事而觉得难为情是很自然的反应吗?在她认为,如果某件事情很自然,那每个人做它的时候都应该觉得很自然。在世界上许多地方,赤身露体是很自然的事。因此一定是一个社会决定你能做什么、不能做什么。在奶奶年轻时,女人做上空日光浴是绝对不可以的。然而今天,大多数人都认为这样做很“自然”,虽然这种行为在许多国家还是严格禁止的。苏菲抓了抓头。难道这就是哲学? 第二个句子是“最聪明的是明白自己无知的人”。 这是怎么比较的呢?如果哲学家的意思是,那些明白自己并不知道太阳底下每一件事的人,比那些知道不多,却自认懂得很多的人要聪明,她还比较可以同意。苏菲过去从来没有想过这件事,但她愈想就愈明白:知道自己无知,也是一种知识。她所见过最愚蠢的人,就是那些对某些自己一无所知的事自信满满的人。 再下面一句:“真正的智慧来自内心”。不过在某个阶段,所有的知识一定得从外面进入人的脑袋吧?但从另外一方面来说,苏菲记得有些时候她对妈妈或学校老师教她的事充耳不闻,而她真正学到的知识则或多或少是自己想出来的。有时候她也会突然间领悟一些事情。这也许就是人们所谓的“智慧”吧! 嗯,到目前为止都还不错。苏菲心想,前面这三个问题她答的都算可以。但接下来这句话实在太奇怪了,她不禁莞尔:“明辨是非者必能进退合宜。” 这是不是说一个强盗抢银行是因为他不能辨别是非?她可不这么想。 相反的,她认为无论孩童还是成人有时总是会干一些傻事,之后可能会后悔,这正是因为他们在做事时不依照自己理性的判断所致。 当她坐在那儿思考时,听见树篱靠近树林那一边的干枯灌木丛中有某个东西正沙沙作响。使者来了吗?她的心开始怦怦地跳。 然后她愈来愈害怕地发现,那个正朝她走来的东西居然发出像动物喘息一般的声音。 说时迟,那时快,一只猎狗钻进了密洞。 它口中衔着一个棕色的大信封,随后便将信丢在苏菲的脚跟前。事情发生得太快了,以致苏菲来不及有什么反应。下一秒钟,她发现自己坐在那儿,手里拿着那个大信封,而那只金黄色的狗已经一溜烟跑回树林里去了。 苏菲愣了一会儿才回过神来。她把手放在膝盖上开始哭泣。 她就这样坐了好一会儿,忘记了时间。 然后她突然抬起头。 原来这就是他所说的使者。她叹了一口气,如释重负。难怪那些白色信封的边缘会有些潮湿并且有洞了。她怎么没有想到呢?无怪乎哲学家会要她在写信给他时,在信封里放一块饼干或糖了。 她也许并不像她自认的那样聪明。但谁会想到送信的使者居然是一只受过训练的狗呢?这还真有点不寻常呢!现在她可别想从送信使者那儿盘问出艾伯特的行踪了。 苏菲打开大信封,开始看了起来。 雅典的哲学 亲爱的苏菲:当你看到这封信时,可能已经遇见汉密士了。 如果你还没遇见,我可以先告诉你它是一只狗。不过你不用担心。它是一只性情很温和的狗,智商也比许多人要高得多,而且它从来不会试图假装聪明。 你可能也已经发现,它的名字其实是有意义的。 在希腊神话中,汉密士(Hermes)是为天神送信的使者,也是航海人的神。不过我们现在且不谈这个。更重要的是,从Hermes衍生了Hermetic这个字。它的意思是“隐藏的”或“无法接近的”。 从汉密士小心不让我俩见面的这个角度来看,这个名字不是颇为恰当吗? 好了,我们的送信使者终于出场了。不用说,你叫它的名字它就会答应,而且它非常乖。 现在我们还是来谈哲学吧!我们已经完成第一部分了。我曾提到自然派的哲学理论以及人类后来完全摒弃神话式世界观的 :事。现在我们要谈谈三位伟大的古典派哲学家:苏格拉底、柏拉图与亚理斯多德。这三位哲学家各自以不同的方式影响了整个欧洲文明。 自然派的哲学家也被称为“苏格拉底之前的哲学家”,因为他们生在苏格拉底之前。德谟克里特斯虽然死于苏格拉底数年之后,但他所有的想法都属于苏格拉底之前的自然派哲学。无论就时间或空间而言,苏格拉底都代表了一个新的时代。他是第一个在雅典诞生的伟大哲学家,他和他的两位传人都在雅典生活、工作。你也许还记得安纳萨哥拉斯以前也曾经在雅典住过一段时间,但后来因为他宣称太阳只是一块红热的石头而被驱逐出境。苏格拉底的遭遇也好不了多少。 自从苏格拉底之后,雅典成为希腊文化的中心。我们要注意的是,在哲学理论从自然派演变到苏格拉底学说的过程中,哲学课题的性质也有了改变。但在我们谈到苏格拉底之前,先让我们来听一听所谓“诡辩学派”的学说。这一派的哲学家是苏格拉底时代雅典的主流学派。 哲学史就像一出分成许多幕的戏剧。注意,苏菲,现在舞台上的布幕就要升起了。 以人为中心 从大约公元前四五O年左右起,雅典成了希腊王国的文化中心。从此以后,哲学走上了一个新的方向。 自然派的哲学家关切的主题是自然世界的本质,这使得他们在科学史上占了很重要的一席之地。而雅典的哲学家的兴趣主要在个人本身与每个人在社会的地位。当时,一个拥有人民议会与法庭等机构的民主制度正在雅典逐渐成形。 为了使民主能够运作,人民必须接受足够的教育以参与民主的进程。在现代,我们也看到新兴的民主国家如何需要开启民智。 当时的雅典人认为,最重要的事就是要精通演说术,也就是说要能够用令人信服的方式来表达自己的看法。 这时,有一群四处游历的教师与哲学家从希腊各殖民地来到了雅典。他们自称为哲士或智者(SopLists)。Sophist这个字原来指的是一个有智慧而且博学的人(按:一般贬称为诡辩学家)。这些诡辩学家在雅典以教导市民为生。 诡辩学家与自然派哲学家有一个共通点,那就是:他们都批评传统的神话。但诡辩学家不屑于从事在他们眼中了无益处的哲学 性思考。他们的看法是:虽然哲学问题或许有答案,但人类永远不可能揭开大自然及宇宙之谜。在哲学上,类似这样的看法被称为 “怀疑论”。 诡辩学家认为,我们虽然无法知道所有自然之谜的答案,却可以肯定人类必须学习如何共同生活。因此,他们宁愿关心个人在社会中的地位的问题。 诡辩学家普罗塔哥拉斯(Protagoras,约公元前四八五一公元前四一O年)曾说过:“人是衡量一切的尺度。”他的意思是:一件事情是对是错、是好是坏,完全要看它与人类的需求有何关系而定。 当有人问他是否相信希腊的诸神时,他答道:“这个问题太复杂,而生命又太短促了。”一个无法确定世上是否有神的人,我们称他为“不可知论者”。 这批诡辩学家多半都是一些游遍各地、见过不同政治制度的人。在他们到过的各个城邦中,无论传统规范或地方法律可能都各不相同。这使得那些诡辩学家不禁质疑哪些事物是与生俱来,而哪些事物又是社会环境造成的。就这样,他们播下了雅典城邦内社会批评的种子。 例如,他们指出,像“天生害羞”这样的说法并不一定成立,因为假使害羞是一种“天生”的性格,那一定是人一出生就有的,是一种出于内在的品格。但是,苏菲,害羞的个性果真是天生的吗?还是由社会环境造成的?对于某个已经游遍世界的人来说,答案应该很简单:害怕展露自己赤裸的身体并非“自然”的,也不是天生的。 害羞——或不害羞——最主要还是受到社会规范的制约所致。 你应该想象得到,这批游历四方的诡辩学家宣称,世间没有绝对的是非标准,这种说法在雅典会造成多么激烈的争议。 相反的,苏格拉底则试图证明此类的规范事实上不容置疑,而且是放诸四海皆准的。 苏格拉底是谁7 苏格拉底(公元前四七O~公元前三九九年)也许是整个哲学 史上最神秘难解的人物。他从未留下任何文字,但却是对欧洲思想影响最重大的人物之一。而这并不全然是因为他后来戏剧性的结束了生命的缘故。 我们知道苏格拉底生于雅典。他有生之年大半时间都在市中心广场与市场等地与他遇见的人闲谈。他说:“乡野的树木不能教我任何东西。”有时他也会连续好几小时站着思想、发呆。 即使在当时,他也被视为谜样的人物,但他死后很快就被誉为许多哲学学派的始祖。正因为他神秘难解、模棱两可,才使得一些在学说上大相径庭的学派都可以宣称他们是苏格拉底的传人。 我们现在可以确知的是:苏格拉底长得很丑。他肚大、眼凸,有个狮子鼻。但据说他的性情“极为和蔼可亲”,也有人说他是“古今无人能及”的人物。尽管如此,他还是因为他从事的哲学活动而被判处死刑。 我们之所以能够得知苏格拉底的生平,主要是透过柏拉图的著作。柏拉图是苏格拉底的学生,后来也成为古往今来最伟大的哲学家之一。 柏拉图曾撰写过几本《对话录》,以类似戏剧对白来讨论哲学,而苏格拉底就是其中的主要人物与代言人。 由于柏拉图在书中是透过苏格拉底之口来阐扬自己的哲学,因此我们无法确定对话录中苏格拉底说的话是否确是苏格拉底本人说的。因此,要区分苏格拉底的学说与柏拉图的哲学并不容易。这也是我们面临其他许多未曾留下撰述的历史人物时遭遇的难题。最典型的例子当然是耶稣了。 我们无法确定当年的耶稣是否讲过马太福音或路加福音上记载的话。同样的,苏格拉底本人究竟说过些什么话,将会一直是历史上的谜团。 不过,苏格拉底的真正面貌其实并不那么重要。因为近两千五百年来对西方思想家产生启发作用的,事实上是柏拉图描绘出来的苏格拉底。 谈话的艺术 苏格拉底的高明之处在于他与人谈话时看来并无意要指导别人。事实上他给人的印象是他很想从那些与他谈话的人身上学到一些东西。所以,他并不像传统的学校教师那般讲课,而是与别人 进行讨论。 如果他纯粹只是倾听别人说话,那他显然不会成为一个著名的哲学家,也不会被判处死刑。不过,话说回来,他所做的也只不过是提出问题而已,尤其是在刚开始与人谈话时,仿佛他一无所知似的。通常在讨论过程中,他会设法使他的对手承认自己理论上的弱点。最后,到了词穷之际,他们也不得不认清是非与对错。 苏格拉底的母亲是一位产婆。苏格拉底也常说他的谈话艺术就像为人接生一样。产婆本身并不是生孩子的人,她只是帮忙接生而已。同样的,苏格拉底认为他的工作就是帮助人们“生出”正确的 思想,因为真正的知识来自内心,而不是得自别人的传授。同时,唯有出自内心的知识,才能使人拥有真正的智慧。 说得更明白些:生小孩的能力是与生俱来的。同样的,每一个人只要运用本身的常识,就可以领悟哲学的真理。所谓运用本身的常识就是搜寻自己的内心,运用内心的智慧。 借着假装无知的方式,苏格拉底强迫他所遇见的人们运用本身的常识。这种装傻、装呆的方式,我们称为“苏格拉底式的反讽”。 这使得他能够不断揭露人们思想上的弱点。即使在市区广场的中心,他也照做不误。于是,对于某些人而言,与苏格拉底谈话无异于当众出丑并成为众人的笑柄。 因此我们不难理解为何当时的人愈来愈将苏格拉底视为眼中钉,尤其是那些在地方上有头有脸的人。据说,苏格拉底曾说:“雅典就像一匹驽马,而我就是一只不断叮它,让它具有活力的牛蝇。” “我们是怎样对付牛蝇的?苏菲,你可以告诉我吗?” 神圣的声音 苏格拉底之所以不断地像牛蝇般叮他的同胞,并不是想折磨他们。而是他内心有某种声音让他非如此做不可。他总是说他的心中有“神明指引”。举例说,他不愿伙同众人将他人判处死罪,也不愿打政敌的小报告。这终于使他丧失性命。 在公元前三九九年时,他被控“宣扬新的神明,腐化青年人”。 在五百名陪审团员的投票之下,他以些微的票数之差被定罪。 他大可以恳求陪审团手下留情,或至少可以同意离开雅典,借以免于一死。 然而,如果他这样做,他就不是苏格拉底了。问题在于他重视他的良心——与真理——更甚于生命。他向陪审团保证他过去所作所为全是为了国家的福祉。然而他们还是要他服毒。不久,苏格拉底就当着友人的面喝下毒药,结束了生命。 为什么?苏菲,为什么苏格拉底非死不可?两千四百年来人们不断问着这个问题。然而,他并不是历史上唯一坚持不肯妥协,最后落得被定罪处死的人。 我曾经提过的耶稣就是其中之一。事实上,苏格拉底与耶稣之间还有若干极为相似之处。 他们两人都是谜样的人物,即使对于与他们同时代的人也是 如此。他们都没有将他们的学说教诲撰写成书,因此我们只好透过他们门徒的描写来认识他们。不过可以肯定的是,他们两个都是通晓谈话艺术的专家。他们说起话来都充满自信、侃侃而谈,虽然引人入胜,但也可能会得罪别人。此外,他们都相信自己是某一种更高力量的代言人。他们批评各种形式的不公不义与腐败现象,向地方势力挑战,最后并因此丧命。 耶稣与苏格拉底所受的审判显然也有雷同之处。 他们原本都可以求饶,但他们却都觉得如果不成仁取义,就无法完成他们的使命。而由于他们如此从容就义,所以吸引了许多徒众追随,即使在他们死后仍然如此。 我指出这些相似之处并不是说耶稣与苏格拉底相像。我只是要提醒你注意,他们所要传达的信息与他们个人的勇气是密不可分的。 雅典的小丑 苏菲,接下来我们还是要谈苏格拉底。我们刚才已经谈到他所使用的方法,但他的哲学课题又是什么? 苏格拉底与那些诡辩学家生在同一时代。他就像他们一样,比 较关心个人与他在社会中的位置,对于大自然的力量较不感兴趣。 就像几百年后罗马哲学家西塞罗所说的,苏格拉底“将哲学从天上召唤下来,使它在各地落脚生根,并进入各个家庭,还迫使它审视生命、伦理与善恶”。 不过,苏格拉底有一点与诡辩学派不同,而这点很重要。他并不认为自己是个“智者”,即博学或聪明的人。他也不像诡辩学家一样,为赚钱而教书。不,苏格拉底称自己为“哲学家”,而他也的确是 一位真正的哲学家,因为哲学家的英文philo---sopher这个字的意思是“一个爱好智慧的人”。 苏菲,你现在坐得舒服吗?你必须完全了解“智者”与“哲学家”之间的差异,这样我们才能继续上以后的课程。诡辩学家教人道理,并收取学费,而他们所说的道理或多或少都有吹毛求疵的意味。这样的诡辩学家千百年来不知凡几。我指的是所有的学校教师、那些自以为无所不知而以既有的一丁点知识为满足的人,以及那些自夸博学多闻但实际上一无所知的人。你年纪虽小,但或许已经遇见过几位这样的诡辩学家。一个真正的哲学家则完全不同,事实上他们与诡辩学家正好相反。他们知道实际上自己所知十分有限,这也是为何他们不断追求真知灼见的原因。苏格拉底就是这些稀有人物之一。他知道自己对生命与世界一无所知,并对自己贫乏的知识感到相当懊恼。这点非常重要。 所以说,所谓哲学家就是那些领悟到自己有很多事情并不知道,并因此而感到苦恼的人。就这一方面而言,他们还是比那些自称博学但实际上非常无知的人更聪明。我曾经说过:“最聪明的是明白自己无知的人。”苏格拉底也说:“我只知道一件事,就是我一无所知。” 请你记住这句话,因为很难得有人会承认自己无知,即使哲学家也不例外。最重要的是,当众说这句话是很危险的,可能会使你丧命。最具颠覆性的人就是那些提出问题的人,而回答问题则比较不危险。任何一个问题都可能比一千个答案要更具爆炸性。 你是否听说过国王的新衣这个故事?故事中的国王其实浑身一丝不挂,但他的臣民却没有人敢说出真相。这时,一个小孩突然脱口而出:“可是他什么衣服都没穿呀!”苏菲,这个孩子很勇敢,就像苏格拉底一样。苏格拉底也敢于告诉我们人类所知多么有限。哲学家与小孩子的相似性我们已经谈过了。 确切来说,人类面临了许多难解的问题,而我们对这些问题还没有找到满意的答案。因此现在我们面临两种可能:一个是假装拥有所有的知识,借此自欺欺人。另一个则是闭上眼睛,从此不去理会,并放弃一切我们迄今所有的成就。就这方面而言,人类的意见并不一致。人们通常不是太过笃定,就是漠不关心(这两种人都是 在兔子的毛皮深处蠕动的虫子)。苏菲,这就像切牌一样。你把黑牌放在一堆,红牌放在一堆,但不时会有小丑牌出现。他们既不是红桃也不是黑桃,既不是红砖也不是梅花。在雅典,苏格拉底就像是小丑一样。他既不笃定也不漠然。他只知道自己一无所知,而这使他非常苦恼。因此他成为一个哲学家,一个孜孜不倦追求真理,永不放弃的人。 据说,一个雅典人问戴尔菲的神谕:“谁是雅典最聪明的人?” 神谕回答说:“在所有的凡人中,苏格拉底是最聪明的。”苏格拉底听到这件事时,大为震惊(苏菲,我想他一定曾经放声大笑)。他直接去找城内公认聪明出众的一个人问问题。但是当此人也无法给他一个满意的答案时,苏格拉底便知道神谕是对的。 苏格拉底认为人类必须为自己的知识奠定巩固的基础,他相信这个基础就是人的理性。由于他对人的理性具有不可动摇的信念,因此他显然是一个理性主义者。 正确的见解导致正确的行动 正如我先前讲过的,苏格拉底声称他受到内心一个神圣声音的指引,同时他的“良心”也告诉他什么是对的。他说:“知善者必能行善。” 他的意思是人只要有正确的见解,就会采取正确的行动。也唯有行所当行的人才能成为一个“有德之人”。我们之所以犯错,是因为我们不知道何者是对的。这是人何以必须不断学习的原因。苏格拉底想为是非对错找出一个清楚明白,而且放诸四海皆准的定义。他与那些诡辩家不同的是,他相信辨别是非的能力就存在于人的理性中,而不存在于社会中。 你,也许会认为最后一部分有些大过含糊。让我们这样说好了:苏格拉底认为,人如果违反自己的理性就不会快乐。而那些知道如何找到快乐的人就会遵照自己的理性行事。因此,明白是非者必然不会为恶。因为世间哪有人会想要成为一个不快乐的人? 你怎么想呢?苏菲。如果你一直做一些自己深知不对的事,你还会活得很快乐吗?有很多人撒谎、舞弊、中伤别人,而他们本身也深深明白这些行为是不对或不公平的。你想这些人会快乐吗? 苏菲看完有关苏格拉底的信后,匆匆将信放在饼干盒内便爬出密洞。她想在妈妈买菜回家前进门,以免妈妈啰哩啰唆地盘问她的行踪。再说,苏菲答应要帮妈妈洗碗。 苏菲刚在碗槽里放满水,妈妈就提着两个大袋子,跌跌撞撞地走进来了。也许是因为这样,妈妈才说:“苏菲,最近你很心不在焉。” 苏菲也不知道自己是怎么回事,脱口就说:“苏格拉底也是这样啊!” “苏格拉底?” 妈妈睁大眼睛看着她。 “他因此而非死不可,这真是太悲哀了。”苏菲悠悠地说。 “天哪!苏菲,我真不知道该怎么办才好!” “苏格拉底也是。他只知道自己一无所知,然而他却是雅典最聪明的人。” 妈妈差点说不出话来。最后,她说:“这是你在学校里学到的吗?” 苏菲用力摇摇头:“我们在那儿什么也学不到。教师和哲学家的不同之处在于老师自认为懂得很多,并且强迫我们吸收。哲学家则是与学生一起寻求答案。” “瞧,现在我们又回到兔子的问题了。苏菲,我要你告诉我你的男朋友究竟是谁。要不然我会认为他脑筋有点问题。” 苏菲转过身来,背对着碗槽,手拿着一块洗碗布指着妈妈:“脑筋有问题的可不是他。不过他喜欢让别人伤一伤脑筋,让他们脱离窠臼。” “够了!我看他有点目中无人。” 苏菲转回身去。 “他既不是目中无人,也不是目中有人,他只是努力追寻真正的智慧。一个真正的小丑和其他纸牌是大不相同的。” “你是说小丑吗?” 苏菲点点头。“你有没有想过一副牌里面有很多红心和红砖,也有很多黑桃和梅花,但只有一个小丑。” “天哪!你看你多会顶嘴。” “你看你问的什么问题嘛!” 妈妈已经把买来的东西都放好了,于是她拿着报纸走进起居室。苏菲感到,她今天关门的声音比平常都大。 苏菲洗完碗后,就上楼回到自己的房间。 她已经把那条红色的丝巾和积木一起放在衣柜的上层。现在她把丝巾拿了下来,仔细地看。 席德…… Athens ... several tall buildings had risen from the ruins  Early that evening Sophie's mother went to visit a friend. As soon as she was out of the house Sophie went down the garden to the den. There she found a thick package beside the big cookie tin. Sophie tore it open. It was a video cassette. She ran back to the house. A video tape! How on earth did the philosopher know they had a VCR? And what was on the cassette? Sophie put the cassette into the recorder. A sprawling city appeared on the TV screen. As the camera zoomed in on the Acropolis Sophie realized that the city must be Athens. She had often seen pictures of the ancient ruins there. It was a live shot. Summer-clad tourists with cameras slung about them were swarming among the ruins. One of them looked as if he was carrying a notice board. There it was again. Didn't it say "Hilde"? After a minute or two there was a close-up of a middle-aged man. He was rather short, with a black, well-trimmed beard, and he was wearing a blue beret. He looked into the camera and said: "Welcome to Athens, Sophie. As you have probably guessed, I am Alberto Knox. If not, I will just reiterate that the big rabbit is still being pulled from the top hat of the universe. "We are standing at the Acropolis. The word means 'citadel'--or more precisely, 'the city on the hill.' People have lived up here since the Stone Age. The reason, naturally, was its unique location. The elevated plateau was easy to defend against marauders. From the Acrop-olis there was also an excellent view down to one of the best harbors in the Mediterranean. As the early Athens began to develop on the plain below the plateau, the Acropolis was used as a fortress and sacred shrine... During the first half of the fifth century B.C., a bitter war was waged against the Persians, and in 480 the Persian king Xerxes plundered Athens and burned all the old wooden buildings of the Acropolis. A year later the Persians were defeated, and that was the beginning of the Golden Age of Athens. The Acropolis was rebuilt-- prouder and more magnificent than ever--and now purely as a sacred shrine. "This was the period when Socrates walked through the streets and squares talking with the Athenians. He could thus have witnessed the rebirth of the Acropolis and watched the construction of all the proud buildings we see around us. And what a building site it was! Behind me you can see the biggest temple, the Parthenon, which means 'the Virgin's Place.' It was built in honor of Athene, the patron goddess of Athens. The huge marble structure does not have a single straight line; all four sides are slightly curved to make the building appear less heavy. In spite of its colossal dimensions, it gives the impression of lightness. In other words, it presents an optical illusion. The columns lean slightly inwards, and would form a pyramid 1,500 meters high if they were continued to a point above the temple. The temple contained nothing but a twelve-meter-high statue of Athene. The white marble, which in those days was painted in vivid colors, was transported here from a mountain sixteen kilometers away." Sophie sat with her heart in her mouth. Was this really the philosopher talking to her? She had only seen his profile that one time in the darkness. Could he be the same man who was now standing at the Acropolis in Athens? He began to walk along the length of the temple and the camera followed him. He walked right to the edge of the terrace and pointed out over the landscape. The camera focused on an old theater which lay just below the plateau of the Acropolis. "There you can see the old Dionysos Theater," continued the man in the beret. "It is probably the very oldest theater in Europe. This is where the great tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were performed during the time of Socrates. I referred earlier to the ill-fated King Oedipus. The tragedy about him, by Sophocles, was first performed here. But they also played comedies. The best known writer of comedies was Aristophanes, who also wrote a spiteful comedy about Socrates as the buffoon of Athens. Right at the back you can see the stone wall which the actors used as a backdrop. It was called skene, and is the origin of our word 'scene.' Incidentally, the word 'theater' comes from an old Greek word meaning 'to see.' But we must get back to the philosophers, Sophie. We are going around the Parthenon and down through the gateway ..." The little man walked around the huge temple and passed some smaller temples on his right. Then he began to walk down some steps between several tall columns. When he reached the foot of the Acropolis, he went up a small hill and pointed out toward Athens: "The hill we are standing on is called Areopagos. It was here that the Athenian high court of justice passed judgment in murder trials. Many hundreds of years later, St. Paul the Apostle stood here and preached about Jesus and Christianity to the Athenians. We shall return to what he said on a later occasion. Down to the left you can see the remains of the old city square in Athens, the agora. With the exception of the large temple to Hephaestos, the god of smiths and metalworkers, only some blocks of marble are preserved. Let us go down ..." The next moment he appeared among the ancient ruins. High up beneath the sky--at the top of Sophie's screen--towered the monumental Athene temple on the Acropolis. Her philosophy teacher had seated himself on one of the blocks of marble. He looked into the camera and said: "We are sitting in the old agora in Athens. A sorry sight, don't you think? Today, I mean. But once it was surrounded by splendid temples, courts of justice and other public offices, shops, a concert hall, and even a large gymnastics building. All situated around the square, which was a large open space ... The whole of European civilization was founded in this modest area. "Words such as politics and democracy, economy and history, biology and physics, mathematics and logic, theology and philosophy, ethics and psychology, theory and method, idea and system date back to the tiny populace whose everyday life centered around this square. This is where Socrates spent so much of his time talking to the people he met. He might have buttonholed a slave bearing a jar of olive oil, and asked the unfortunate man a question on philosophy, for Socrates held that a slave had the same common sense as a man of rank. Perhaps he stood in an animated wrangle with one of the citizens--or held a subdued conversation with his young pupil Plato. It is extraordinary to think about. We still speak of Socratic or Platonic philosophy, but actually being Plato or Socrates is quite another matter." Sophie certainly did think it was extraordinary to think about. But she thought it was just as extraordinary the way her philosopher was suddenly talking to her on a video that had been brought to her own secret hideout in the garden by a mysterious dog. The philosopher rose from the block of marble he was sitting on and said quietly: "It was actually my intention to leave it at that, Sophie. I wanted you to see the Acropolis and the remains of the old agora in Athens. But I am not yet sure that you have grasped just how splendid these surroundings once were ... so I am very tempted to go a bit further. It is quite irregular of course ... but I am sure I can count on it remaining just between the two of us. Oh well, a tiny glimpse will suffice anyway ..." He said no more, but remained standing there for a long time, staring into the camera. While he stood there, several tall buildings had risen from the ruins. As if by magic, all the old buildings were once again standing. Above the skyline Sophie could still see the Acropolis, but now both that and all the buildings down on the square were brand-new. They were covered with gold and painted in garish colors. Gaily dressed people were strolling about the square. Some wore swords, others carried jars on their heads, and one of them had a roll of papyrus under his arm. Then Sophie recognized her philosophy teacher. He was still wearing the blue beret, but now he was dressed in a yellow tunic in the same style as everyone else. He came toward Sophie, looked into the camera, and said: "That's better! Now we are in the Athens of antiquity, Sophie. I wanted you to come here in person, you see. We are in the year 402 B.C., only three years before Socrates dies. I hope you appreciate this exclusive visit because it was very difficult to hire a video camera ..." Sophie felt dizzy. How could this weird man suddenly be in Athens 2,400 years ago? How could she be seeing a video film of a totally different age? There were no videos in antiquity ... so could this be a movie? But all the marble buildings looked real. If they had recreated all of the old square in Athens as well as the Acropolis just for the sake of a film--the sets would have cost a fortune. At any rate it would be a colossal price to pay just to teach Sophie about Athens. The man in the beret looked up at her again. "Do you see those two men over there under the colonnade?" Sophie noticed an elderly man in a crumpled tunic. He had a long unkempt beard, a snub nose, eyes like gimlets, and chubby cheeks. Beside him stood a handsome young man. "That is Socrates and his young pupil, Plato. You are going to meet them personally." The philosopher went over to the two men, took off his beret, and said something which Sophie did not understand. It must have been in Greek. Then he looked into the camera and said, "I told them you were a Norwegian girl who would very much like to meet them. So now Plato will give you some questions to think about. But we must do it quickly before the guards discover us." Sophie felt the blood pounding in her temples as the young man stepped forward and looked into the camera. "Welcome to Athens, Sophie," he said in a gentle voice. He spoke with an accent. "My name is Plato and I am going to give you four tasks. First you must think over how a baker can bake fifty absolutely identical cookies. Then you can ask yourself why all horses are the same. Next you must decide whether you think that man has an immortal soul. And finally you must say whether men and women are equally sensible. Good luck!" Then the picture on the TV screen disappeared. Sophie wound and rewound the tape but she had seen all there was. Sophie tried to think things through clearly. But as soon as she thought one thought, another one crowded in before she had thought the first one to its end. She had known from the start that her philosophy teacher was eccentric. But when he started to use teaching methods that defied all the laws of nature, Sophie thought he was going too far. Had she really seen Socrates and Plato on TV? Of course not, that was impossible. But it definitely wasn't a cartoon. Sophie took the cassette out of the video recorder and ran up to her room with it. She put it on the top shelf with all the Lego blocks. Then she sank onto the bed, exhausted, and fell asleep. Some hours later her mother came into the room. She shook Sophie gently and said: "What's the matter, Sophie?" "Mmmm?" "You've gone to sleep with all your clothes on!" Sophie blinked her eyes sleepily. "I've been to Athens," she mumbled. That was all she could manage to say as she turned over and went back to sleep. 雅典    ……废墟中升起了几栋高楼…… 那天傍晚,苏菲的妈妈去拜访一位朋友。她一出门,苏菲立刻下楼,跑到花园中老树篱内的密洞。她在里面发现了一个厚厚的包裹,就放在饼干盒旁。苏菲拆开包裹,里面是一卷录影带。 她跑回屋里。一卷录影带!这次特别不同。哲学家怎会知道她家有录放影机?录影带内又是什么呢? 苏菲将带子放进录影机。电视荧屏出现了一座面积辽阔的城市。当摄影机镜头带人到巴特农神殿时,苏菲知道这座城市一定是雅典。她从前常常看到当地古代废墟的照片。 这卷录影带拍的是真实的情景。一群穿着夏装、的游客背着相机在废墟之间走动。其中有一个人好像拿着一块告示牌。又来了。 苏菲心想,牌子上面写的可不是“席德”这两个字吗? 一两分钟后,镜头变成一个中年男子的特写。他个子甚为矮小,留着一脸整齐干净的黑胡子,头上戴着一顶蓝扁帽。他看着镜头说: “欢迎你来到雅典,苏菲。我想你大概已经猜到了,我就是艾伯特。如果你还没猜到,我可以再说一次,那只大兔子仍然可以被魔术师从宇宙的帽子之中拉出来。 “我们现在正站在雅典的高城(Acropolis)。这个字的意思是‘城堡’,或者更准确地说,是‘山城’的意思。自从石器时代以来,这里就有人居住。这自然是因为它地理位置特殊的缘故。它的地势高,在盗匪入侵时容易防守。从高城这儿俯瞰,可以很清楚地看到地中海的一个良港。古代雅典人开始在高地下面的平原发展时,高城被当作城堡和神庙。公元前第四世纪的前半,雅典人对波斯人发‘动了一场惨烈的战争。公元前四八O年时,波斯国王齐尔克西(Xerxes)率兵掠夺了雅典城,并将高城所有的古老木造建筑焚烧净尽。一年后,波斯人被打败,雅典的黄金时代也从此开始。雅典人开始重建高城,规模更大,气象也更雄浑,而且完全做为神庙使用。 “就在这个时期,苏格拉底穿梭在大街小巷与广场上,与雅典 人民谈话。他原本可以目睹高城的复兴,并看到我们四周这些雄伟建筑的进展。你瞧,这是一个多么好的地方。在我后面,你可以看到世界上最大的神庙巴特农神殿。巴特农(Panhenon)的意思是‘处女之地’,是为了崇奉雅典的保护神雅典娜(Athene)而建造的。 这整座宏伟的大理石建筑看不到一条直线。它的四面墙壁都稍微有些弧度,以使整栋建筑看来不致太过沉重。也因此这座神庙虽然硕大无朋,却仍给人轻巧之感,这就是所谓的视觉幻象。神殿所有的柱子都微向内弯,如果继续朝上发展,将可以形成一座一千五百公尺高的金字塔。神殿内只有一尊十二公尺高的雅典娜雕像。此处所用的白色大理石是从十六公里以外的一座山上运来的,当年上面还有五彩的图画。” 苏菲的心差一点跳出来。哲学家真的是在跟她说话吗?她只有一次在黑暗中看过他的侧影。他真的就是这位站在雅典高城的男人吗? 他开始沿着神殿的前方走,摄影机也跟着他。他走到台地边缘;指着四周的风景。摄影机把焦点放在高城高地的正下方一座古老的戏院。 “你在那里可以看到古老的酒神剧院。”这位戴着扁帽的老人继续说:“这也许是欧洲最古老的剧院。在苏格拉底时期,伊思齐勒斯(Aeschylus)、索福克里斯(Sophoeles)与尤瑞皮底斯(Euripides)等希腊剧作家写的伟大悲剧就在这儿上演。我以前曾经提到命运凄惨的伊迪帕斯国王。这出悲剧最先就是在这儿上演。不过这里也演喜剧。当时最知名的喜剧作家叫亚里斯多芬尼斯(Aristo—phanes)。他曾经写过一出恶毒的喜剧,将苏格拉底描写成雅典的一个丑角。在剧院正后方,你可以看到一块当年被演员们用作背景的地方,叫做skene,英文的scene(场景)这个字就是由此字衍生的。顺便一提的是,英文theater(剧院、剧场)这个字是源自古希腊文,原意是“看”。不过,到这里,我们得回头谈谈哲学家了。现在我们要绕过巴特农神殿走下去,经过大门口……” 这个矮小的男人绕过巨大的神殿,经过右边几座较小的神庙。 然后他开始沿着两边排列着高大石柱的梯阶走下去。到达高城的最低点时,他走上一座小山丘,用手遥指着雅典的方向:“我们现在站的这个小山丘是古代雅典的高等法院(Areopa—gos),也是雅典人审判杀人犯的地方。几百年以后,使徒保罗曾站在此处对雅典人宣扬耶稣基督的教诲。以后我们会谈到他所说的。 在左下方,你可以看到雅典古老的市区广场(Agora)的遗迹,如今除了供奉铁匠与金属工人之神贺非斯托思(Hephaestos)的大神庙之外,只剩下几块大理石了。现在我们继续往下走……” 不久,他出现在这片古废墟中。在荧屏上方,只见高城的雅典 娜神殿巍然矗立在天空下。她的哲学教师已经坐在一块大理石上。 一两分钟后,他看着摄影机说: “现在我们正坐在从前雅典的市区广场上。如今这里的景象令人唏嘘,不是吗?但从前这里四周环绕的都是壮丽的神殿、法院和 其他政府机构、商店、音乐厅,甚至还有一个大型的体育场。这些建筑物环绕着广场,而广场本身则是一个宽阔开放的空间……整个欧洲的文明都在这个朴实的地方扎下根基。 “今天我们听到的一些字眼,如政治与民主、经济与历史、生物与物理、数学与逻辑、神学与哲学、伦理学与,b理学、理论与方法、概念与系统以及其他许许多多的字眼,最先都是由以这个广场为日常生活中心的一小群人发明的。这里也就是当年苏格拉底花了许多时间与人谈话的广场,那个时候,他可能会抓住一个扛着一瓶橄榄油的奴隶不放,并且问这个倒楣的人一个哲学问题,因为苏格拉底认为奴隶与一般人一样有常识。有时他也会与别人争辩得脸红脖子粗,或与他的学生柏拉图进行一场温和的讨论。想起来,这是多么奇妙的事啊!现代人仍然时常提到‘苏格拉底式’与‘柏拉图式’的哲学,但真正做苏格拉底或柏拉图却是两码子事。” 一时之间,苏菲也觉得这件事想起来真是很奇妙。 不过,她认为,她的哲学老师居然派他那只很不寻常的狗把录影带送到她在花园中的密洞,而现在他本人正在荧屏上对她说话,这件事不是也很奇妙吗? 哲学家从大理石上起身,平静地说道: “苏菲,我原来只打算到此为止,让你看看高城和古代雅典广 畅的遗迹就好了。但是现在我还不确定你是否能够想象从前这儿四周的景象是多么壮观……因此我很想……再进一步……当然这是不太寻常的……但我确实想要这么做。我相信你一定不会告诉别人吧?不管怎么说,我们看一下就够了……” 他说完后站在那儿静默了好一会儿,眼睛看着摄影机。就在这段时间,废墟中突然升起了几栋高大的建筑。就像魔术一般,所有昔日的建筑又突然再现。高城依旧巍然矗立天际,但不同的是,无论高城或是广场上的屋宇建筑,如今看来都焕然一新,上面镶着金箔,绘着艳丽的色彩。服饰鲜明的人群在广场四周慢慢走着。有人佩着剑,有人头上顶着瓶子,其中有一个人腋下夹着一卷纸草做成的纸。 这时,苏菲看到了她的哲学老师。他还是戴着那顶蓝色的扁帽,只是换了衣裳。如今他穿着一件长及膝盖的黄衫,与其他人没有两样。他走向苏菲,看着镜头说道: “这样好些了。我们来到了古代的雅典城,我就是希望你能亲自来这儿。你瞧,现在的年代是公元前四O二年,也就是苏格拉底逝世的三年前。我希望你喜欢这次游览,因为我可是费了很大的劲才雇到一个摄影师的……” 苏菲觉得头昏。这个奇怪的人怎么会一下子就到了两千四百年前的雅典?自己怎么可能看到另外一个时代的录影带?古代并没有录影机呀!难道这是电影吗? 然而,那些大理石建筑看起来却是如此逼真。如果他们为了拍片而重建整座雅典广场与高城的话,那光是布景一定就要花一大笔钱。如果这样做,只是为了让苏菲了解雅典昔日的景象,那花费实在是太大了。 戴着蓝扁帽的男人再度抬起头看着苏菲 “你看到那边廊柱下站的两个男人吗?” 苏菲看到一个年长的男子穿了一件皱巴巴的长衫,一脸乱七八糟的胡子,狮子鼻,目光犀利,两颊丰满。他身旁站了一个英俊的年轻人。 “这就是苏格拉底和他的学生柏拉图,你将亲自与他们见面。” 哲学家走到那两人身旁,取下他的扁帽,说了一些苏菲听不懂的话。苏菲想,那一定是希腊文。然后,他看着摄影机说: “我告诉他们你是一个挪威女孩,很想见见他们。因此,现在柏拉图会问你一些问题让你思考。不过我们得快点,以免被警卫发现。” 当那位年轻人走向前来,看着摄影机时,苏菲觉得自己全身的血液都涌到太阳穴来。 “苏菲,欢迎你到雅典来,”年轻人用一种浓厚的外国腔调轻声地说。“我的名字叫柏拉图。我要让你做四件事。第一,请你想一想,一个面包师傅如何能做五十个一模一样的饼干。其次,你要问自己,为何所有的马都一样。第三,你必须肯定地回答人的灵魂是否不朽。最后请你告诉我们,男人与女人是否一样具有理性。祝你好运。” 然后,电视荧屏上的影像消失了。苏菲将带子转了又转,倒了又倒。不过再也没有任何影像了。 苏菲努力整理自己的思绪。不过她一件事还没想完,第二件事已开始在脑中浮现。 她一开始就知道她的哲学教师与常人不同。不过苏菲认为,他运用这类违反所有自然法则的教学方法也实在是太过分了。 她真的在电视上看到了苏格拉底与柏拉图吗?当然不,这完全不可能。但那看起来又绝对不像是卡通。 苏菲将带子从录影机内取出,拿到楼上房间。她把它放在柜子上层,积木的旁边,然后她就一股脑儿躺下,整个人疲倦不堪。不久就睡着了。 几个小时后,妈妈走进她的房间,轻轻地摇一摇她,说: “苏菲,你怎么啦?” “嗯?” “你衣服都没脱就睡了。” 苏菲睁了睁惺忪的睡眼。 “我到雅典去了。”她含糊地说,之后翻个身又睡着了。 Plato  a longing to return to the realm of the soul Sophie woke with a start early the next morning. She glanced at the clock. It was only a little after five but she was so wide awake that she sat up in bed. Why was she wearing a dress? Then she remembered everything. She climbed onto a stool and looked on the top shelf of the closet. Yes--there, at the back, was the video cassette. It hadn't been a dream after all; at least, not all of it. But she couldn't really have seen Plato and Socrates ... oh, never mind! She didn't have the energy to think about it any more. Perhaps her mother was right, perhaps she was acting a bit nuts these days. Anyway, she couldn't go back to sleep. Perhaps she ought to go down to the den and see if the dog had left another letter. Sophie crept downstairs, put on a pair of jogging shoes, and went out. In the garden everything was wonderfully clear and still. The birds were chirping so energetically that Sophie could hardly keep from laughing. The morning dew twinkled in the grass like drops of crystal. Once again she was struck by the incredible wonder of the world. Inside the old hedge it was also very damp. Sophie saw no new letter from the philosopher, but nevertheless she wiped off one of the thick roots and sat down. She recalled that the video-Plato had given her some questions to answer. The first was something about how a baker could bake fifty identical cookies. Sophie had to think very carefully about that, because it definitely wouldn't be easy. When her mother occasionally baked a batch of cookies, they were never all exactly the same. But then she was not an expert pastry cook; sometimes the kitchen looked as if a bomb had hit it. Even the cookies they bought at the baker's were never exactly the same. Every single cookie was shaped separately in the baker's hands. Then a satisfied smile spread over Sophie's face. She remembered how once she and her father went shopping while her mother was busy baking Christmas cookies. When they got back there were a lot of gingerbread men spread out on the kitchen table. Even though they weren't all perfect, in a way they were all the same. And why was that? Obviously because her mother had used the same mold for all of them. Sophie felt so pleased with herself for having remembered the incident that she pronounced herself done with the first question. If a baker makes fifty absolutely identical cookies, he must be using the same pastry mold for all of them. And that's that! Then the video-Plato had looked into the camera and asked why all horses were the same. But they weren't, at all! On the contrary, Sophie thought no two horses were the same, just as no two people were the same. She was ready to give up on that one when she remembered what she had thought about the cookies. No one of them was exactly like any of the others. Some were a bit thicker than the others, and some were broken. But still, everyone could see that they were--in a way-- "exactly the same." What Plato was really asking was perhaps why a horse was always a horse, and not, for example, a cross between a horse and a pig. Because even though some horses were as brown as bears and others were as white as lambs, all horses had something in common. Sophie had yet to meet a horse with six or eight legs, for example. But surely Plato couldn't believe that what made all horses alike was that they were made with the same mold? Then Plato had asked her a really difficult question. Does man have an immortal soul? That was something Sophie felt quite unqualified to answer. All she knew was that dead bodies were either cremated or buried, so there was no future for them. If man had an immortal soul, one would have to believe that a person consisted of two separate parts: a body that gets worn out after many years--and a soul that operates more or less independently of what happens to the body. Her grandmother had said once that she felt it was only her body that was old. Inside she had always been the same young girl-The thought of the "young girl" led Sophie to the last question: Are women and men equally sensible? She was not so sure about that. It depended on what Plato meant by sensible. Something the philosopher had said about Socrates came into her mind. Socrates had pointed out that everyone could understand philosophical truths if they just used their common sense. He had also said that a slave had the same common sense as a nobleman. Sophie was sure that he would also have said that women had the same common sense as men. While she sat thinking, there was a sudden rustling in the hedge, and the sound of something puffing and blowing like a steam engine. The next second, the golden Labrador slipped into the den. It had a large envelope in its mouth. "Hermes!" cried Sophie. "drop it! drop it!" The dog dropped the envelope in Sophie's lap, and Sophie stretched out her hand to pat the dog's head. "Good boy, Hermes!" she said. The dog lay down and allowed itself to be patted. But after a couple of minutes it got up and began to push its way back through the hedge the same way it had come in. Sophie followed with the brown envelope in her hand. She crawled through the dense thicket and was soon outside the garden. Hermes had already started to run toward the edge of the woods, and Sophie followed a few yards behind. Twice the dog turned around and growled, but Sophie was not to be deterred. This time she was determined to find the philosopher--even if it meant running all the way to Athens. The dog ran faster and suddenly turned off down a narrow path. Sophie chased him, but after a few minutes he turned and faced her, barking like a watchdog. Sophie still refused to give up, taking the opportunity to lessen the distance between them. Hermes turned and raced down the path. Sophie realized that she would never catch up with him. She stood quite still for what seemed like an eternity, listening to him running farther and farther away. Then all was silent. She sat down on a tree stump by a little clearing in the woods. She still had the brown envelope in her hand. She opened it, drew out several typewritten pages, and began to read: PLATO'S ACADEMY Thank you for the pleasant time we spent together, Sophie. In Athens, I mean. So now I have at least introduced myself. And since I have also introduced Plato, we might as well begin without further ado. Plato (428-347 B.C.) was twenty-nine years old when Socrates drank the hemlock. He had been a pupil of Socrates for some time and had followed his trial very closely. The fact that Athens could condemn its noblest citizen to death did more than make a profound impression on him. It was to shape the course of his entire philosophic endeavor. To Plato, the death of Socrates was a striking example of the conflict that can exist between society as it really is and the true or ideal society. Plato's first deed as a philosopher was to publish Socrates' Apology, an account of his plea to the large jury. As you will no doubt recall, Socrates never wrote anything down, although many of the pre-Socratics did. The problem is that hardly any of their written material remains. But in the case of Plato, we believe that all his principal works have been preserved. (In addition to Socrates' Apology, Plato wrote a collection of Epistles and about twenty-five philosophical Dialogues.) That we have these works today is due not least to the fact that Plato set up his own school of philosophy in a grove not far from Athens, named after the legendary Greek hero Academus. The school was therefore known as the Academy. (Since then, many thousands of "academies" have been established all over the world. We still speak of "academics" and "academic subjects.") The subjects taught at Plato's Academy were philosophy, mathematics, and gymnastics--although perhaps "taught" is hardly the right word. Lively discourse was considered most important at Plato's Academy. So it was not purely by chance that Plato's writings took the form of dialogues. The Eternally True, Eternally Beautiful, and Eternally Good In the introduction to this course I mentioned that it could often be a good idea to ask what a particular philosopher's project was. So now I ask: what were the problems Plato was concerned with? Briefly, we can establish that Plato was concerned with the relationship between what is eternal and immutable, on the one hand, and what "flows," on the other. (Just like the pre-Socratics, in fact.) We've seen how the Sophists and Socrates turned their attention from questions of natural philosophy to problems related to man and society. And yet in one sense, even Socrates and the Sophists were preoccupied with the relationship between the eternal and immutable, and the "flowing." They were interested in the problem as it related to human morals and society's ideals or virtues. Very briefly, the Sophists thought that perceptions of what was right or wrong varied from one city-state to another, and from one generation to the next. So right and wrong was something that "flowed." This was totally unacceptable to Socrates. He believed in the existence of eternal and absolute rules for what was right or wrong. By using our common sense we can all arrive at these immutable norms, since human reason is in fact eternal and immutable. Do you follow, Sophie? Then along comes Plato. He is concerned with both what is eternal and immutable in nature and what is eternal and immutable as regards morals and society. To Plato, these two problems were one and the same. He tried to grasp a "reality" that was eternal and immutable. And to be quite frank, that is precisely what we need philosophers for. We do not need them to choose a beauty queen or the day's bargain in tomatoes. (This is why they are often unpopular!) Philosophers will try to ignore highly topical affairs and instead try to draw people's attention to what is eternally "true," eternally "beau-tiful," and eternally "good." We can thus begin to glimpse at least the outline of Plato's philosophical project. But let's take one thing at a time. We are attempting to understand an extraordinary mind, a mind that was to have a profound influence on all subsequent European philosophy. The World of Ideas Both Empedocles and Democritus had drawn attention to the fact that although in the natural world everything "flows," there must nevertheless be "something" that never changes (the "four roots," or the "atoms"). Plato agreed with the proposition as such--but in quite a different way. Plato believed that everything tangible in nature "flows." So there are no "substances" that do not dissolve. Absolutely everything that belongs to the "material world" is made of a material that time can erode, but everything is made after a timeless "mold" or "form" that is eternal and immutable. You see? No, you don't. Why are horses the same, Sophie? You probably don't think they are at all. But there is something that all horses have in common, something that enables us to identify them as horses. A particular horse "flows," naturally. It might be old and lame, and in time it will die. But the "form" of the horse is eternal and immutable. That which is eternal and immutable, to Plato, is therefore not a physical "basic substance," as it was for Empedocles and Democritus. Plato's conception was of eternal and immutable patterns, spiritual and abstract in their nature that all things are fashioned after. Let me put it like this: The pre-Socratics had given a reasonably good explanation of natural change without having to presuppose that anything actually "changed." In the midst of nature's cycle there were some eternal and immutable smallest elements that did not dissolve, they thought. Fair enough, Sophie! But they had no reasonable explanation for how these "smallest elements" that were once building blocks in a horse could suddenly whirl together four or five hundred years later and fashion themselves into a completely new horse. Or an elephant or a crocodile, for that matter. Plato's point was that Democritus' atoms never fashioned themselves into an "eledile" or a "crocophant." This was what set his philosophical reflections going. If you already understand what I am getting at, you may skip this next paragraph. But just in case, I will clarify: You have a box of Lego and you build a Lego horse. You then take it apart and put the blocks back in the box. You cannot expect to make a new horse just by shaking the box. How could Lego blocks of their own accord find each other and become a new horse again? No, you have to rebuild the horse, Sophie. And the reason you can do it is that you have a picture in your mind of what the horse looked like. The Lego horse is made from a model which remains unchanged from horse to horse. How did you do with the fifty identical cookies? Let us assume that you have dropped in from outer space and have never seen a baker before. You stumble into a tempting bakery--and there you catch sight of fifty identical gingerbread men on a shelf. I imagine you would wonder how they could be exactly alike. It might well be that one of them has an arm missing, another has lost a bit of its head, and a third has a funny bump on its stomach. But after careful thought, you would nevertheless conclude that all gingerbread men have something in common. Although none of them is perfect, you would suspect that they had a common origin. You would realize that all the cookies were formed in the same mold. And what is more, Sophie, you are now seized by the irresistible desire to see this mold. Because clearly, the mold itself must be utter perfection--and in a sense, more beautiful--in comparison with these crude copies. If you solved this problem all by yourself, you arrived at the philosophical solution in exactly the same way that Plato did. Like most philosophers, he "dropped in from outer space." (He stood up on the very tip of one of the fine hairs of the rabbit's fur.) He was astonished at the way all natural phenomena could be so alike, and he concluded that it had to be because there are a limited number of forms "behind" everything we see around us. Plato called these forms ideas. Behind every horse, pig, or human being, there is the "idea horse," "idea pig," and "idea human being." (In the same way, the bakery we spoke of can have gingerbread men, gingerbread horses, and gingerbread pigs. Because every self-respecting bakery has more than one mold. But one mold is enough for each type of gingerbread cookie.) Plato came to the conclusion that there must be a reality behind the "material world." He called this reality the world of ideas; it contained the eternal and immutable "patterns" behind the various phenomena we come across in nature. This remarkable view is known as Plato's theory of ideas. True Knowledge I'm sure you've been following me, Sophie dear. But you may be wondering whether Plato was being serious. Did he really believe that forms like these actually existed in a completely different reality? He probably didn't believe it literally in the same way for all his life, but in some of his dialogues that is certainly how he means to be understood. Let us try to follow his train of thought. A philosopher, as we have seen, tries to grasp something that is eternal and immutable. It would serve no purpose, for instance, to write a philosophic treatise on the existence of a particular soap bubble. Partly because one would hardly have time to study it in depth before it burst, and partly because it would probably be rather difficult to find a market for a philosophic treatise on something nobody has ever seen, and which only existed for five seconds. Plato believed that everything we see around us in nature, everything tangible, can be likened to a soap bubble, since nothing that exists in the world of the senses is lasting. We know, of course, that sooner or later every human being and every animal will die and decompose. Even a block of marble changes and gradually disintegrates. (The Acropolis is falling into ruin, Sophie! It is a scandal, but that's the way it is.) Plato's point is that we can never have true knowledge of anything that is in a constant state of change. We can only have opinions about things that belong to the world of the senses, tangible things. We can only have true knowledge of things that can be understood with our reason. All right, Sophie, I'll explain it more clearly: a gingerbread man can be so lopsided after all that baking that it can be quite hard to see what it is meant to be. But having seen dozens of gingerbread men that were more or less successful, I can be pretty sure what the cookie mold was like. I can guess, even though I have never seen it. It might not even be an advantage to see the actual mold with my own eyes because we cannot always trust the evidence of our senses. The faculty of vision can vary from person to person. On the other hand, we can rely on what our reason tells us because that is the same for everyone. If you are sitting in a classroom with thirty other pupils, and the teacher asks the class which color of the rainbow is the prettiest, he will probably get a lot of different answers. But if he asks what 8 times 3 is, the whole class will--we hope--give the same answer. Because now reason is speaking and reason is, in a way, the direct opposite of "thinking so" or "feeling." We could say that reason is eternal and universal precisely because it only expresses eternal and universal states. Plato found mathematics very absorbing because mathematical states never change. They are therefore states we can have true knowledge of. But here we need an example. Imagine you find a round pinecone out in the woods. Perhaps you say you "think" it looks completely round, whereas Joanna insists it is a bit flattened on one side. (Then you start arguing about it!) But you cannot have true knowledge of anything you can perceive with your eyes. On the other hand you can say with absolute certainty that the sum of the angles in a circle is 360 degrees. In this case you would be talking about an ideal circle which might not exist in the physical world but which you can clearly visualize. (You are dealing with the hidden gingerbread-man mold and not with the particular cookie on the kitchen table.) In short, we can only have inexact conceptions of things we perceive with our senses. But we can have true knowledge of things we understand with our reason. The sum of the angles in a triangle will remain 180 degrees to the end of time. And similarly the "idea" horse will walk on four legs even if all the horses in the sensory world break a leg. An Immortal Soul As I explained, Plato believed that reality is divided into two regions. One region is the world of the senses, about which we can only have approximate or incomplete knowledge by using our five (approximate or incomplete) senses. In this sensory world, "everything flows" and nothing is permanent. Nothing in the sensory world is, there are only things that come to be and pass away. The other region is the world of ideas, about which we can have true knowledge by using our reason. This world of ideas cannot be perceived by the senses, but the ideas (or forms) are eternal and immutable. According to Plato, man is a dual creature. We have a body that "flows," is inseparably bound to the world of the senses, and is subject to the same fate as everything else in this world--a soap bubble, for example. All our senses are based in the body and are consequently unreliable. But we also have an immortal soul--and this soul is the realm of reason. And not being physical, the soul can survey the world of ideas. But that's not all, Sophie. IT'S NOT ALL! Plato also believed that the soul existed before it inhabited the body, (it was lying on a shelf in the closet with all the cookie molds.) But as soon as the soul wakes up in a human body, it has forgotten all the perfect ideas. Then something starts to happen. In fact, a wondrous process begins. As the human being discovers the various forms in the natural world, a vague recollection stirs his soul. He sees a horse--but an imperfect horse. (A gingerbread horse!) The sight of it is sufficient to awaken in the soul a faint recollection of the perfect "horse," which the soul once saw in the world of ideas, and this stirs the soul with a yearning to return to its true realm. Plato calls this yearning eras--which means love. The soul, then, expe-riences a "longing to return to its true origin." From now on, the body and the whole sensory world is experienced as imperfect and insignificant. The soul yearns to fly home on the wings of love to the world of ideas. It longs to be freed from the chains of the body. Let me quickly emphasize that Plato is describing an ideal course of life, since by no means all humans set the soul free to begin its journey back to the world of ideas. Most people cling to the sensory world's "reflections" of ideas. They see a horse--and another horse. But they never see that of which every horse is only a feeble imitation. (They rush into the kitchen and stuff themselves with gingerbread cookies without so much as a thought as to where they came from.) What Plato describes is the philosophers'way. His philosophy can be read as a description of philosophic practice. When you see a shadow, Sophie, you will assume that there must be something casting the shadow. You see the shadow of an animal. You think it may be a horse, but you are not quite sure. So you turn around and see the horse itself--which of course is infinitely more beautiful and sharper in outline than the blurred "horse-shadow." Plato believed similarly that all natural phenomena are merely shadows of the eternal forms or ideas. But most people are content with a life among shadows. They give no thought to what is casting the shadows. They think shadows are all there are, never realizing even that they are, in fact, shadows. And thus they pay no heed to the immortality of their own soul. Out of the Darkness of the Cave Plato relates a myth which illustrates this. We call it the Myth of the Cave. I'll retell it in my own words. Imagine some people living in an underground cave. They sit with their backs to the mouth of the cave with their hands and feet bound in such a way that they can only look at the back wall of the cave. Behind them is a high wall, and behind that wall pass human-like creatures, holding up various figures above the top of the wall. Because there is a fire behind these figures, they cast flickering shadows on the back wall of the cave. So the only thing the cave dwellers can see is this shadow play. They have been sitting in this position since they were born, so they think these shadows are all there are. Imagine now that one of the cave dwellers manages to free himself from his bonds. The first thing he asks himself is where all these shadows on the cave wall come from. What do you think happens when he turns around and sees the figures being held up above the wall? To begin with he is dazzled by the sharp sunlight. He is also dazzled by the clarity of the figures because until now he has only seen their shadow. If he manages to climb over the wall and get past the fire into the world outside, he will be even more dazzled. But after rubbing his eyes he will be struck by the beauty of everything. For the first time he will see colors and clear shapes. He will see the real animals and flowers that the cave shadows were only poor reflections of. But even now he will ask himself where all the animals and flowers come from. Then he will see the sun in the sky, and realize that this is what gives life to these flowers and animals, just as the fire made the shadows visible. The joyful cave dweller could now have gone skipping away into the countryside, delighting in his new-found freedom. But instead he thinks of all the others who are still down in the cave. He goes back. Once there, he tries to convince the cave dwellers that the shadows on the cave wall are but flickering reflections of "real" things. But they don't believe him. They point to the cave wall and say that what they see is all there is. Finally they kill him. What Plato was illustrating in the Myth of the Cave is the philosopher's road from shadowy images to the true ideas behind all natural phenomena. He was probably also thinking of Socrates, whom the "cave dwellers" killed because he disturbed their conventional ideas and tried to light the way to true insight. The Myth of the Cave illustrates Socrates' courage and his sense of pedagogic responsibility. Plato's point was that the relationship between the darkness of the cave and the world beyond corresponds to the relationship between the forms of the natural world and the world of ideas. Not that he meant that the natural world is dark and dreary, but that it is dark and dreary in comparison with the clarity of ideas. A picture of a beautiful landscape is not dark and dreary either. But it is only a picture. The Philosophic State The Myth of the Cave is found in Plato's dialogue the Republic. In this dialogue Plato also presents a picture of the "ideal state," that is to say an imaginary, ideal, or what we would call a Utopian, state. Briefly, we could say that Plato believed the state should be governed by philosophers. He bases his explanation of this on the construction of the human body. According to Plato, the human body is composed of three parts: the head, the chest, and the abdomen. For each of these three parts there is a corresponding faculty of the soul. Reason belongs to the head, will belongs to the chest, and appetite belongs to the abdomen. Each of these soul faculties also has an ideal, or "virtue." Reason aspires to wisdom, Will aspires to courage, and Appetite must be curbed so that temperance can be exercised. Only when the three parts of the body function together as a unity do we get a harmonious or "virtuous" individual. At school, a child must first learn to curb its appetites, then it must develop courage, and finally reason leads to wisdom. Plato now imagines a state built up exactly like the tripartite human body. Where the body has head, chest, and abdomen, the State has rulers, auxiliaries, and fa-borers (farmers, for example). Here Plato clearly uses Greek medical science as his model. Just as a healthy and harmonious man exercises balance and temperance, so a "virtuous" state is characterized by everyone knowing their place in the overall picture. Like every aspect of Plato's philosophy, his political philosophy is characterized by rationalism. The creation of a good state depends on its being governed with reason. Just as the head governs the body, so philosophers must rule society. Let us attempt a simple illustration of the relationship between the three parts of man and the state: BODY SOUL VIRTUE STATE head reason wisdom rulers chest will courage auxiliaries abdomen appetite temperance laborers Plato's ideal state is not unlike the old Hindu caste system, in .which each and every person has his or her particular function for the good of the whole. Even before Plato's time the Hindu caste system had the same tripartite division between the auxiliary caste (or priest caste), the warrior caste, and the laborer caste. Nowadays we would perhaps call Plato's state totalitarian. But it is worth noting that he believed women could govern just as effectively as men for the simple reason that the rulers govern by virtue of their reason. Women, he asserted, have exactly the same powers of reasoning as men, provided they get the same training and are exempt from child rearing and housekeeping. In Plato's ideal state, rulers and warriors are not allowed family life or private property. The rearing of children is considered too important to be left to the individual and should be the responsibility of the state. (Plato was the first philosopher to advocate state-organized nursery schools and full-time education.) After a number of significant political setbacks, Plato wrote the tows, in which he described the "constitutional state" as the next-best state. He now reintroduced both private property and family ties. Women's freedom thus became more restricted. However, he did say that a state that does not educate and train women is like a man who only trains his right arm. All in all, we can say that Plato had a positive view of women--considering the time he lived in. In the dialogue Symposium, he gives a woman, the legendary priestess Diotima, the honor of having given Socrates his philosophic insight. So that was Plato, Sophie. His astonishing theories have been discussed--and criticized--for more than two thousand years. The first man to do so was one of the pupils from his own Academy. His name was Aristotle, and he was the third great philosopher from Athens. I'll say no more! While Sophie had been reading about Plato, the sun had risen over the woods to the east. It was peeping over the horizon just as she was reading how one man clambered out of the cave and blinked in the dazzling light outside. It was almost as if she had herself emerged from an underground cave. Sophie felt that she saw nature in a completely different way after reading about Plato. It was rather like having been color-blind. She had seen some shadows but had not seen the clear ideas. She was not sure Plato was right in everything he had said about the eternal patterns, but it was a beautiful thought that all living things were imperfect copies of the eternal forms in the world of ideas. Because wasn't it true that all flowers, trees, human beings, and animals were "imperfect"? Everything she saw around her was so beautiful and so alive that Sophie had to rub her eyes to really believe it. But nothing she was looking at now would last. And yet--in a hundred years the same flowers and the same animals would be here again. Even if every single flower and every single animal should fade away and be forgotten, there would be something that "recollected" how it all looked. Sophie gazed out at the world. Suddenly a squirrel ran up the trunk of a pine tree. It circled the trunk a few times and disappeared into the branches. "I've seen you before!" thought Sophie. She realized that maybe it was not the same squirrel that she had seen previously, but she had seen the same "form." For all she knew, Plato could have been right. Maybe she really had seen the eternal "squirrel" before--in the world of ideas, before her soul had taken residence in a human body. Could it be true that she had lived before? Had her soul existed before it got a body to move around in? And was it really true that she carried a little golden nugget inside her--a jewel that cannot be corroded by time, a soul that would live on when her own body grew old and died? 柏拉图    ……回归灵魂世界的渴望…… 第二天清早,苏菲猛然惊醒,看一看钟,才刚过五点,但她却已经没有一点睡意了,于是她便在床上坐起来。奇怪,自己为何仍然穿着白天的衣裳呢?然后,她想起了昨天发生的一切。 她爬到凳子上,检查一下柜子的上层。没错,带子还在那里。原来这真的不是一场梦。至少不完全是一场梦。 不过她一定不可能真的见到了柏拉图与苏格拉底……算了,真伤脑筋,她现在已经没有力气再去想它了。也许妈妈说得对,也许她这几天真的有些神经兮兮的。 不管怎样,她是再睡不着了。也许她应该到密洞去,看看那只狗是否曾留下任何信件。 苏菲溜下楼,穿上一双慢跑鞋便出门了。 花园中一切都清朗宁静美好。鸟儿们唱得如此起劲,使苏菲忍不住想笑。草叶上的朝露宛如水晶一般闪闪发光。 这世界如此美好,令人不可思议。苏菲再一次深深受到感动。 老树篱内非常潮湿。苏菲没有看到哲学家的来信,不过她还是掸了掸一截粗大的树根,坐了下来。 她想起录影带上的柏拉图曾经要她回答一些问题。第一个问 题是面包师傅如何做出五十个一模一样的饼干。 苏菲暗忖,她得仔细想一想才行,因为这个问题一定不简单。 妈妈偶尔也会做一些饼干,但从来没有一次饼干形状完全相同。不过话说回来,妈妈不是专业的面包师傅,有时厨房甚至乱得像被炸弹轰炸过一样。即使是店里卖的饼干也从来没有完全一样的,每一块饼干在制饼师傅手中都捏成不同的样子。 此时,苏菲脸上浮现满意的笑容。她记得有一回妈妈忙着烤圣诞节的饼干,因此她和爸爸一起去买东西。他们回到家后看到厨房的桌子上散放了许多姜饼人。这些姜饼人虽然不很完美,但就某一方面来说,却都是一模一样的。为什么会这样呢?显然是由于妈妈做这些姜饼人时用了同一个模子的缘故。 想到自己居然记得这件小事,苏菲很是得意。因此她想这第一个问题应该已经答完了。 如果一个饼干师傅做了五十个完全一模一样的饼干,他一定是用了同样一副饼干模子。很简单,就是这样。 录影带上的柏拉图问的第二个问题是:为何所有的马都一样? 可是,事实并非如此啊j相反的,苏菲认为没有两匹马是完全相同的,就像没有两个人是一模一样的。 苏菲正要放弃这个问题时,突然想到她刚才对饼干的看法。事 实上,也没有两块饼干是一模一样的,有些比较厚,有些比较薄,有些碎了。然而,每个人都可以看出这些饼干就某一方面来说是“一模一样”的。 也许柏拉图问的是为何马一直是马,而不会变成一种既像马又像猪的动物。因为,虽然有些马像熊一样是棕色的,有些则白得像绵羊,但所有的马都有一些共同点。举例来说,苏菲就从没有见过六条腿或八条腿的马。 但柏拉图不可能相信所有的马之所以相同,是因为他们是用同一个模子做成的吧? 然后柏拉图又问了她一个很深、很难的问题:人有没有不朽的灵魂? 苏菲觉得自己不太够资格回答这个问题。她只知道人死后,人体不是火葬就是土葬,因此实在没有未来可言。如果人有一个不朽的灵魂,那我们就必须相信一个人是由两个不同的部分组成的一个是用了多年之后就会老旧、损坏的躯体,还有一个是无论身体情况如何,仍然多少可以独立作业的灵魂。苏菲的奶奶曾经说过,她觉得变老的只是自己的身体而已,在内心她一直都还是一个年轻的女孩。 想到“年轻女孩”,苏菲就想到最后 有理性吗?对于这点,她可不敢确定。 “性”是什么。 —个问题:女人和男人一样 这要看柏拉图所谓的“理 哲学老师在谈论苏格拉底时所说的一些话突然浮现在苏菲的脑海中。苏格拉底曾经指出,每一个人只要运用自己的常识,都可以了解哲学的真理。他也曾说奴隶与贵族一样有常识。因此苏菲肯定他也会说女人和男人一样有常识。 当她正坐在那儿想着这些问题时,突然听到树篱里有沙沙的声音以及类似蒸汽引擎“噗!噗!”喷气的声音。下一秒钟,一条金色的狗已经钻进了密洞,嘴里衔着一个大信封。 “汉密士!”苏菲叫它,“丢下来,丢下来!” 狗儿把信放在苏菲的怀中。苏菲伸出手摸摸它的头“你真乖。”她说。 狗儿躺下来任由苏菲抚摸。但过了两三分钟,它就站了起来,钻过树篱由原路回去。苏菲手拿棕色的信封跟着它,爬过浓密的枝叶,不一会就出了花园。 汉密士已经开始向树林的边缘跑去了。苏菲在后头跟了几码路,狗儿两次转过身来对她吠叫,但苏菲一点也不害怕。 这次她决心要找到那个哲学家,即使必须一路跑到雅典也在所不惜。狗儿愈跑愈快,然后突然跑到一条窄的小路上。苏菲紧迫不舍,但几分钟后狗儿转过身来面对着她,像看门狗一样的吠叫。 苏菲仍然不肯放弃,趁机会拉近他们之间的距离。 汉密士一转身,向前飞奔。苏菲发现自己永远不可能迫得上。 于是她停下来,在那儿站了好久好久,听到它愈跑愈远,而后一切复归寂静。 她在林中空地旁的一截树木残桩上坐下,手里仍拿着那个棕色的信封。她把它拆开,拿出几页打着字的信纸,开始看信: 柏拉图学院 苏菲,谢谢你与我共度一段愉快的时光。我是指我们在雅典的时候。现在我至少已经算是做过自我介绍了。还有,既然我也向你介绍了柏拉图,因此我们还是开门见山地谈他吧。 苏格拉底服毒而死时,柏拉图(公元前四二七~公元前三四七年)才二十九岁。当时他受教于苏格拉底门下已经有一段时间。他密切注意苏格拉底受审的经过。当他看到雅典人民居然将他们当中最高贵的人判处死刑时,内心非常震动。这件事影响了他后来的哲学生涯。 对柏拉图而言,苏格拉底之死证明了当今社会与理想社会之间的冲突。柏拉图成为哲学家后所做的第一件事就是将苏格拉底对陪审团的陈情内容出版成《自辩》(Apo1ogy)一书。 你也许还记得,苏格拉底从未留下任何丈字。至于苏格拉底之前的哲学家虽然有许多人曾著书立说,但他们的文字到现在却几乎都荡然无存。至于柏拉图,我们相信他所有的重要著作应该都已经保存下来了。除了苏格拉底的《自辩》之外,柏拉图也写了好些书信与至少三十五篇哲学对话录。这些作品之所以能留存至今,一部分是因为柏拉图在距雅典不远之处的一个树林中创立了一个哲学学校,并以传奇中的希腊英雄阿卡戴慕士(ACademus)为名。因此这个学校被称为“学园”或“学院”(Academy)(从此以后全世界各 地成立了成千上万所学院,以后我们会谈到有关“学院”与“学科”的问题)。 柏拉图学园中教授的科目包括哲学、数学与体育。不过,说“教授”其实不太正确,因为柏拉图学园也是采取活泼的对话方式上课,因此柏拉图之所以采用对话录的形式来写作并非偶然。 永远的真善美 在这堂课的序言中,我曾经提到一个人可以不时问问自己某 一个哲学家研究什么课题。因此我现在要问:柏拉图关心的是哪些问题? 简单地说,我们可以断定柏拉图关心的是永恒不变的事物与“流动”事物之间的关系(就像苏格拉底之前的哲学家一样)。我们已经谈过诡辩论学派与苏格拉底如何将他们的注意力由有关自然哲学的问题转到与人和社会的问题。然而从某个角度来看,就连苏格拉底与诡辩学派也都关心永恒不变的事物与“流动”事物之间的关系。他们之所以对这个问题感兴趣,乃是由于它与人类道德与社会理想及美德之间的关系。简而言之,诡辩学家认为每一个城邦、每一个世代对于是非的观念各不相同。因此是非的观念是“流动”的。苏格拉底则完全不能接受这种说法,他认为世间有所谓永恒、绝对的是非观念存在。我们只要运用自己的常识便可以悟出这些不变的标准,因为人类的理智事实上是永恒不变的。 你明白吗?苏菲。后来,柏拉图出现了。他既关心自然界中永恒不变的事物,也关心与人类道德及社会有关的永恒不变的事物。 对于柏拉图而言,这两个问题是一体的两面。他试图掌握有关个人永恒不变的“真理”。 坦白说,这正是世间为何要有哲学家的原因。我们需要哲学家,不是因为他们可以为我们选拔美皇后或告诉我们今天番茄最低价。(这是他们为何经常不受欢迎的原因㈠哲学家们总是试图避开这类没有永恒价值的热门话题,而努力将人们的的注意力吸引到永远“真”、永远“善”、永远“美”的事物上。 明白了这点,我们才可以开始略微了解柏拉图课题的大概内容,不过还是让我们一样一样来吧。我们将试着了解一个不凡的心灵、一个对后来所有欧洲哲学有着深远影响的心灵。 理型的世界 恩培窦可里斯与德谟克里特斯两人都提醒世人:尽管自然界的所有事物都是“流动”的,但世间一定仍有“某些东西”永远不会改变(如“四根”或“原子”)。柏拉图也同意这个命题,但他的方式却大不相同。 柏拉图认为,自然界中有形的东西是“流动”的,所以世间才没有不会分解的“物质”。属于“物质世界”的每一样东西必然是由某种物质做成。这种物质会受时间侵蚀,但做成这些东西的“模子”或“形式”却是永恒不变的。 你了解了吗?苏菲。不,我想你还不了解。 为何全天下的马儿都一样?你也许不认为它们是一样的,但有些特质是所有的马儿都具备的,这些特质使得我们可以认出它们是马。当然个别的马是“流动”的,因为它会老、会瘸,时间到了甚至会死。但马的“形式”却是永恒不变的。 因此,对柏拉图而言,永恒不变的东西并非一种“基本物质”,而是形成各种事物模样的精神模式或抽象模式。 我们这么说吧:苏格拉底之前的哲学家对于自然界的变化提出了相当不错的解释。他们指出,自然界的事物事实上并未“改变”,因为在大自然的各种变化中,有一些永恒不变的最小单位是不会分解的。他们的说法固然不错,但是,苏菲,他们并未对为何这些原本可能组成一匹马“最小单位”突然会在四五百年后突然又聚在一起,组成另外一批新的马(或大象或鳄鱼)提出合理的解释。柏拉图的看法是:这些德谟克里特斯所说的原子只会变成大象或鳄鱼,而绝不会成为“象鳄”或“鳄象”。这是他的哲学思想的特色。如果你已经了解我所要说的,你可以跳过这一段。不过为了保险起见,我要再补充说明一下:假如你有一盒积木,并用这些积木造了一匹马。完工后,你把马拆开,将积木放回盒内。你不可能光是把盒子摇一摇就造出另外一匹马。这些积木怎么可能会自动找到彼此,并再度组成一匹新的马呢?不,这是不可能的。你必须重新再组合过。而你之所以能够这样做,是因为你心中已经有了一幅马的图像,你所参考的模型适用于所有的马匹。 关于五十块一模一样饼干的问题,你回答得如何呢?让我们假设你是从外大空来的,从来没有见过一位面包师傅。有一天你无意间走进一家香气扑鼻的面包店,看到架子上有五十个一模一样的姜饼人。我想你大概会搔搔头,奇怪它们怎么看起来都一个样子。 事实上这些姜饼人可能有的少了一双胳臂,有的头上缺了一角,有的则是肚子上很滑稽的隆起了一块。不过你仔细想过之后,还是认为这些姜饼人都有一些共同点。虽然这些姜饼人没有一个是完美的,但你仍会怀疑它们是出自同一双手的杰作。你会发现这些饼干全部都是用同一个模子做出来的。更重要的是,苏菲,你现在开始有一股不可抗拒的念头,想要看看这个模子。因为很明显的,这个模子本身一定是绝对完美的,而从某个角度来看,它比起这些粗糙的副本来,也会更美丽。 如果你是完全靠自己的思考解答了这个问题,那么你回答这个哲学问题的方法就跟柏拉图完全一样。 就像大多数哲学家一般,他也是“从外太空来的”(他站在兔子毛皮中一根细毛的最顶端)。他看到所有的自然现象都如此类似,觉得非常惊讶,而他认为这一定是因为我们周遭事物的“背后”有一些特定的形式的缘故。柏拉图称这些形式为“理型”或观念。在每一匹马、每一只猪或每一个人的后面,都有一个“理型马”、“理型猪”或“理型人”。(同样的,刚才我们说的面包店也可能会有姜饼人、姜饼马或姜饼猪,因为每一家比较有规模的面包店都会做一种以上的姜饼模子。但一个模子已够做许许多多同样形状的姜饼了。) 柏拉图因此得出一个结论:在“物质世界的背后,必定有一个实在存在。他称这个实在为‘理型的世界’,其中包含存在于自然界各种现象背后、永恒不变的模式。”这种独树一格的观点我们称之为“柏拉图的理型论”。 真正的知识 亲爱的苏菲,到目前为止我所说的话你一定可以了解。不过你 也许会问,柏拉图是认真的吗?他真的相信类似这样的形式的确存在于一个完全不同的世界中吗? 他也许并不是终其一生都保持这种看法,但在他部分对话录中他的意思无疑就是这样。让我们试着追随他思想的脉络。 就像我们看到的,哲学家努力掌握一些永恒不变的事物。举例来说,如果我要你就“某个肥皂泡的存在”这个题目来撰写一篇哲学论文,这就没有什么意义了。原因之一是:往往在我们还没来得及深入研究之前,肥皂泡就破了。原因之二是:这个肥皂泡没有别人看过,并且仅存在五秒钟,这样的哲学论文可能很难找到市场。 柏拉图认为我们在周遭的自然界中所看到的一切具体事物,都可以比做是一个肥皂泡泡,因为没有一件存在于感官世界的东西是永远不变的。我们知道每一个人、每一只动物迟早会死,而且会腐烂分解。即使一决大理石也会发生变化,逐渐分解。(希腊的高城目前正逐渐倒塌,这真是非常糟糕的事,但也没有办法。)柏拉 图的观点是:我们对于那些不断改变的事物不可能会有真正的认识。我们对于那些属于感官世界的具体事物只能有意见或看法。我们能够真正认识的,只有那些我们可以运用理智来了解的事物。 好,苏菲,我再解释得更清楚一些:经过烘烤后,有的姜饼人可能会不成形状。不过在看了几百个像与不像的姜饼人之后,我可以非常确定姜饼人的模型是什么样子。虽然我未曾见过它的模样,但也可以猜到。甚至可以说,即使我们亲眼见过那个模子也不见得会更好,因为我们并不一定信任我们的感官所察知的事物。视觉能力因人而异,但我们却能信赖我们的理智告诉我们的事物,因为理智是人人相同的。 如果你和三十个同学一起坐在教室内。老师问全班学生彩虹里的哪一种颜色最漂亮,他也许会得到很多不同的答案。但如果他问8乘3是多少,全班大概都会提出相同的答案。因为这时理性正在发言,而理性可说是“想法”或“感觉”的相反。正因为理性只表达永恒不变、宇宙共通的事物,因此我们可以说理性永恒不变,而且是宇宙共通的。 柏拉图认为数学是非常吸引人的学科,因为数学的状态永远不会改变,因此也是人可以真正了解的状态。这里让我们来举一个 例子。 假设你在树林间捡到一个圆形的松果,也许你会说你“认为”这个松果是圆的,而乔安则坚持它一边有点扁。(然后你们两个就开始为这件事拌嘴!)所以说,我们人类是无法真正了解我们肉眼所见的事物的,但是我们却可以百分之百确定,一个圆形内所有的角度加起来一定是三六O度。我们这里所说的是一个理想的圆形,也许这个圆形在物质世界中并不存在,不过我们仍然可以很清楚地想象出来。(这个圆形就像那个看不见的姜饼人模子,而不是放在厨房桌上的那些姜饼人。) 简而言之,我们对于感官所感受到的事物,只能有模糊、不精确的观念,但是我们却能够真正了解我们用理智所理解的事物。三角形内的各内角总和一定是一八O度,这是亘古不变的。而同样的,即使感官世界中所有的马都瘸了,“理型”马还会是四肢健全的。 不朽的灵魂 我们已经见到柏拉图如何认为实在世界可以分为两个领域。 其中一个是感官世界。我们只能用我们五种并不精确的官能来约略认识这个世界。在这个世界中,“每一件事物都会流动”,而且没有一个是永久不变的。这里面存在的都是一些生生灭灭的事物。 另外一个领域则是理型的世界。我们可以用理性来确实认识这个世界。我们无法用感官来察知这个理型的世界,但这些理型(或形式)是永恒不变的。 根据柏拉图的说法,人是一种具有双重性质的生物。我们的身体是“流动”的,与感官的世界不可分割,并且其命运与世界上其他每一件事物(如肥皂泡)都相同。我们所有的感官都是以身体为基础,因此是不可靠的。但我们同时也有一个不朽的灵魂,而这个灵魂则是理性的天下。由于灵魂不是物质,因此可以探索理型的世界。 苏菲,柏拉图的学说差不多就是这样了,但这并不是全部。这并不是全部! 柏拉图同时认为,灵魂栖居在躯体内之前,原本就已经存在(它和所有的饼干模子一起躺在橱柜的上层)。然而一旦灵魂在某 一具躯体内醒来时,它便忘了所有的完美的理型。然后,一个奇妙的过程展开了。当人类发现自然界各种不同的形式时,某些模糊的回忆便开始扰动他的灵魂。他看到了一匹马,然而是一匹不完美的马。(一匹姜饼马!)灵魂一看到这匹马,便依稀想起它在理型世界中所见过的完美“马”,同时涌起一股回到它本来领域的渴望。柏拉图称这种渴望为eros,也就是“爱”的意思。此时,灵魂体验到“一种回归本源的欲望”。从此以后.,肉体与整个感官世界对它而言,都是不完美而且微不足道的。灵魂渴望乘着爱的翅膀回“家”,回到理型的世界。它渴望从“肉体的枷锁”中挣脱。 我要强调的是,柏拉图在这里描述的,是一个理想中的生命历程,因为并非所有人都会释放自己的灵魂,让它踏上回到理型世界的旅程。大多数人都紧抱完美理型在感官世界中的“倒影”不放。他们看见一匹又一匹的马,却从未见到这些马所据以产生的“完美马”的形象。(他们只是冲进厨房,拿了姜饼人就吃,也不想一想这些姜饼人是打哪里来的。)柏拉图描述的是哲学家面对事物的方式。他的哲学可以说是对哲学性做法的一种描述。 苏菲,当你看到一个影子时,一定会假定有一样东西投射出这个影子。你看到一只动物的影子,心想那可能是一匹马,但你也不太确定。于是你就转过身来,瞧瞧这匹马。而比起那模糊的影子,这匹马当然显得更俊秀,轮廓也更清晰。同样的,柏拉图也相信,自然界所有的现象都只是永恒形式或理型的影子。但大多数人活在影子之间就已经感到心满意足。他们从不去思考是什么东西投射出这些影子。他们认为世间就只有影子,甚至从不曾认清世间万物都只是影子,也因此他们对于自身灵魂不朽的物质从不在意。 走出黑暗的洞穴 柏拉图用一个神话故事来说明这点。我们称之为“洞穴神话”。 现在就让我用自己的话再说一次这个故事。 假设有些人住在地下的洞穴中。他们背向洞口,坐在地上,手脚都被绑着,因此他们只能看到洞穴的后壁。在他们的身后是一堵高墙,墙后面有一些人形的生物走过,手中举着各种不同形状的人偶,由于人偶高过墙头,同时墙与洞穴间还有一把火炬,因此它们在洞穴的后壁上投下明明灭灭的影子。在这种情况下,穴中居民所看到的唯一事物就是这种“皮影戏”。他们自出生以来就像这样坐着,因此他们认为世间唯一存在的便只有这些影子了。 再假设有一个穴居人设法挣脱了他的锁链。他问自己的第一 个问题便是:洞壁上的这些影子从何而来?你想:如果他一转身,看到墙头上高举着的人偶时,会有何反应?首先,强烈的火光会照得他睁不开眼睛,人偶的鲜明形状也会使他大感惊讶,因为他过去看到的都只是这些人偶的影子而已。如果他想办法爬过墙,越过火炬,进入外面的世界,他会更加惊讶。在揉揉眼睛后,他会深受万物之美的感动。这是他生平第一次看到色彩与清楚的形体。他看到了真正的动物与花朵,而不是洞穴里那些贫乏的影子。不过即使到了现在,他仍会问自己这些动物与花朵从何而来?然后他会看到天 空中的大阳,并悟出这就是将生命赋予那些花朵与动物的源头,就像火光造就出影子一般。 这个穴居人如获至宝。他原本大可以从此奔向乡间,为自己新 获的自由而欢欣雀跃,但他却想到那些仍然留在洞里的人,于是他回到洞中,试图说服其他的穴居人,使他们相信洞壁上那些影子只不过是“真实”事物的闪烁影像罢了。然而他们不相信他,并指着洞壁说除了他们所见的影子之外,世间再也没有其他事物了。最后,他们把那个人杀了。 柏拉图借着这个洞穴神话,想要说明哲学家是如何从影子般的影像出发,追寻自然界所有现象背后的真实概念。这当中,他也许曾想到苏格拉底,因为后者同样是因为推翻了“穴居人”传统的观念。并试图照亮他们追寻真知的道路而遭到杀害。这个神话说 明了苏格拉底的勇气与他的为人导师的责任感。 柏拉图想说的是:黑暗洞穴与外在世界的关系就像是自然世界的形式与理型世界的关系。他的意思并非说大自然是黑暗、无趣的,而是说,比起鲜明清楚的理型世界来,它就显得黑暗而平淡。同样的,一张漂亮女孩的照片也不是单调无趣的,但再怎么说它也只是一张照片而已。 哲学之国 洞穴神话记载于柏拉图的对话录《理想国》(TheReublic)中。 柏拉图在这本书中也描述了“理想国”的面貌。所谓“理想国”就是一个虚构的理想的国度,也就是我们所称的“乌托邦”。简而言之, 我们可以说柏拉图认为这个国度应该由哲学家来治理。他用人体的构造来解释这个概念。 根据柏拉图的说法,人体由三部分构成,分别是头、胸、腹。人的灵魂也相对的具有三种能力。“理性”属于头部的能力,“意志”属于胸部,“欲望”则属于腹部。这些能力各自有其理想,也就是“美德”。理性追求智慧,意志追求勇气,欲望则必须加以遏阻,以做到“自制”。唯有人体的这三部分协调运作时,个人才会达到“和谐”或“美德”的境界。在学校时,儿童首先必须学习如何克制自己的欲望,而后再培养自己的勇气,最后运用理性来达到智慧。 在柏拉图的构想中,一个国家应该像人体一般,由三个部分组成。就像人有头、胸、腹一般,一个国家也应该有统治者、战士与工匠(如农夫)。此处柏拉图显然是参考希腊医学的说法。正如一个健康和谐的人懂得平衡与节制一般,一个“有德”之国的特色是,每一位国民都明白自己在整个国家中扮演的角色。 柏拉图的政治哲学与他在其他方面的哲学一般,是以理性主义为特色。国家要能上轨道,必须以理性来统治。就像人体由头部来掌管一般,社会也必须由哲学家来治理。 现在让我们简单说明人体三部分与国家之间的关系: 身体 灵魂 美德 国家 头部 理性 智慧 统治者 胸部 意志 勇气 战士 腹部 欲望 自制 工匠 柏拉图的理想国有点类似印度的阶级世袭制度,每一个人在社会上都有其特殊的功能,以满足社会整体的需求。事实上,早在柏拉图降生以前,印度的社会便已分成统治阶级(或僧侣阶级)、战士阶级与劳动阶级这三个社会族群。对于现代人而言,柏拉图的理想国可算是极权国家。但有一点值得一提的是:他相信女人也能和男人一样有效治理国家,理由很简单:统治者是以理性来治国,而柏拉图认为女人只要受到和男人一样的训练,而且毋需生育、持家的话,也会拥有和男人不相上下的理性思考能力。在柏拉图的理想国中,统治者与战士都不能享受家庭生活,也不许拥有私人的财产。同时,由于养育孩童的责任极为重大,因此不可由个人从事,而必须由政府来负责(柏拉图是第一位主张成立公立育儿所和推展全时教育的哲学家)。 在遭遇若干次重大的政治挫败后,柏拉图撰写了《律法》(ThelaWS)这本对话录。他在书中描述“宪法国家”,并认为这是仅次于理想国的最好国家。这次他认为在上位者可以拥有个人财产与家庭生活,也因此妇女的自由较受限制。但无论如何,他说一个国家若不教育并训练其女性国民,就好像一个人只锻炼右臂,而不锻炼左臂一般。 总而言之,我们可以说,就他那个时代而言,柏拉图对妇女的看法可算是相当肯定。他在《飨宴》(Symposium)对话录中指出,苏格拉底的哲学见解一部分得自于一个名叫黛娥缇玛(Diotima)的女祭司。这对妇女而言可算是一大荣耀了。 柏拉图的学说大致就是这样了。两千多年来,他这些令人惊异的理论不断受人议论与批评,而第一个讨论、批评他的人乃是他园内的一名学生,名叫亚理斯多德,是雅典第三位大哲学家。 好了,今天就到此为止吧! 苏菲坐在虬结的树根上读着柏拉图的学说,不知不觉太阳已经升到东边的树林上。当她读到那个人如何爬出洞穴,被外面闪耀的阳光照得睁不开眼睛时,太阳正在地平线上露出顶端,向大地窥望。 苏菲感觉自己仿佛也刚从地下洞穴出来一般。在读了柏拉图的学说后,她对大自然的看法已经完全改观。那种感觉就好像她从前一直是色盲,并且只看到一些影子,从没见过清楚的概念。 她并不确定柏拉图所谓永恒范式的说法是否都对,但“每一种生物都是理型世界中永恒形体的不完美复制品”,这种想法多美妙啊!世上所有花、树、人与动物不都是“不够完美”的吗? 苏菲周遭所见的事物在在如此美丽、如此生气盎然,以至于她不得不揉揉眼睛才能相信这些都是真的。不过,她现在眼见的事物没有一样会永远存在。但话说回来,在一百年之后,同样的一些花朵和动物仍然会在这里。虽然每一朵花、每一只动物都会凋萎、死去,而且被世人遗忘,但却有某种东西会“记得”它们从前的模样。 苏菲向远处望去。突然间一只松鼠爬上了一棵松树,沿着树干绕了几圈,然后就消失在枝桠间。 苏菲心想:“我看过这只松鼠!”然后又悟到也许这只松鼠并非她从前看到的那只,但她看过同样的“形式”。在她看来,柏拉图可能说得没错。也许她过去真的见过永恒的“松鼠”——在理型世界中,在她的灵魂还没有栖息在她的身体之前。 有没有可能苏菲从前曾经活过呢?她的灵魂在找到身体寄宿之前是否就已经存在?她的身体内是不是真的有一个小小的金色物体,一个不受光阴侵蚀的宝物,一个在她的肉身衰朽之后仍然活着的灵魂? The Major's Cabin ... the girl in the mirror winked with both eyes It was only a quarter past seven. There was no need to hurry home. Sophie's mother always took it easy on Sundays, so she would probably sleep for another two hours. Should she go a bit farther into the woods and try to find Alberto Knox? And why had the dog snarled at her so viciously? Sophie got up and began to walk down the path Hermes had taken. She had the brown envelope with the pages on Plato in her hand. Wherever the path diverged she took the wider one. Birds were chirping everywhere--in the trees and in the air, in bush and thicket. They were busily occupied with their morning pursuits. They knew no difference between weekdays and Sundays. Who had taught them to do all that? Was there a tiny computer inside each one of them, programming them to do certain things? The path led up over a little hill, then steeply down between tall pine trees. The woods were so dense now that she could only see a few yards between the trees. Suddenly she caught sight of something glittering between the pine trunks. It must be a little lake. The path went the other way but Sophie picked her way among the trees. Without really knowing why, she let her feet lead her. The lake was no bigger than a soccer field. Over on the other side she could see a red-painted cabin in a small clearing surrounded by silver birches. A faint wisp of smoke was rising from the chimney. Sophie went down to the water's edge. It was very muddy in many places, but then she noticed a rowboat. It was drawn halfway out of the water. There was a pair of oars in it. Sophie looked around. Whatever she did, it would be impossible to get around the lake to the red cabin without getting her shoes soaked. She went resolutely over to the boat and pushed it into the water. Then she climbed aboard, set the oars in the rowlocks, and rowed across the lake. The boat soon touched the opposite bank. Sophie went ashore and tried to pull the boat up after her. The bank was much steeper here than the opposite bank had been. She glanced over her shoulder only once before walking up toward the cabin. She was quite startled at her own boldness. How did she dare do this? She had no idea. It was as if "something" impelled her. Sophie went up to the door and knocked. She waited a while but nobody answered. She tried the handle cautiously, and the door opened. "Hallo!" she called. "Is anyone at home?" She went in and found herself in a living room. She dared not shut the door behind her. Somebody was obviously living here. Sophie could hear wood crackling in the old stove. Someone had been here very recently. On a big dining table stood a typewriter, some books, a couple of pencils, and a pile of paper. A smaller table and two chairs stood by the window that overlooked the lake. Apart from that there was very little furniture, although the whole of one wall was lined with book-shelves filled with books. Above a white chest of drawers hung a large round mirror in a heavy brass frame. It looked very old. On one of the walls hung two pictures. One was an oil painting of a white house which lay a stone's throw from a little bay with a red boathouse. Between the house and the boathouse was a sloping garden with an apple tree, a few thick bushes, and some rocks. A dense fringe of birch trees framed the garden like a garland. The title of the painting was "Bjerkely." Beside that painting hung an old portrait of a man sitting in a chair by a window. He had a book in his lap. This picture also had a little bay with trees and rocks in the background. It looked as though it had been painted several hundred years ago. The title of the picture was "Berkeley." The painter's name was Smibert. Berkeley and Bjerkely. How strange! Sophie continued her investigation. A door led from the living room to a small kitchen. Someone had just done the dishes. Plates and glasses were piled on a tea towel, some of them still glistening with drops of soapy water. There was a tin bowl on the floor with some leftover scraps of food in it. Whoever lived here had a pet, a dog or a cat. Sophie went back to the living room. Another door led to a tiny bedroom. On the floor next to the bed there were a couple of blankets in a thick bundle. Sophie discovered some golden hairs on the blankets. Here was the evidence! Now Sophie knew that the occupants of the cabin were Alberto Knox and Hermes. Back in the living room, Sophie stood in front of the mirror. The glass was matte and scratched, and her reflection correspondingly blurred. Sophie began to make faces at herself like she did at home in the bathroom. Her reflection did exactly the same, which was only to be expected. But all of a sudden something scary happened. Just once--in the space of a split second--Sophie saw quite clearly that the girl in the mirror winked with both eyes. Sophie started back in fright. If she herself had winked--how could she have seen the other girl wink? And not only that, it seemed as though the other girl had winked at Sophie as if to say: I can see you, Sophie. I am in here, on the other side. Sophie felt her heart beating, and at the same time she heard a dog barking in the distance. Hermes! She had to get out of here at once. Then she noticed a green wallet on the chest of drawers under the mirror. It contained a hundred-crown note, a fifty, and a school I.D. card. It showed a picture of a girl with fair hair. Under the picture was the girl's name: Hilde Moller Knag ... Sophie shivered. Again she heard the dog bark. She had to get out, at once! As she hurried past the table she noticed a white envelope between all the books and the pile of paper. It had one word written on it: SOPHIE. Before she had time to realize what she was doing, she grabbed the envelope and stuffed it into the brown envelope with the Plato pages. Then she rushed out of the door and slammed it behind her. The barking was getting closer. But worst of all was that the boat was gone. After a second or two she saw it, adrift halfway across the lake. One of the oars was floating beside it. All because she hadn't been able to pull it completely up on land. She heard the dog barking quite nearby now and saw movements between the trees on the other side of the lake. Sophie didn't hesitate any longer. With the big envelope in her hand, she plunged into the bushes behind the cabin. Soon she was having to wade through marshy ground, sinking in several times to well above her ankles. But she had to keep going. She had to get home. Presently she stumbled onto a path. Was it the path she had taken earlier? She stopped to wring out her dress. And then she began to cry. How could she have been so stupid? The worst of all was the boat. She couldn't forget the sight of the row-boat with the one oar drifting helplessly on the lake. It was all so embarrassing, so shameful. . . The philosophy teacher had probably reached the lake by now. He would need the boat to get home. Sophie felt almost like a criminal. But she hadn't done it on purpose. The envelope! That was probably even worse. Why had she taken it? Because her name was on it, of course, so in a way it was hers. But even so, she felt like a thief. And what's more, she had provided the evidence that it was she who had been there. Sophie drew the note out of the envelope. It said: What came first--the chicken or the "idea" chicken ? Are we born with innate "ideas"? What is the difference between a plant, an animal, and a human? Why does it rain? What does it take to live a good life? Sophie couldn't possibly think about these questions right now, but she assumed they had something to do with the next philosopher. Wasn't he called Aristotle? When she finally saw the hedge after running so far through the woods it was like swimming ashore after a shipwreck. The hedge looked funny from the other side. She didn't look at her watch until she had crawled into the den. It was ten-thirty. She put the big envelope into the biscuit tin with the other papers and stuffed the note with the new questions down her tights. Her mother was on the telephone when she came in. When she saw Sophie she hung up quickly. "Where on earth have you been?" "I... went for a walk ... in the woods," she stammered. "So I see." Sophie stood silently, watching the water dripping from her dress. "I called Joanna..." "Joanna?" Her mother brought her some dry clothes. Sophie only just managed to hide the philosopher's note. Then they sat together in the kitchen, and her mother made some hot chocolate. "Were you with him?" she asked after a while. "Him?" Sophie could only think about her philosophy teacher. "With him, yes. Him.... your rabbit!" Sophie shook her head. "What do you do when you're together, Sophie? Why are you so wet?" Sophie sat staring gravely at the table. But deep down inside she was laughing. Poor Mom, now she had that to worry about. She shook her head again. Then more questions came raining down on her. "Now I want the truth. Were you out all night? Why did you go to bed with your clothes on? Did you sneak out as soon as I had gone to bed? You're only fourteen, Sophie. I demand to know who you are seeing!" Sophie started to cry. Then she talked. She was still frightened, and when you are frightened you usually talk. She explained that she had woken up very early and had gone for a walk in the woods. She told her mother about the cabin and the boat, and about the mysterious mirror. But she mentioned nothing about the secret correspondence course. Neither did she mention the green wallet. She didn't quite know why, but she had to keep Hilde for herself. Her mother put her arms around Sophie, and Sophie knew that her mother believed her now. "I don't have a boyfriend," Sophie sniffed. "It was just something I said because you were so upset about the white rabbit." "And you really went all the way to the major's cabin ..." said her mother thoughtfully. "The major's cabin?" Sophie stared at her mother. "The little woodland cabin is called the major's cabin because some years ago an army major lived there for a time. He was rather eccentric, a little crazy, I think. But never mind that. Since then the cabin has been unoccupied." "But it isn't! There's a philosopher living there now." "Oh stop, don't start fantasizing again!" Sophie stayed in her room, thinking about what had happened. Her head felt like a roaring circus full of lumbering elephants, silly clowns, daring trapeze flyers, and trained monkeys. But one image recurred unceasingly-- a small rowboat with one oar drifting in a lake deep in the woods--and someone needing the boat to get home. She felt sure that the philosophy teacher didn't wish her any harm, and would certainly forgive her if he knew she had been to his cabin. But she had broken an agreement. That was all the thanks he got for taking on her philosophic education. How could she make up for it? Sophie took out her pink notepaper and began to write: Dear Philosopher, It was me who was in your cabin early Sunday morning. I wanted so much to meet you and discuss some of the philosophic problems. For the moment I am a Plato fan, but I am not so sure he was right about ideas or pattern pictures existing in another reality. Of course they exist in our souls, but I think--for the moment anyway-- that this is a different thing. I have to admit too that I am not altogether convinced of the immortality of the soul. Personally, I have no recollections from my former lives. If you could convince me that my deceased grandmother's soul is happy in the world of ideas, I would be most grateful. Actually, it was not for philosophic reasons that I started to write this letter (which I shall put in a pink envelope with a lump of sugar). I just wanted to say I was sorry for being disobedient. I tried to pull the boat completely up on shore but I was obviously not strong enough. Or perhaps a big wave dragged the boat out again. I hope you managed to get home without getting your feet wet. If not, it might comfort you to know that I got soaked and will probably have a terrible cold. But that'll be my own fault. I didn't touch anything in the cabin, but I am sorry to say that I couldn't resist the temptation to take the envelope that was on the table. It wasn't because I wanted to steal anything, but as my name was on it, I thought in my confusion that it belonged to me. I am really and truly sorry, and I promise never to disappoint you again. P.S. I will think all the new questions through very carefully, starting now. P.P.S. Is the mirror with the brass frame above the white chest of drawers an ordinary mirror or a magic mirror? I'm only asking because I am not used to seeing my own reflection wink with both eyes. With regards from your sincerely interested pupil, SOPHIE Sophie read the letter through twice before she put it in the envelope. She thought it was less formal than the previous letter she had written. Before she went downstairs to the kitchen to get a lump of sugar she looked at the note with the day's questions: "What came first--the chicken or the "idea" chicken? This question was just as tricky as the old riddle of the chicken and the egg. There would be no chicken without the egg, and no egg without the chicken. Was it really just as complicated to figure out whether the chicken or the "idea" chicken came first? Sophie understood what Plato meant. He meant that the "idea" chicken had existed in the world of ideas long before chickens existed in the sensory world. According to Plato, the soul had "seen" the "idea" chicken before it took up residence in a body. But wasn't this just where Sophie thought Plato must be mistaken? How could a person who had never seen a live chicken or a picture of a chicken ever have any "idea" of a chicken? Which brought her to the next question: Are we born with innate "ideas"? Most unlikely, thought Sophie. She could hardly imagine a newborn baby being especially well equipped with ideas. One could obviously never be sure, because the fact that the baby had no language did not necessarily mean that it had no ideas in its head. But surely we have to see things in the world before we can know anything about them. "What is the difference between a plant, an animal, and a human?" Sophie could immediately see very clear differences. For instance, she did not think a plant had a very complicated emotional life. Who had ever heard of a bluebell with a broken heart? A plant grows, takes nourishment, and produces seeds so that it can reproduce itself. That's about all one could say about plants. Sophie concluded that everything that applied to plants also applied to animals and humans. But animals had other attributes as well. They could move, for example. (When did a rose ever run a marathon?) It was a bit harder to point to any differences between animals and humans. Humans could think, but couldn't animals do so as well? Sophie was convinced that her cat Sherekan could think. At least, it could be very calculating. But could it reflect on philosophical questions? Could a cat speculate about the difference between a plant, an animal, and a human? Hardly! A cat could probably be either contented or unhappy, but did it ever ask itself if there was a God or whether it had an immortal soul? Sophie thought that was extremely doubtful. But the same problem was raised here as with the baby and the innate ideas. It was just as difficult to talk to a cat about such questions as it would be to discuss them with a baby. "Why does it rain?" Sophie shrugged her shoulders. It probably rains because seawater evaporates and the clouds condense into raindrops. Hadn't she learnt that in the third grade? Of course, one could always say that it rains so that plants and animals can grow. But was that true? Had a shower any actual purpose? The last question definitely had something to do with purpose: "What does it take to live a good life?" The philosopher had written something about this quite early on in the course. Everybody needs food, warmth, love, and care. Such basics were the primary condition for a good life, at any rate. Then he had pointed out that people also needed to find answers to certain philosophical questions. It was probably also quite important to have a job you liked. If you hated traffic, for instance, you would not be very happy as a taxi driver. And if you hated doing homework it would probably be a bad idea to become a teacher. Sophie loved animals and wanted to be a vet. But in any case she didn't think it was necessary to win a million in the lottery to live a good life. Quite the opposite, more likely. There was a saying: The devil finds work for idle hands. Sophie stayed in her room until her mother called her down to a big midday meal. She had prepared sirloin steak and baked potatoes. There were cloudberries and cream for dessert. They talked about all kinds of things. Sophie's mother asked her how she wanted to celebrate her fifteenth birthday. It was only a few weeks away. Sophie shrugged. "Aren't you going to invite anyone? I mean, don't you want to have a party?" "Maybe." "We could ask Martha and Anne Marie ... and Helen. And Joanna, of course. And Jeremy, perhaps. But that's for you to decide. I remember my own fifteenth birthday so clearly, you know. It doesn't seem all that long ago. I felt I was already quite grown up. Isn't it odd, Sophie! I don't feel I have changed at all since then." "You haven't. Nothing changes. You have just developed, gotten older..." "Mm ... that was a very grownup thing to say. I just think it's all happened so very quickly." 少校的小木屋    .....镜中的女孩双眼眨了一眨.....    时间才七点十五分,没有必要赶回家。苏菲的妈妈在星期日总是过得比较悠闲一些,因此她也许还会再睡个两小时。 她应不应该再深入树林去找艾伯特呢?上次那只狗为何对她叫得这么凶呢? 苏菲站起身来,开始沿上次汉密士走过的路走去,手里拿着那个装着柏拉图学说的棕色信封。遇到岔路时,她便挑大路走。 到处都可听到鸟儿们轻快的叫声。在林梢、在空中、在荆棘与草丛之中。这些鸟儿正忙于它们的晨间活动。对它们而言,周间与周末并没有分别。是谁教它们如此的呢?难道每一只鸟儿体内都有一架迷你电脑,设定好程式,叫它们做某些特定的事? 苏菲沿着路走上了一座小山丘,然后走到一个向下的陡坡,两旁都是高大的松树,树林非常浓密,以至于苏菲只能看到树与树枝间几码之处。 突然,她看到树干间有个东西在闪动。那一定是个小湖。路向另外一头延伸,但苏菲却转向树丛间走去。她不由自主地走着,自己也不太明白为什么会这样做。 这个湖并不比足球场大。在湖的彼岸,一块由银色桦树所围绕的小小空地上,有一栋红色的小屋。屋顶上的烟囱有一道轻烟正袅袅上升。 苏菲走到湖畔。这里有多处泥泞,不过后来她发现了一条小船,船身有一半在水中,里面还有一对桨。 苏菲环顾四周。看来无论她怎么做,都无法在不把鞋子弄湿的情况下,渡湖到小红屋那边。于是,她一咬牙,走到小船那儿,将它 推到水中。然后她爬上船,将桨固定在桨架上,开始划过湖面。不 一会儿,船便到了对岸。苏菲跨上岸,想把船拖上来。此处的湖岸要比刚才那边陡。 她只回头望了一望,便走向小木屋。 一探究竟 她对自己如此大胆的行径也感到讶异。她怎么敢这样做呢?她也不知道。仿佛有“某种东西”催促她似的。 苏菲走到小木屋的门前,敲敲门,但等了一会儿并没有人应门。她小心地转了一下门柄,门就开了。 “嗨!”她喊。“有人在家吗?” 她走进去,进入一个客厅,但却不敢把门带上。 这里显然有人住。苏菲听到柴火在旧炉子里发出哔哔剥剥的声音,显然不久前还有人在这里。 客厅里的一张大餐桌上放了一台打字机、几本书、几支铅笔和 一沓纸。面湖的窗前有一张较小的桌子和两把椅子。除此之外,屋里很少家具,不过有一整面墙都是书架,上面放满了书。一个白色的五斗柜上方挂了一面圆形的大镜子,外围镶着巨大的铜框,看起来已经是老古董了。 另外一面墙上挂着两幅画。一幅是油画作品,画里有一个建有红色船坞的小港湾,距港湾不远处有一栋白屋。船库与白屋之间是 一个有点坡度的花园,种了一株苹果树、几棵浓密的灌木,此外还有几块岩石。一排浓密的桦树像花环一般围绕着这座花园。画的题名为“柏客来”(Bjerkely)。 这幅油画旁挂了另一幅古老的肖像画。画的是一个男人坐在窗边的椅子上,怀中放了一本书,背景也是一个有树、有岩石的小港湾。这幅画看来像是几百年前画的,题名是“柏克莱”(Berkeley)。画家的名字叫史密伯特(Smibert)。 “柏克莱”与“柏客来”,苏菲心想,多奇怪呀! 苏菲继续勘查这座小木屋。客厅有一扇门通向一间小厨房。不久前这里刚有人洗过碗,盘子与玻璃杯都堆在一条茶巾上,其中几个碗杯上面还有几滴闪闪发光的肥皂水。地板上有一个锡碗,里面放着一些剩饭剩菜。这房子的主人一定养了狗或猫。 苏菲回到客厅。另外一扇门通向一间小小的卧室,里面有一张 床,旁边的地板上放着两、三条捆得厚厚的毯子。苏菲在毯子上发现几根金色的毛发。这就是证据了]现在苏菲知道住在这栋小木屋里的就是艾伯特和汉密士。 再回到客厅后,苏菲站在五斗柜上方的镜子前。镜面已经失去光泽,而且刮痕累累,因此她在镜中的影像也显得模糊不清。苏菲开始对着镜中的自己扮鬼脸,就像她在家中浴室里做的一般。镜中人也一如预期的跟着她的动作做。 突然间,一件骇人的事发生了。有一刹那,苏菲很清楚地看到镜中的女孩同时眨着双眼。苏菲吓得倒退了一步。如果是她自己同时眨动双眼,那她怎么看到镜中的影像呢?不仅如此,那个女孩眨眼的样子仿佛是在告诉苏菲:“我可以看到你喔!我在这里,在另外一边。” 苏菲觉得自己的心怦怦地跳着。就在这时候,她听到远处的狗吠声。汉密士来了!她得马上离开这里才行。这时她看到镜子下方的五斗柜上面有一个绿色的皮夹,里面有一张百元大钞、一张五十元的钞票以及一张学生证,上面贴着一张金发女孩的照片,照片下面写着女孩的名字:席德…… 苏菲打了一个冷颤。她再次听到狗叫声,她必须马上离开! 当她匆匆经过桌旁时,看到那些书与纸堆旁放着一个白色的信封,上面写着两个字:“苏菲”。 在她还没有时间弄清楚自己在做什么以前,她已经一把抓起了那封信,把它塞到装着柏拉图学说的棕色信封里,然后她便冲出大门,把门在身后“砰!”一声关上。 狗叫声愈来愈近。但最糟的是小船不见了。一两秒钟后,她才看到它,原来它正在湖心漂浮,一只桨也在船边漂着。这都是因为她那时无力将它拖上岸的缘故。她听到狗叫声已经逼近,同时湖对岸的树林间也有一些动静。 苏菲不再迟疑。手里拿着大信封,她飞奔到小木屋后面的树丛中。不久她就已置身一片潮湿的沼地。当她在草地上跋涉时,好几次不小心踩进比她脚踝还高很多的水洼中。但是她非继续往前走 不可。她必须回家……回家。 不久,她看到了一条路。这是她来时所走的路吗?她停下来把衣服拧干,然后开始哭泣。 她怎么会这么笨呢?最糟的是那条船。她忘不了那船还有那只桨在湖上无助地漂浮的景象。真难为情,真是羞死人了…… 她的哲学老师现在可能已经到达湖边了。他必须要坐船才能回到家。苏菲觉得自己几乎像是个罪犯一般,不过她不是故意的。 对了,那封信!这下,事情更糟了。她为什么要拿它呢?当然, 是因为信上写着她的名字,因此可以说那封信是她的。但即使如此,她仍然觉得自己像个小偷。更糟的是,她这样做无异留下证据, 显示擅闯小屋的不是别人,就是她。 苏菲把那信从信封里抽出来看,上面写着: 鸡与鸡的观念何者先有? 人是否生来就有一些概念? 植物、动物与人类的差别在哪里? 天为何会下雨? 人需要什么才能过好的生活? 苏菲现在没法思考这些问题。不过她想它们大概与下一位要讨论的哲学家有关。他不是叫亚理斯多德吗? 解释 苏菲在树林间跑了很久。当她终于看到家附近的树篱时,感觉就好像发生船难后游泳上岸的人一般。从这个方向看过去,那排树篱显得很滑稽。 她爬进密洞后,看了看腕表,已经十点半了。她把大信封放进饼干盒里,并把那张写着新问题的纸条塞进她贴身衬衣内。 她进门时,妈妈正在打电话。她一看到苏菲,马上挂掉电话。 “你到底到哪里去了?” “我……我去……树林里散步。”她舌头有点打结。 “原来如此。” 苏菲静静地站着,看着水滴从她的衣服上滴下来。 “我打电话给乔安……” “乔安?” 妈妈拿了几条干布来。苏菲差一点藏不住哲学家的纸条。然后她们母女两个一起坐在厨房里,妈妈泡了一杯热巧克力给苏菲喝。 过了一会儿后,妈妈问道;“你刚才是跟他在一起吗?” “他?” 苏菲的脑海里想的只有她的哲学老师。 “对,他……那个跟你谈兔子的人。” 她摇摇头。 . “苏菲,你们在一起时都做些什么?为什么你会把衣服弄得这么湿?” 苏菲坐在那儿,神情严肃地看着桌子,心里却在暗笑。可怜的妈妈,她现在还得操心“那档子事”。 她再度摇摇头。然后妈妈又连珠炮似的问了她一堆问题。 “现在你要说实话。你是不是整晚都在外面?那天晚上你为什么没换衣服就睡了?你是不是一等我上床就偷跑出去了?苏菲,你才十四岁。我要你告诉我你到底和什么人交朋友!” 苏菲哭了起来,然后她便开始说话。因为她心里还是很害怕, 而当一个人害怕时,通常会想要说些话。 她向妈妈解释:她今天早上起得很早,于是便去森林里散步。 她告诉妈妈有关那小木屋与船,还有那面神秘镜子的事情,但她没有提到她所上的秘密函授课程。也没有提到那只绿色的皮夹。她也不知道为什么,不过她觉得她“不能”把有关席德的事说出来。 妈妈用手抱着苏菲,因此苏菲知道妈妈相信她了。 “我没有男朋友。”苏菲啜泣说,“那是我编的,因为那时候我说白兔的事情让你不高兴。” “你真的一路走到少校的小木屋去……”妈妈若有所思地说。 “少校的小木屋?”苏菲睁大了眼睛。 “那栋小木屋叫少校的小木屋,因为多年前有一位老少校住在那儿。他性情很古怪,我想他大概有点疯狂吧。不过,别管这个了。 后来,小屋就一直空着。” “不,现在有一个哲学家住在那里。” “得了,苏菲,别再幻想了。” 苏菲待在房间内,心里想着这段时间发生的事。她的脑袋像一个满是大象、滑稽小丑、大胆空中飞人与训练有素的猴子闹哄哄的马戏团。不过有一个影像一‘直在她脑海里挥之不去,那就是一艘只有一只桨的小舟在林间深处的湖面上漂浮,而湖岸上有一个人正需要划船回家的情景。 苏菲可以肯定她的哲学老师不会愿意见她受伤,同时,即使他知道她到过他的小木屋,也一定会原谅她的。但是她打破了他们之间的协议。这就是他为她上哲学课所得的报酬吗?她要怎样才能弥补呢? 苏菲拿出粉红色的笔记纸,开始写信: 亲爱的哲学家: 星期天清晨闯进你的小屋的人就是我。因为我很想见到你,和你讨论一些哲学问题。现在我成了柏拉图迷,不过我不太确定他所说的存在于另外一个世界的观念或形式的说法是否正确。当然这些东西存在于我们的灵魂中,但我认为——至少现在如此——这是两回事。同时我必须承认,我还是不太相信灵魂是不朽的。就我个人来说,我不记得前生的事。如果你能够让我相信我奶奶死后的灵魂正在观念世界里过得很快乐,我会很感谢你。 事实上,我最初写这封信(我会把它和一块糖一起放在一个粉红色的信封里)并不是为了有关哲学的问题。我只是想告诉你我很抱歉没有遵守你的规定。我曾想办法把船拉上岸,但显然我的力气不够大,或者可能是一个大浪把船打走了。 我希望你已经设法回到家,而且没有把脚弄湿。但就算你把脚弄湿了,你也可以稍感安慰,因为我自己也弄得湿淋淋的,而且可能还会得重感冒。当然啦,我是自作自受。 我没有碰小屋里的任何东西,不过很惭愧的是,我受不了诱惑,拿走了放在桌上的那封信。我并不是想偷东西,只是因为信封上写着我的名字,所以我在一时糊涂之下,便以为那是属于我的。 我真的很抱歉,我答应以后绝不会再让你失望了。 P.S:从现在开始,我会把所有的新问题很仔细地想过一遍。 PP.S:白色的五斗柜上那面镶铜框的镜子是普通的镜子还是魔镜?我之所以这样问,是因为我不怎么习惯看到自己在镜中的影像同时眨着两只眼睛。 敬祝安好 学生 苏菲敬上 苏菲把信念了两遍,才装进信封。她觉得这次的信不像上一封那么正式。在下楼到厨房拿糖之前,她特地再看了一下纸条上的问题: “鸡和鸡的观念,是何者先有?” 思索 这个问题就像“鸡生蛋还是蛋生鸡”这个老问题一样难以回答。没有蛋就没有鸡,但没有鸡也无从有蛋。“先有鸡还是先有蛋’这个观念”这个问题真的一样复杂吗?苏菲了解柏拉图的意思。他是说早在感官世界出现鸡以前,“鸡”这个观念已经存在于观念世界多时了。根据柏拉图的说法,灵魂在寄宿于人体之前已经 “见过“观念鸡”。不过这就是苏菲认为柏拉图可能讲错的地方。一个从来没有看过一只活生生的鸡,也从来没有看过鸡的图片的人怎么可能会有任何有关鸡的“观念”呢。这又让她想到下一个问题: “人是否生来就有一些观念呢?”苏菲认为,这是不太可能的。 她很难想象一个初生的婴儿有很多自己的想法。当然,这点我们无法确定,因为婴儿虽不会讲话,也并不一定意味着他的脑袋里没有任何想法。不过我们一定要先看到世间之物,才能对这些事物有所了解吧! “植物、动物与人类之间有何区别?”答案太明显了,苏菲可以立即指出来。 例如,她认为植物没有复杂的感情生活。谁听过风铃草伤心欲碎?植物生长、吸收养分,然后制造种子以繁衍下一代。除此之外, 就没有什么了。苏菲的结论是:植物所有的,动物与人类也都有,但动物还有其他的特色。例如,动物可以移动,(谁听说过一株玫瑰可以跑六十公尺?)至于动物与人类之间的区别就比较难说了。人类能够思考,动物也会吗?苏菲相信她的猫咪雪儿懂得如何思考。至少它很会为自己打算,但是它会思索哲学问题吗?一只猫会去思考植物、动物与人类之间的差异吗?这是不太可能的。一只猫可能很快乐,也可能不快乐,但它会问自己“世间有没有上帝”或“猫儿有没有不朽的灵魂”这类问题吗?苏菲认为这是非常令人怀疑的。不过,话说回来,这个问题就像婴儿有没有自己的想法一样难以回答。就像我们很难和婴儿讨论这类问题一样,我们也很难跟一只猫谈这些问题。 “天为何会下雨?”苏菲耸了耸肩膀。下雨是因为海水蒸发,云层凝聚成雨滴的缘故。这个道理她不是三年级就学过了吗?当然,我们也可以说天之所以下雨是为了要让植物、动物能够生长。但这是真的吗?天空下雨真的有任何目的吗? 无论如何,最后一个问题至少与目的有关 “人需要什么才能过好的生活?” 哲学家在课程开始不久时曾经谈过这个问题。每一个人都需要食物、温暖、爱与关怀。这类事物是良好生活的基本条件。接着哲学家指出,人们也需要为一些哲学问题寻找答案。除此之外,拥有一份自己喜欢的工作可能也是很重要的。举例来说,如果你讨厌塞车,那么你要是当个计程车司机绝对不会快乐。如果你不喜欢做作业,那么你也许不太适合当老师。苏菲喜欢动物,想当兽医。不过,无论如何,她不认为人一定要中百万大奖才能过得好。事实上很可能正好相反。不是有句俗话说“游手好闲,易生祸端”吗? 苏菲一直待在房间内,直到妈妈叫她下楼吃晚饭为止。妈妈煮了沙朗牛排与烤马铃薯。真棒!餐桌上点了蜡烛,饭后还有奶油草莓当甜点。 吃饭时,母女俩谈天说地。妈妈问苏菲想如何庆祝自己的十五岁生日。再过几个礼拜苏菲的生日就到了。 苏菲耸了耸肩。 “你不想请别人到家里来吗?我的意思是,你不想开个宴会吗?” “也许。” “我们可以请玛莎和安玛丽来……还有海姬,当然啦,还有乔安,说不定还可以请杰瑞米。不过这得由你自己决定。你知道吗? 我还很清楚的记得我自己过十五岁生日酌情景。感觉上好像才没过多久。当时我觉得自己已经很大了。这不是很奇怪吗?苏菲。我觉得从那以后,自己好像一点都没变。” “你没变啊。什么事情都没有改变。你只是不断成长,一年比 一年大罢了……” “嗯……你说话已经有大人的口气了。我只是认为一切都发生得太快了,快得让人害怕。” Aristotle ...a meticulous organizer who wanted to clarify our concepts  While her mother was taking her afternoon nap, Sophie went down to the den. She had put a lump of sugar in the pink envelope and written "To Alberto" on the outside. There was no new letter, but after a few minutes Sophie heard the dog approaching. "Hermes!" she called, and the next moment he had pushed his way into the den with a big brown envelope in his mouth. "Good boy!" Sophie put her arm around the dog, which was snorting and snuffling like a walrus. She took the pink envelope with the lump of sugar and put it in the dog's mouth. He crawled through the hedge and made off into the woods again. Sophie opened the big envelope apprehensively, wondering whether it would contain anything about the cabin and the boat. It contained the usual typed pages held together with a paperclip. But there was also a loose page inside. On it was written: Dear Miss Sleuth, or, to be more exact, Miss Burglar. The case has already been handed over to the police. Not really. No, I'm not angry. If you are just as curious when it comes to discovering answers to the riddles of philosophy, I'd say your adventure was very promising. It's just a little annoying that I'll have to move now. Still, I have no one to blame but myself, I suppose. I might have known you were a person who would always want to get to the bottom of things. Greetings, Alberto Sophie was relieved. So he was not angry after all. But why would he have to move? She took the papers and ran up to her room. It would be prudent to be in the house when her mother woke up. Lying comfortably on her bed, she began to read about Aristotle. PHILOSOPHER AND SCIENTIST Dear Sophie: You were probably astonished by Plato's theory or ideas. You are not the only one! I do not know whether you swallowed the whole thing--hook, line, and sinker--or whether you had any critical comments. But if you did have, you can be sure that the self-same criticism was raised by Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), who was a pupil at Plato's Academy for almost twenty years. Aristotle was not a native of Athens. He was born in Macedonia and came to Plato's Academy when Plato was 61. Aristotle's father was a respected physician-- and therefore a scientist. This background already tells us something about Aristotle's philosophic project. What he was most interested in was nature study. He was not only the last of the great Greek philosophers, he was Europe's first great biologist. Taking it to extremes, we could say that Plato was so engrossed in his eternal forms, or "ideas," that he took very little notice of the changes in nature. Aristotle, on the other hand, was preoccupied with just these changes--or with what we nowadays describe as natural processes. To exaggerate even more, we could say that Plato turned his back on the sensory world and shut his eyes to everything we see around us. (He wanted to escape from the cave and look out over the eternal world of ideas!) Aristotle did the opposite: he got down on all fours and studied frogs and fish, anemones and poppies. While Plato used his reason, Aristotle used his senses as well. We find decisive differences between the two, not least in their writing. Plato was a poet and mythologist; Aristotle's writings were as dry and precise as an encyclopedia. On the other hand, much of what he wrote was based on up-to-the-minute field studies. Records from antiquity refer to 170 titles supposedly written by Aristotle. Of these, 47 are preserved. These are not complete books; they consist largely of lecture notes. In his time, philosophy was still mainly an oral activity. The significance of Aristotle in European culture is due not least to the fact that he created the terminology that scientists use today. He was the great organizer who founded and classified the various sciences. Since Aristotle wrote on all the sciences, I will limit myself to some of the most important areas. Now that I have told you such a lot about Plato, you must start by hearing how Aristotle refuted Plato's theory of ideas. Later we will look at the way he formulated his own natural philosophy, since it was Aristotle who summed up what the natural philosophers before him had said. We'll see how he categorizes our concepts and founds the discipline of Logic as a science. And finally I'll tell you a little about Aristotle's view of man and society. No Innate Ideas Like the philosophers before him, Plato wanted to find the eternal and immutable in the midst of all change. So he found the perfect ideas that were superior to the sensory world. Plato furthermore held that ideas were more real than all the phenomena of nature. First came the idea "horse," then came all the sensory world's horses trotting along like shadows on a cave wall. The idea "chicken" came before both the chicken and the egg. Aristotle thought Plato had turned the whole thing upside down. He agreed with his teacher that the particular horse "flows" and that no horse lives forever. He also agreed that the actual form of the horse is eternal and immutable. But the "idea" horse was simply a concept that we humans had formed after seeing a certain number of horses. The "idea" or "form" horse thus had no existence of its own. To Aristotle, the "idea" or the "form" horse was made up of the horse's characteristics--which define what we today call the horse species. To be more precise: by "form" horse, Aristotle meant that which is common to all horses. And here the metaphor of the gingerbread mold does not hold up because the mold exists independently of the particular gingerbread cookies. Aristotle did not believe in the existence of any such molds or forms that, as it were, lay on their own shelf beyond the natural world. On the contrary, to Aristotle the "forms" were in the things, because they were the particular characteristics of these things. So Aristotle disagreed with Plato that the "idea" chicken came before the chicken. What Aristotle called the "form" chicken is present in every single chicken as the chicken's particular set characteristics--for one, that it lays eggs. The real chicken and the "form" chicken are thus just as inseparable as body and soul. And that is really the essence of Aristotle's criticism of Plato's theory of ideas. But you should not ignore the fact that this was a dramatic turn of thought. The highest degree of reality, in Plato's theory, was that which we think with our reason. It was equally apparent to Aristotle that the highest degree of reality is that which we perceive with our senses. Plato thought that all the things we see in the natural world were purely reflections of things that existed in the higher reality of the world of ideas--and thereby in the human soul. Aristotle thought the opposite: things that are in the human soul were purely reflections of natural objects. So nature is the real world. According to Aristotle, Plato was trapped in a mythical world picture in which the human imagination was confused with the real world. Aristotle pointed out that nothing exists in consciousness that has not first been experienced by the senses. Plato would have said that there is nothing in the natural world that has not first existed in the world of ideas. Aristotle held that Plato was thus "doubling the number of things." He explained a horse by referring to the "idea" horse. But what kind of an explanation is that, Sophie? Where does the "idea" horse come from, is my question. Might there not even be a third horse, which the "idea" horse is just an imitation of? Aristotle held that all our thoughts and ideas have come into our consciousness through what we have heard and seen. But we also have an innate power of reason. We have no innate ideas, as Plato held, but we have the innate faculty of organizing all sensory impressions into categories and classes. This is how concepts such as "stone," "plant," "animal," and "human" arise. Similarly there arise concepts like "horse," "lobster," and "canary." Aristotle did not deny that humans have innate reason. On the contrary, it is precisely reason, according to Aristotle, that is man's most distinguishing characteristic. But our reason is completely empty until we have sensed something. So man has no innate "ideas." The Form of a Thing Is Its Specific CharacteristicsHaving come to terms with Plato's theory of ideas, Aristotle decided that reality consisted of various separate things that constitute a unity of form and substance. The "substance" is what things are made of, while the "form" is each thing's specific characteristics. A chicken is fluttering about in front of you, Sophie. The chicken's "form" is precisely that it flutters--and that it cackles and lays eggs. So by the "form" of a chicken, we mean the specific characteristics of its species--or in other words, what it does. When the chicken dies--and cackles no more--its "form" ceases to exist. The only thing that remains is the chicken's "substance" (sadly enough, So-phie), but then it is no longer a chicken. As I said earlier, Aristotle was concerned with the changes in nature. "Substance" always contains the potentiality to realize a specific "form." We could say that "substance" always strives toward achieving an innate potentiality. Every change in nature, according to Aristotle, is a transformation of substance from the "potential" to the "actual." Yes, I'll explain what I mean, Sophie. See if this funny story helps you. A sculptor is working on a large block of granite. He hacks away at the formless block every day. One day a little boy comes by and says, "What are you looking for?" "Wait and see," answers the sculptor. After a few days the little boy comes back, and now the sculptor has carved a beautiful horse out of the granite. The boy stares at it in amazement, then he turns to the sculptor and says, "How did you know it was in there?" How indeed! In a sense, the sculptor had seen the horse's form in the block of granite, because that particular block of granite had the potentiality to be formed into the shape or a horse. Similarly Aristotle believed that everything in nature has the potentiality of realizing, or achieving, a specific "form." Let us return to the chicken and the egg. A chicken's egg has the potentiality to become a chicken. This does not mean that all chicken's eggs become chickens--many of them end up on the breakfast table as fried eggs, omelettes, or scrambled eggs, without ever having realized their potentiality. But it is equally obvious that a chicken's egg cannot become a goose. That potentiality is not within a chicken's egg. The "form" of a thing, then, says something about its limitation as well as its potentiality. When Aristotle talks about the "substance" and "form" of things, he does not only refer to living organisms. Just as it is the chicken's "form" to cackle, flutter its wings, and lay eggs, it is the form of the stone to fall to the ground. Just as the chicken cannot help cackling, the stone cannot help falling to the ground. You can, of course, lift a stone and hurl it high into the air, but because it is the stone's nature to fall to the ground, you cannot hurl it to the moon. (Take care when you perform this experiment, because the stone might take revenge and find the shortest route back to the earth!) The Final Cause Before we leave the subject of all living and dead things having a "form" that says something about their potential "action," I must add that Aristotle had a remarkable view of causality in nature. Today when we talk about the "cause" of anything, we mean how it came to happen. The windowpane was smashed because Peter hurled a stone through it; a shoe is made because the shoemaker sews pieces of leather together. But Aristotle held that there were different types of cause in nature. Altogether he named four different causes. It is important to understand what he meant by what he called the "final cause." In the case of window smashing, it is quite reasonable to ask why Peter threw the stone. We are thus asking what his purpose was. There can be no doubt that purpose played a role, also, in the matter of the shoe being made. But Aristotle also took into account a similar "purpose" when considering the purely lifeless processes in nature. Here's an example: Why does it rain, Sophie? You have probably learned at school that it rains because the moisture in the clouds cools and condenses into raindrops that are drawn to the earth by the force of gravity. Aristotle would have nodded in agreement. But he would have added that so far you have only mentioned three of the causes. The "material cause" is that the moisture (the clouds) was there at the precise moment when the air cooled. The "efficient cause" is that the moisture cools, and the "formal cause" is that the "form," or nature of the water, is to fall to the earth. But if you stopped there, Aristotle would add that it rains because plants and animals need rainwater in order to grow. This he called the "final cause." Aristotle assigns the raindrops a life-task, or "purpose." We would probably turn the whole thing upside down and say that plants grow because they find moisture. You can see the difference, can't you, Sophie? Aristotle believed that there is a purpose behind everything in nature. It rains so that plants can grow; oranges and grapes grow so that people can eat them. That is not the nature of scientific reasoning today. We say that food and water are necessary conditions of life for man and beast. Had we not had these conditions we would not have existed. But it is not the purpose of water or oranges to be food for us. In the question of causality then, we are tempted to say that Aristotle was wrong. But let us not be too hasty. Many people believe that God created the world as it is so that all His creatures could live in it. Viewed in this way, it can naturally be claimed that there is water in the rivers because animals and humans need water to live. But now we are talking about God's purpose. The raindrops and the waters of the river have no interest in our welfare. Logic The distinction between "form" and "substance" plays an important part in Aristotle's explanation of the way we discern things in the world. When we discern things, we classify them in various groups or categories. I see a horse, then I see another horse, and another. The horses are not exactly alike, but they have something in common, and this common something is the horse's "form." Whatever might be distinctive, or individual, belongs to the horse's "substance." So we go around pigeonholing everything. We put cows in cowsheds, horses in stables, pigs in pigsties, and chickens in chicken coops. The same happens when Sophie Amundsen tidies up her room. She puts her books on the bookshelf, her schoolbooks in her schoolbag, and her magazines in the drawer. Then she folds her clothes neatly and puts them in the closet--underwear on one shelf, sweaters on another, and socks in a drawer on their own. Notice that we do the same thing in our minds. We distinguish between things made of stone, things made of wool, and things made of rubber. We distinguish between things that are alive or dead, and we distinguish between vegetable, animal, and human. Do you see, Sophie? Aristotle wanted to do a thorough clearing up in nature's "room." He tried to show that everything in nature belongs to different categories and subcategories. (Hermes is a live creature, more specifically an animal, more specifically a vertebrate, more specifically a mammal, more specifically a dog, more specifically a Labrador, more specifically a male Labrador.) Go into your room, Sophie. Pick up something, anything, from the floor. Whatever you take, you will find that what you are holding belongs to a higher category The day you see something you are unable to classify you will get a shock. If, for example, you discover a small whatsit, and you can't really say whether it is animal, vegetable, or mineral--I don't think you would dare touch it. Saying animal, vegetable, and mineral reminds me of that party game where the victim is sent outside the room, and when he comes in again he has to guess what everyone else is thinking of. Everyone has agreed to think of Fluffy, the cat, which at the moment is in the neighbor's garden. The victim comes in and begins to guess. The others must only answer "yes" or "no." If the victim is a good Aristotelian--and therefore no victim--the game could go pretty much as follows: Is it concrete? (Yes!) Mineral? (No!) Is it alive? (Yes!) Vegetable? (No!) Animal? (Yes!) Is it a bird? (No!) Is it a mammal? (Yes!) Is it the whole animal? (Yes!) Is it a cat? (Yes!) Is it Fluffy? (Yeah! Laughter. . .) So Aristotle invented that game. We ought to give Plato the credit for having invented hide-and-seek. Democritus has already been credited with having invented Lego. Aristotle was a meticulous organizer who set out to clarify our concepts. In fact, he founded the science of Logic. He demonstrated a number of laws governing conclusions or proofs that were valid. One example will suffice. If I first establish that "all living creatures are mortal" (first premise), and then establish that "Hermes is a living creature" (second premise), I can then elegantly conclude that "Hermes is mortal." The example demonstrates that Aristotle's logic was based on the correlation of terms, in this case "living creature" and "mortal." Even though one has to admit that the above conclusion is 100% valid, we may also add that it hardly tells us anything new. We already knew that Hermes was "mortal." (He is a "dog" and all dogs are "living creatures"--which are "mortal," unlike the rock of Mount Everest.) Certainly we knew that, Sophie. But the relationship between classes of things is not always so obvious. From time to time it can be necessary to clarify our concepts. For example: Is it really possible that tiny little baby mice suckle just like lambs and piglets? Mice certainly do not lay eggs. (When did I last see a mouse's egg?) So they give birth to live young--just like pigs and sheep. But we call animals that bear live young mammals--and mammals are animals that feed on their mother's milk. So--we got there. We had the answer inside us but we had to think it through. We forgot for the moment that mice really do suckle from their mother. Perhaps it was because we have never seen a baby mouse being suckled, for the simple reason that mice are rather shy of humans when they suckle their young. Nature's Scale When Aristotle "clears up" in life, he first of all points out that everything in the natural world can be divided into two main categories. On the one hand there are nonliving things, such as stones, drops of water, or clumps of soil. These things have no potentiality for change. According to Aristotle, nonliving things can only change through external influence. Only living things have the potentiality for change. Aristotle divides "living things" into two different categories. One comprises plants, and the other creatures. Finally, these "creatures" can also be divided into two subcategories, namely animals and humans. You have to admit that Aristotle's categories are clear and simple. There is a decisive difference between a living and a nonliving thing, for example a rose and a stone, just as there is a decisive difference between a plant and an animal, for example a rose and a horse. I would also claim that there definitely is a difference between a horse and a man. But what exactly does this difference consist of? Can you tell me that? Unfortunately I do not have time to wait while you write the answer down and put it in a pink envelope with a lump of sugar, so I'll answer myself. When Aristotle divides natural phenomena into various categories, his criterion is the object's characteristics, or more specifically what it can do or what it does. All living things (plants, animals, humans) have the ability to absorb nourishment, to grow, and to propagate. All "living creatures" (animals and humans) have in addition the ability to perceive the world around them and to move about. Moreover, all humans have the ability to think--or otherwise to order their perceptions into various categories and classes. So there are in reality no sharp boundaries in the natural world. We observe a gradual transition from simple growths to more complicated plants, from simple animals to more complicated animals. At the top of this "scale" is man--who according to Aristotle lives the whole life of nature. Man grows and absorbs nourishment like plants, he has feelings and the ability to move like animals, but he also has a specific characteristic peculiar to humans, and that is the ability to think rationally. Therefore, man has a spark of divine reason, Sophie. Yes, I did say divine. From time to time Aristotle reminds us that there must be a God who started all movement in the natural world. Therefore God must be at the very top of nature's scale. Aristotle imagined the movement of the stars and the planets guiding all movement on Earth. But there had to e something causing the heavenly bodies to move. Aristotle called this the "first mover," or "God." The "first mover" is itself at rest, but it is the "formal cause" of the movement of the heavenly bodies, and thus of all movement in nature. Ethics Let us go back to man, Sophie. According to Aristotle, man's "form" comprises a soul, which has a plant-like part, an animal part, and a rational part. And now he asks: How should we live? What does it require to live a good life? His answer: Man can only achieve happiness by using all his abilities and capabilities. Aristotle held that there are three forms of happiness. The first form of happiness is a life of pleasure and enjoyment. The second form of happiness is a life as a free and responsible citizen. The third form of happiness is a life as thinker and philosopher. Aristotle then emphasized that all three criteria must be present at the same time for man to find happiness and fulfillment. He rejected all forms of imbalance. Had he lived today he might have said that a person who only develops his body lives a life that is just as unbalanced as someone who only uses his head. Both extremes are an expression of a warped way of life. The same applies in human relationships, where Aristotle advocated the "Golden Mean." We must be neither cowardly nor rash, but courageous (too little courage is cowardice, too much is rashness), neither miserly nor extravagant but liberal (not liberal enough is miserly, too liberal is extravagant). The same goes for eating. It is dangerous to eat too little, but also dangerous to eat too much. The ethics of both Plato and Aristotle contain echoes of Greek medicine: only by exercising balance and temperance will I achieve a happy or "harmonious" life. Politics The undesirability of cultivating extremes is also expressed in Aristotle's view of society. He says that man is by nature a "political animal." Without a society around us, we are not real people, he claimed. He pointed out that the family and the village satisfy our primary needs of food, warmth, marriage, and child rearing. But the highest form of human fellowship is only to be found in the state. This leads to the question of how the state should be organized. (You remember Plato's "philosophic state"?) Aristotle describes three good forms of constitution. One is monarchy, or kingship--which means there is only one head of state. For this type of constitution to be good, it must not degenerate into "tyranny"--that is, when one ruler governs the state to his own advantage. Another good form of constitution is aristocracy, in which there is a larger or smaller group of rulers. This constitutional form must beware of degenerating into an "oligarchy"--when the government is run by a few people. An example of that would be a junta. The third good constitutional form is what Aristotle called polity, which means democracy. But this form also has its negative aspect. A democracy can quickly develop into mob rule. (Even if the tyrannic Hitler had not become head of state in Germany^ all the lesser Nazis could have formed a terrifying mob rule.) Views on Women Finally, let us look at Aristotle's views on women. His was unfortunately not as uplifting as Plato's. Aristotle was more inclined to believe that women were incomplete in some way. A woman was an "unfinished man." In reproduction, woman is passive and receptive whilst man is active and productive; for the child inherits only the male characteristics, claimed Aristotle. He believed that all the child's characteristics lay complete in the male sperm. The woman was the soil, receiving and bringing forth the seed, whilst the man was the "sower." Or, in Aristotelian language, the man provides the "form" and the woman contributes the "substance." It is of course both astonishing and highly regrettable that an otherwise so intelligent man could be so wrong about the relationship of the sexes. But it demonstrates two things: first, that Aristotle could not have had much practical experience regarding the lives of women and children, and second, it shows how wrong things can go when men are allowed to reign supreme in the fields of philosophy and science. Aristotle's erroneous view of the sexes was doubly harmful because it was his--rather than Plato's--view that held sway throughout the Middle Ages. The church thus inherited a view of women that is entirely without foundation in the Bible. Jesus was certainly no woman hater! I'll say no more. But you will be hearing from me again. When Sophie had read the chapter on Aristotle one and a half times, she returned it to the brown envelope and remained sitting, staring into space. She suddenly became aware of the mess surrounding her. Books and ring binders lay scattered on the floor. Socks and sweaters, tights and jeans hung half out of the closet. On the chair in front of the writing desk was a huge pile of dirty laundry. Sophie had an irresistible desire to clear up. The first thing she did was to pull all the clothes out of the closet and onto the floor. It was necessary to start all over. Then she began folding her things very neatly and stacking them all tidily on the shelves. The closet had seven shelves. One was for underwear, one for socks and tights, and one for jeans. She gradually filled up each shelf. She never had any question about where to put anything. Dirty laundry went into a plastic bag she found on the bottom shelf. One thing she did have trouble with--a white knee-length stocking. The problem was that the other one of the pair was missing. What's more, it had never been Sophie's. She examined it carefully. There was nothing to identify the owner, but Sophie had a strong suspicion about who the owner was. She threw it up onto the top shelf to join the Lego, the video cassette, and the red silk scarf. Sophie turned her attention to the floor. She sorted books, ring binders, magazines, and posters--exactly as the philosophy teacher had described in the chapter on Aristotle. When she had done that, she made her bed and got started on her writing desk. The last thing she did was to gather all the pages on Aristotle into a neat pile. She fished out an empty ring binder and a hole punch, made holes in the pages, and clipped them into the ring binder. This also went onto the top shelf. Later on in the day she would have to bring in the cookie tin from the den. From now on things would be kept neat. And she didn't only mean in her room. After reading Aristotle, she realized it was just as important to keep her ideas orderly. She had reserved the top shelf of the closet especially for that kind of thing. It was the only place in the room that she did not yet have complete control over. There had been no sign of life from her mother for over two hours. Sophie went downstairs. Before she woke her mother up she decided to feed her pets. She bent over the goldfish bowl in the kitchen. One of the fishes was black, one orange, and one red and white. This was why she called them Black Jack, Gold-top, and Red Ridinghood. As she sprinkled fish food into the water she said: "You belong to Nature's living creatures, you can absorb nourishment, you can grow and reproduce yourselves. More specifically, you belong to the animal kingdom. So you can move around and look out at the world. To be precise, you are fish, and you breathe through your gills and can swim back and forth in the waters of life." Sophie put the lid back on the fish food jar. She was quite satisfied with the way she had placed the goldfish in Nature's scale, and she was especially pleased with the expression "the waters of life." So now it was the budgerigars' turn. Sophie poured a little birdseed in their feeding cup and said: "Dear Smit and Smule. You have become dear little budgerigars because you grew out of dear little budgerigar eggs, and because these eggs had the form of being budgerigars, luckily you didn't grow into squawking parrots." Sophie then went into the large bathroom, where the sluggish tortoise lay in a big box. Every now and then when her mother showered, she yelled that she would kill it one day. But so far it had been an empty threat. Sophie took a lettuce leaf from a large jam jar and laid it in the box. "Dear Govinda," she said. "You are not one of the speediest animals, but you certainly are able to sense a tiny fraction of the great big world we live in. You'll have to content yourself with the fact that you are not the only one who can't exceed your own limits." Sherekan was probably out catching mice--that was a cat's nature, after all. Sophie crossed the living room toward her mother's bedroom. A vase of daffodils stood on the coffee table. It was as if the yellow blooms bowed respectfully as Sophie went by. She stopped for a moment and let her fingers gently brush their smooth heads. "You belong to the living part of nature too," she said. "Actually, you are quite privileged compared to the vase you are in. But unfortunately you are not able to appreciate it." Then Sophie tiptoed into her mother's bedroom. Although her mother was in a deep sleep, Sophie laid a hand on her forehead. "You are one of the luckiest ones," she said, "because you are not only alive like the lilies of the field. And you are not only a living creature like Sherekan or Govinda. You are a human, and therefore have the rare capacity of thought." "What on earth are you talking about, Sophie?" Her mother had woken up more quickly than usual. "I was just saying that you look like a lazy tortoise. I can otherwise inform you that I have tidied up my room, with philosophic thoroughness." Her mother lifted her head. "I'll be right there," she said. "Will you put the coffee on?" Sophie did as she was asked, and they were soon sitting in the kitchen over coffee, juice, and chocolate. Suddenly Sophie said, "Have you ever wondered why we are alive, Mom?" "Oh, not again!" "Yes, because now I know the answer. People live on this planet so that someone can go around giving names to everything." "Is that right? I never thought of that." "Then you have a big problem, because a human is a thinking animal. If you don't think, you're not really a human." "Sophie!" "Imagine if there were only vegetables and animals. Then there wouldn't have been anybody to tell the difference between 'cat' and 'dog,' or 'lily' and 'gooseberry.' Vegetables and animals are living too, but we are the only creatures that can categorize nature into different groups and classes." "You really are the most peculiar girl I have ever had," said her mother. "I should hope so," said Sophie. "Everybody is more or less peculiar. I am a person, so I am more or less peculiar. You have only one girl, so I am the most peculiar." "What I meant was that you scare the living daylights out of me with all that new talk." "You are easily scared, then." Later that afternoon Sophie went back to the den. She managed to smuggle the big cookie tin up to her room without her mother noticing. First she put all the pages in the right order. Then she punched holes in them and put them in the ring binder, before the chapter on Aristotle. Finally she numbered each page in the top right-hand corner. There were in all over fifty pages. Sophie was in the process of compiling her own book on philosophy. It was not by her, but written especially for her. She had no time to do her homework for Monday. They were probably going to have a test in Religious Knowledge, but the teacher always said he valued personal commitment and value judgments. Sophie felt she was beginning to have a certain basis for both. 亚理斯多德    ……一位希望澄清我们观念的严谨的逻辑学家, 妈妈睡午觉时,苏菲跑到密洞去。之前她已经把一块糖放在那个粉红色的信封里,信上并写着“艾伯特收”。 密洞中并没有任何新的信,但几分钟后她听到狗儿走近的声音。 “汉密士!”她喊。一转眼,它已经钻进密洞,嘴里衔着一个棕色的大信封。 “乖狗狗!”汉密士正像海象一般在咻咻喘气。苏菲一手抱着它,一手拿起装有一块糖的粉红色信封,放在它的嘴里。然后汉密士便钻过树篱,奔回树林中。 苏菲焦急地打开大信封,心想信里不知是否会提到有关木屋与小船的事。 信封里还是像往常那样装了几张用纸夹夹住的打字信纸过这次里面还有另一张信纸,上面写着: 亲爱的侦探小姐(或小偷小姐): 有关阁下擅闯小屋的事,我已经报警处理了。 说着玩的。其实,我并不很生气。如果你在追求哲学问题的答案时,也有同样的好奇心,那你的前途真是不可限量。只是我现在非搬家不可了,这是颇恼人的一点。不过我想我只能怪自己,我应该早就知道你是那种喜欢打破砂锅问到底的人。 祝好。 艾伯特笔 苏菲松一口气,放下心中的一块大石头。原来他一点也不生气,但他为何非搬家不可呢? 她拿了这一沓信纸,跑到楼上的房间去。她想,妈妈醒来时,她还是待在屋里比较好。不久她便舒适地躺在她的床上,开始读有关亚理斯多德的种种。 亲爱的苏菲: 柏拉图的理型论也许使你很震惊。其实有这种感觉的不只你 一个人而已。我不知道你对这个理论是否照单全收,还是有所批 评。不过,即使你不能完全同意,你也大可放心,因为同样的批评亚理斯多德(公元前三八四~公元前三二二年)都曾经提出过。 亚理斯多德曾经在柏拉图的学园中进修了二十年。他并不是雅典当地的人士,他出生于马其顿,在柏拉图六十一岁时来到他的学园进修。他的父亲是一位很受人敬重的医生(所以也算是一位科学家),这个背景对于亚理斯多德的哲学事业影响颇大,他因此对研究大自然极感兴趣。他不仅是希腊最后一位大哲学家,也是欧洲第一位大生物学家。 我们可以说柏拉图太过沉迷于他那些永恒的形式(或“理型”),以至于他很少注意到自然界的变化。相反的,亚理斯多德则只对这些变化(或我们今天所称的大自然的循环)感到兴趣。 说得夸张一些,我们可以说柏拉图无视于感官世界的存在,也无视于我们在周遭所见的一切事物。(他只想逃离洞穴,观察永恒的概念世界。) 亚理斯多德则正好相反:他倾全力研究青蛙与鱼、白头翁与罂粟等事物。 我们可以说,柏拉图运用他的理性,而亚理斯多德则同时也运用他的感官。 他们有很大的不同,这些差异也显现于他们的写作上。柏拉图是一位诗人与神话学家,亚理斯多德的文章则朴实精确,一如百科全书。此外,他有许多作品都是他进行实地研究的结果。 根据古籍记载,亚理斯多德写了一百七十本书,其中只有四十七本保存至今。这些作品都不完整,大部分都是一些演讲的笔记。 在他那个时代,哲学主要仍是一种口头的活动。 亚理斯多德在欧洲文化的地位并不仅是因为他创造了许多现代科学家使用的辞汇,同时也是因为他是一位伟大的组织家,他发明了各种科学并且加以分类。 亚理斯多德的作品涉及各种科学,但我只想讨论其中较为重要的领域。由于我们已经谈了许多柏拉图的哲学,因此一开始我们要听听亚理斯多德如何驳斥柏拉图的理型论。然后,我们再来看他 如何总结前人的理论,创立他自己的自然哲学。 我们也会谈到他如何将我们的概念加以分类,并创建理则学(或称逻辑学)这门学科。最后,我将略微讨论亚理斯多德对人与社会的看法。 如果你可以接受这种安排,那就让我们卷起袖子开始吧! 没有的概念 柏拉图和他的前辈一样,想在所有变化无常的事物中找出永恒与不变之物。因此他发现了比感官世界层次更高的完美理型。他更进一步认为理型比所有的自然现象真实。他指出,世间是先有“马”的理型,然后才有感官世界里所有的马匹,它们就像洞壁上的影子一般达达前进。因此“鸡”的理型要先于鸡,也先于蛋。 亚理斯多德则认为柏拉图将整个观念弄反了。他同意他的老 师的说法,认为一匹特定的马是“流动”的,没有一匹马可以长生不死,他也认为马的形式是永恒不变的。但他认为马的“理型”是我们人类在看到若干匹马后形成的概念。因此马的“理型”或“形式” 本身是不存在的。对于亚理斯多德而言,马的“理型”或“形式”就是马的特征,后者定义了我们今天所称的马这个“种类”。 更精确地说,亚理斯多德所谓马的“形式”乃是指所有马匹都共有的特征。在这里姜饼人模子的比喻并不适用,因为模于是独立于姜饼人之外而存在的。亚理斯多德并不相信自然界之外有这样一些模子或形式放在他们所属的架子上。相反的,亚理斯多德认为“形式”存在于事物中,因为所谓形式就是这些事物的特征。 所以,亚理斯多德并不赞成柏拉图主张“鸡”的理型比鸡先有的说法。亚理斯多德所称的鸡的“形式”存在于每一只鸡的身上,成为鸡之所以为鸡的特色,例如:鸡会生蛋。因此真正的鸡和鸡的“形式”就像身体与灵魂一般是不可分割的。 这就是亚理斯多德批评柏拉图的理型论的大要。这是思想上的一大转变。在柏拉图的理论中,现实世界中最高层次的事物乃是那些我们用理性来思索的事物。但对亚理斯多德而言,真实世界中最高层次的事物乃是那些我们用感官察觉的事物。柏拉图认为,我们在现实世界中看到的一切事物纯粹只是更高层次的概念世界(以及灵魂)中那些事物的影子。亚理斯多德的主张正好相反。他认为,人类灵魂中存在的事物纯粹只是自然事物的影子。因此自然就是真实的世界。根据亚理斯多德的说法,柏拉图是陷入了一个神话世界的图像中不可自拔,在这个世界中人类的想像与真实世界混淆不清。 亚理斯多德指出,我们对于自己感官未曾经验过的事物就不可能有意识。柏拉图则会说:不先存在于理型世界中的事物就不可能出现在自然界中。亚理斯多德认为柏拉图如此的主张会使“事物的数目倍增”。他用“马的理型”来解释马,但那是怎样的一种解释呢?苏菲,我的问题在于:这个“马的理型”从何而来?世间会不会有另外一匹马,而马的理型只不过是模仿这匹马罢了? 亚理斯多德认为,我们所拥有的每一种想法与意念都是透过我们看到、听到的事物而进入我们的意识。不过我们也具有与生俱来的理性,因此天生就能够组织所有的感官印象,并且将它们加以整理与分类,所以才会产生诸如“石头”、“植物”、“动物”与“人类”等概念。而“马”、“龙虾”、“金丝雀”这些概念也是以同样的方式形成的。 亚理斯多德并不否认人天生就有理性。相反的,根据他的说法,具有理性正是人最大的特征。不过在我们的感官经验到各种事物之前,我们的理性是完全真空的。因此人并没有天生的“观念”。 一件事物的形式乃是它的特征    在批评柏拉图的理型论后,亚理斯多德认为实在界乃是由各种本身的形式与质料和谐一致的事物所组成的。“质料”是事物组成的材料,“形式”则是每一件事物的个别特征。 苏菲,假设现在你眼前有一只鼓翅乱飞的鸡。这只鸡的“形式”正是它会鼓翅、会咕咕叫、会下蛋等。因此我们所谓的一只鸡的“形式”就是指鸡这种动物的特征,也可以说是鸡的各种行为。当这只鸡死时(当它不再咕咕叫时),它的“形式”也不再存在。唯一剩下的就是鸡的“物质”(说起来很悲哀),但这时它已经不再是鸡了。 就像我先前所说的,亚理斯多德对于自然界的变化很感兴趣。 “质料”总是可能实现成某一特定的“形式”。我们可以说“质料”总是致力于实现一种内在的可能性。亚理斯多德认为自然界的每一种变化,都是物质从“潜能”转变为“实现”的结果。 这点显然我必须加以解释,我将试着用一个小故事来说明。有一位雕刻家正在雕凿一块大花岗石。他每天一斧一斧的雕凿着这块没有形状的岩石。有一天,一个小男孩走过来问他:“你在找寻什么?”雕刻家答道:“你等着瞧吧!”几天后小男孩又回来了,看到雕刻家已经将花岗岩雕成了一匹骏马。小男孩惊异的注视着这只马, 然后转向雕刻家问道:“你怎么知道马在里面呢?” 的确,就某一方面来说,雕刻家确实在那块花岗岩里看到了马的形式,因为这块花岗岩具有变成一匹马的潜能。同样的,亚理斯多德相信自然界的每一件事物都可能实现或达成某一个特定的形式”。 让我们回到鸡与蛋的问题。鸡蛋有成为一只鸡的潜能,这并不表示每一个鸡蛋都会变成鸡,因为许多鸡蛋到头来会变成人们早餐桌上的煎蛋、蛋卷或炒蛋等佳肴,因而未能实现它们的潜能。同理,鸡蛋显然不能变成一只鹅,因为鸡蛋没有这样的潜能。因此,一件事物的“形式”不但说明了这件事物的潜能,也说明了它的极限。 当亚理斯多德谈到事物的“质料”与“形式”时,他所指的不仅是生物而已。正如鸡的“形式”就是会咕咕叫、会鼓翅、会下蛋,石头的形式就是会掉在地上。正如鸡无法不咕咕叫一般,石头也无法不掉在地上。当然你可以捡起一块石头,把它丢向空中,但由于石头的天性就是要掉在地上,因此你无法把它丢向月亮。(你做这个实验的时候可要小心,因为石头可能会报复,并且由最短的一条路径回到地球上。希望上帝保佑那些站在它的路径上的人!) 目的因    在我们结束“所有生物、无生物的‘形式’都说明他们可能采取的‘行动’”这个话题前,我必须声明亚理斯多德对自然界的因果律的看法实在很高明。 今天当我们谈到一件事物的“原因”时,我们指的是这件事物为何会发生。窗子之所以被砸破是因为彼德丢了一块石头穿过它; 鞋子之所以被制造出来,是因为鞋匠把几块皮革缝在一起。不过亚理斯多德认为自然界有各种不同的原因。他一共举出了四种原因。 我们必须了解他所谓的“目的因”是什么意思。 在窗予被砸破后,问问彼德为何要丢石头是一件很合理的事。 我们所问的就是他的目的。在这里,目的无疑扮演了一个重要的角色。在制鞋的例子中也是如此。同样的,亚理斯多德认为自然界种种循环变迁中也可能有类似的“目的”存在。我们用一个简单的例子来说明好了: 苏菲,你认为天为什么会下雨?不用说,你曾在学校里念过天之所以下雨,是因为云层中的湿气冷却凝结后变成雨滴,然后受重力的吸引,降落在地上。对这个说法,亚理斯多德应该会点头同意。 但是,他也会补充说你只提到其中的三种肇囚。“质料因”是在空气冷却时湿气(云层)正好在那儿。“主动因”是湿气冷却,“形式因”则是水的“形式”(或天性)就是会降落地面。不过假如你只提到这三者,亚理斯多德会补充说,天空下雨的原因是因为植物和动物需要雨水才能生长,这就是他所谓的“目的因”。因此,你可以看出来,亚理斯多德赋予雨滴一个任务或“目的”。 我们也许可以反过来说,植物之所以生长是因为它们有了湿气,你应该可以看出这两种说法之间的不同,是不是?亚理斯多德相信自然界的每一件事物都有其目的。天空下雨是因为要让植物生长,柳橙和葡萄之所以生长是为了供人们食用。 这并不是现代科学思维的本质。我们说食物、雨水是人类与动物维生的必要条件。如果没有这些条件,我们就无法生存。不过,水或柳橙存在的目的并不是为了供人类食用。 因此,就因果律的问题而言,我们往往会认为亚理斯多德的想法是错误的。但我们且勿遽下定论。许多人相信上帝创造这个世界,是为了让它所有的子民都可以生活于其间。从这种说法来看,我们自然可以宣称河流里面之所以有水是因为动物与人类需要水才能生存。不过,话说回来,这是上帝的目的。雨滴和河水本身对我们人类的福祉可是一点也不感兴趣。 逻辑 亚理斯多德说明人类如何区别世间事物时,强调了“形式”与“质料”的差别。 我们区别事物的方法是将事物分门别类。例如,我先看到一匹马,然后又看到另外两匹。这些马并非完全相同,但也有一些相似之处。这些相似之处就是马的“形式”。至于每匹马与其他马不同 之处就是它的“质料”。 就这样,我们把每一件事物都加以分类。我们把牛放在牛棚里,把马放在马厩里,把猪赶进猪圈里,把鸡关在鸡舍里。你在清理房间时,一定也是这样做的。你会把书放在书架上,把书本放在书包里,把杂志放在抽屉里。然后再把衣服折得整整齐齐的,放在衣橱里:内衣放一格、毛衣放一格、袜子则单独放在抽屉里。注意,我们心里也是做着类似的工作,我们把事物分成石头做的、羊毛做的或橡胶做的;我们也把事物分成活的、死的、植物、动物或人类。 你明白了吗?苏菲。亚里斯多德想把大自然“房间”内的东西都彻底地分门别类。他试图显示自然界里的每一件事物都各自有其所属的类目或次类目。(例如,我们可以说汉密士是一个生物,但更严格地说,它是一只动物,再严格一点说,它是一只脊椎动物,更进一步说,它是一只哺乳类动物,再进一步说,它是一只狗,更精确地说,它是一只猎狗,更完整地说,它是一只雄猎狗。) 苏菲,假设你进入房间,从地上捡起某样东西。无论你捡的是什么,你会发现它属于一个更高的类目。如果有一天你看到了一样你很难分类的东西,你一定会大吃一惊。举例来说,如果你发现了一个小小的、不知道是啥玩意的东西,你不确定它是动物、植物还是矿物,我想你大概不敢碰它吧! 说到动物、植物与矿物,让我想到一个大伙聚会时常玩的游戏:当“鬼”的人必须要离开房间,当他再回来时,必须猜出大家心里面在想什么东西。在此之前,大家已经商量好要想的东西是那只正在隔壁花园里玩耍的猫咪“毛毛”。当“鬼”的人回到房间后就开始猜。其他人必须答“是”或“不是”。如果这个“鬼”受过良好的亚理斯多德式训练的话,这个游戏的情形很可能会像下面描述的一样: 是具体的东西吗?(是门是矿物吗?(不是!)是活的吗?(是!)是植物吗?(不是!)是动物吗?(是!)是鸟吗?(不是!)是哺乳类动物吗?(是!)是一整只动物吗?(是!)是猫吗?(是!)是“毛毛”吗?(猜对了!大伙笑……) 如此看来,发明这个游戏的人应该是亚理斯多德,而捉迷藏的游戏则应该是柏拉图发明的。至于堆积木的游戏,我们早已经知道是德谟克里特斯发明的。 亚理斯多德是一位严谨的逻辑学家。他致力于澄清我们的概念。因此,是他创立了逻辑学这门学科。他以实例显示我们在得出合乎逻辑的结论或证明时,必须遵循若干法则。 我们只单一个例子就够了。如果我先肯定“所有的生物都会死”(第一前提),然后再肯定“汉密士是生物”(第二前提),则我可以从容地得出一个结论:“汉密士会死”。 这个例子显示亚理斯多德的推理是建立在名词之间的相互关系上。在这个例子中,这两个名词分别是“生物”与“会死”。虽然我们不得不承认这两个结论都是百分之百正确,但我们可能会说:这些都是我们已经知道的事情呀。我们已经知道汉密士“会死”。(他是一只“狗”,而所有的狗都是“生物”,而所有的生物都“会死”,不像圣母峰的岩石一样。)不用说,这些我们都知道,但是,苏菲,各种事物之间的关系并非都是如此明显。因此我们可能需要不时澄清我们的概念。 我举一个例子就好了:一丁点大的小老鼠真的可能像小羊或不猪一样吸奶吗?对于小老鼠来说,吸奶当然是一件很吃力的工作。但我们要记得:老鼠一定不会下蛋。(我们什么时候见过老鼠蛋?)因此,它们所生的是小老鼠,就像猪生小猪,羊生小羊一般。同时,我们将那些会生小动物的动物称为哺乳动物,而哺乳动物也就是那些吃母奶的动物。因此,答案很明显了。我们心中原来就有答案,但必须要想清楚,答案才会出来。我们会一下子忘记了老鼠真是吃奶长大的。这也许是因为我们从未见过老鼠喂奶的缘故。理由很简单:老鼠喂奶时很怕见人。    自然的层级    当亚理斯多德将人类的生活做一番整理时,他首先指出:自然界的万事万物都可以被分成两大类。一类是石头、水滴或土壤等无生物,这些无生物没有改变的潜能。亚理斯多德认为无生物只能透过外力改变。另外一类则是生物,而生物则有潜能改变。 亚理斯多德同时又把生物分成两类:一类是植物,一类是动物。而这些“动物”又可以分成两类,包括禽兽与人类。 我们不得不承认亚理斯多德的分类相当清楚而简单。生物与无生物(例如玫瑰与石头)确实截然不同。而植物与动物(如玫瑰与马儿)之间也有很大的不同。我们也会说,马儿与人类之间确实是不相同的。但这些差异究竟何在呢?你能告诉我吗? 很遗憾我没有时间等你把答案写下来,和一块糖一起放在一个粉红色的信封内。所以我就直接告诉你答案好了。当亚理斯多德把自然现象分成几类时,他是以对象的特征为标准。说得详细一些,所谓标准就是这个东西能做什么或做些什么。 所有的生物(植物、动物与人类)都有能力吸收养分以生长、繁殖。所有的动物(禽兽与人类)则还有感知周遭环境以及到处移动 的能力。至于人类则更进一步有思考(或将他们感知的事物分门别类)的能力。 因此,实际上自然界各类事物中并没有清楚分明的界线。我们看到的事物从简举的生物到较为复杂的植物,从简单的动物到较为复杂的动物都有。在这些层级之上的就是人类。亚理斯多德认为人类乃是万物中最完全的生命。人能够像植物一般生长并吸收养分,也能够像动物一般有感觉并能移动。除此之外,人还有一个与众不同的特质,就是理性思考的能力。 因此,苏菲,人具有一些神的理性。没错,我说的是“神”的理性。亚理斯多德不时提醒我们,宇宙间必然有一位上帝推动自然界 所有的运作,因此上帝必然位于大自然层级的最顶端。 亚理斯多德猜想地球上所有的活动乃是受到各星球运转的影响。不过,这些星球必定是受到某种力量的操控才能运转。亚理斯多德称这个力量为“最初的推动者”或“上帝”。这位“最初的推动者”本身是不动的,但他却是宇宙各星球乃至自然界各种活动的“目的因”。 伦理学    让我们回到人类这个主题。根据亚理斯多德的看法,人的“形式”是由一个“植物”灵魂、一个“动物”灵魂与一个“理性”灵魂所组成。同时他问道:“我们应该如何生活?…‘人需要什么才能过良好的生活?”我可以用一句话来回答:“人唯有运用他所有的能力与才干,才能获得幸福。” 亚理斯多德认为,快乐有三种形式。一种是过着享乐的生活, 一种是做一个自由而负责的公民,另一种则是做一个思想家与哲学家。 接着,他强调,人要同时达到这三个标准才能找到幸福与满足。他认为任何一种形式的不平衡都是令人无法接受的。他如果生在现今这个时代,也许会说:一个只注重锻炼身体的人所过的生活就像那些只动脑不动手的人一样不平衡。无论偏向哪一个极端,生活方式都会受到扭曲。 同理也适用于人际关系。亚理斯多德提倡所谓的“黄金中庸”。 也就是说:人既不能懦弱,也不能太过鲁莽,而要勇敢(不够勇敢就是懦弱,太过勇敢就变成鲁莽);既不能吝啬也不能挥霍,而要慷慨(不够慷慨即是吝啬,太过慷慨则是挥霍)。在饮食方面也是如此。 吃得太少或吃得太多都不好。柏拉图与亚理斯多德两人关于伦理道德的规范使人想起希腊医学的主张:唯有平衡、节制,人才能过着快乐和谐的生活。 政治学 亚理斯多德谈到他对社会的看法时,也主张人不应该走极端。 他说人天生就是“政治动物”。他宣称人如果不生存在社会中,就不算是真正的人。他指出,家庭与社区满足我们对食物、温暖、婚姻与生育的基本需求。但人类休戚与共的精神只有在国家中才能表现得淋漓尽致。 这就使我们想到一个国家应该如何组织起来的问题。(你还记得柏拉图的“哲学国度”吗?)亚理斯多德描述了三种良好的政治制度。 一种是君主制,就是一个国家只有一位元首。但这种制度如果要成功,统治者就不能致力于谋求私利,以免沦为“专制政治”。另一种良好的制度是“贵族政治”,就是国家由一群人来统治。这种制度要小心不要沦于“寡头政治”(或我们今天所称的“执政团”式的政治制度)。第三种制度则是亚理斯多德所称的Polity,也就是民主政治的意思。但这种制度也有不好的一面,因为它很容易变成暴民政治。(当年即使专制的希特勒没有成为德国元首,他乎下那些纳粹分子可能也会造成可怕的暴民政治。)    对女人的看法    最后,让我们来看看亚理斯多德对女性的看法。很遗憾的,他在这方面的观点并不像柏拉图那般崇高。亚理斯多德似乎倾向于认为女性在某些方面并不完整。在他眼中,女性是“未完成的男人”在生育方面,女性是被动的,只能接受,而男性则是主动且多产的。亚理斯多德宣称小孩只继承男性的特质。他相信男性的精子中具有小孩所需的全部特质,女性只是土壤而已,她们接受并孕育种子,但男性则是“播种者”。或者,用亚理斯多德的话来说,男人提供“形式”,而女人则仅贡献“质料”。 像亚理斯多德这样有智慧的男人居然对两性关系有如此谬误的见解,的确令人震惊而且遗憾。但这说明了两件事:第一,亚理斯多德对妇女与儿童的生活大概没有多少实际的经验。第二,这个例子显示如果我们任由男人主宰哲学与科学的领域的话,可能发生何等的错误。 亚理斯多德对于两性错误的见解带来很大的负面作用,因为整个中世纪时期受到他(而不是柏拉图)的看法的影响。教会也因此继承了一种歧视女性的观点,而事实上,这种观点在圣经上是毫无根据的。耶稣基督当然不是一个仇视妇女的人。 今天就到此为止吧。我会再和你联络的。 苏菲把信又读了一遍,读到一半时,她把信纸放回棕色的信封内,仍然坐着发呆。 她突然察觉到房间内是如何凌乱:地板上到处放着书本与讲义夹,袜子、毛衣、衬衣与牛仔裤有一半露在衣橱外,书桌前的椅子上放着一大堆待洗的脏衣服。 她突然有一股无法抗拒的冲动,想要把房间清理一下。首先她把所有的衣服都拉出衣橱,丢在地板上,因为她觉得有必要从头做起。然后她开始把东西折得整整齐齐的,叠在架子上。衣橱共有七格,一格放内衣,一格放袜子与衬衣,一格放牛仔裤。她轮流把每 一格放满。她从不曾怀疑过什么东西应该放哪里。脏衣服总是放在最底下一格的一个塑胶袋内。但是现在有一样东西她不知道该放哪里,那就是一只白色的及膝的袜子。因为,另外一只不见了。何况,苏菲从来没有过这样的袜子。 苏菲仔细地看着这只袜子,看了一两分钟。袜子上并没有任何标记,但苏菲非常怀疑它的主人究竟是谁。她把它丢到最上面一格,和积木、录影带与丝巾放在一起。 现在,苏菲开始把注意力放在地板上。她把书本、讲义夹、杂志与海报加以分类,就像她的哲学老师在讲到亚理斯多德时形容的一般。完成后,她开始铺床并整理书桌。 最后,她把所有关于亚理斯多德的信纸叠好,并找出一个没有用的讲义夹和一个打孔机,在每一张信纸上打几个洞,然后夹进讲义夹中,并且把这个讲义夹放在衣橱最上一格,白袜子的旁边。她决定今天要把饼干盒从密洞中拿出来。 从今以后,她将把一切收拾得井然有序。她指的可不止是房间而已。在读了亚理斯多德的学说后,她领悟到她应该把自己的思想也整理得有条不紊。她已经将衣橱的最上面一格留作这样的用途。 这是房间内唯一一个她还没有办法完全掌握的地方。 妈妈已经有两个多小时没有动静了。苏菲走下楼。在把妈妈叫醒之前,她决定先喂她的宠物。 她躬身在厨房里的金鱼缸前看着。三条鱼中,有一条是黑色的,一条是橘色的,另一条则红、白相间。这是为什么她管它们叫黑水手、金冠与小红帽的缘故。 当她把鱼饲料撒进水中时,她说:“你们属于大自然中的生物。 你们可以吸收养分、可以生长并且繁殖下一代。更精确地说,你们属于动物王国,因此你们可以移动并且看着外面的这个世界。再说得精确些,你们是鱼,用鳃呼吸,并且可以在生命的水域中游来游去。” 苏菲把饲料罐的盖子合上。她很满意自己把金鱼放在大自然的层级中的方式,更满意自己所想出来的“生命的水域”这样的词句。现在,该喂那些鹦哥了。 苏菲倒了一点鸟食在鸟杯中,并且说:“亲爱的史密特和史穆尔,你们之所以成为鹦哥是因为你们从小鹦哥的蛋里生出来,也是因为那些蛋具有成为鹦哥的形式。你们运气不错,没有变成叫声很难听的鹦鹉。” 然后,苏菲进入那间大浴室。她的乌龟正在里面一个大盒子里缓缓爬动。以前妈妈不时在洗澡时大声嚷嚷说,总有一天她要把那只乌龟弄死。不过,到目前为让,她并没有这样做。苏菲从一个大果酱罐子里拿了一片莴苣叶,放在盒子里。 “亲爱的葛文达,”她说,“你并不是世间跑得最快的动物之一,但是你当然能够感觉到一小部分我们所生活的这个伟大世界。你应该知足了,因为你并不是唯一无法超越自己限制的生物。” 雪儿也许正在外面抓老鼠,毕竟这是猫的天性。苏菲穿过客厅,走向妈妈的卧室。一瓶水仙花正放在茶几上,苏菲经过时,那些黄色的花朵仿佛正向她弯腰致敬。她在花旁停驻了一会儿,用手指轻轻抚摸着那光滑的花瓣。 她说:“你们也是属于大自然的生物。事实上,比起装着你们的花瓶来说,你们是非常幸福的。不过很可惜的是你们无法了解这点。” 然后苏菲蹑手蹑脚地进入妈妈的房间。虽然妈妈正在熟睡,但苏菲仍用一只手放在她的额头上。 “你是最幸运的一个。”她说,“因为你不像原野里的百合花一样,只是活着而已,也不像雪儿或葛文达一样,只是一种生物。你是人类,因此具有难能可贵的思考能力。” “苏菲,你到底在说什么?”妈妈比平常醒得更快。 “我只是说你看起来像一只懒洋洋的乌龟。还有,我要告诉你,我已经用哲学家般严谨的方法把房间收拾干净了。” 妈妈抬起头。 “我就来。”她说,“请你把咖啡拿出来好吗?” 苏菲遵照妈妈的嘱咐。很快地,她们已经坐在厨房里,喝着咖啡、果汁和巧克力。 突然间,苏菲问道;“妈,你有没有想过为什么我们会活着?” “天哪!你又来了!” “因为我现在知道答案了。人活在这个星球上是为了替每东西取名字。” “是吗?我倒没有这样想过。” “那你的问题可大了,因为人是会思考的动物。如果你不思考,就不算是人。” “苏菲!” “你有没有想过,如果世间只有植物和动物,就没有人可以区分猫和狗、百合与鹅莓之间的不同。植物和动物虽然也活着,但我们是唯一可以将大自然加以分类的生物。” “我怎么会生出像你这样古怪的女儿?”妈妈说。 “我倒希望自己古怪一点。”苏菲说。“每一个人或多或少都有些古怪。我是个人,因此或多或少总有些古怪。你只有一个女儿,因此我可以算是最古怪的。” “我的意思是你刚才讲的那些话可把我吓坏了。” “那你真是太容易受到惊吓了。” 那天下午,苏菲回到密洞。她设法偷偷地将大饼干盒运回楼上的房间,妈妈一点也没有发现。 回到房间后,她首先将所有的信纸按次序排列。然后她把每一张信纸打洞,并放在讲义夹内亚理斯多德那一章之前。最后她在每一页的右上角写上页序。总共有五十多页。她要自己编纂一本有关哲学的书。虽然不是她写的,却是专门为她写的。 她没有时间写星期一的功课了。明天宗教知识这门课或许会考试,不过老师常说他比较重视学生用功的程度和价值判断。苏菲觉得自己在这两方面都开始有一些基础了。 Hellenism ... a spark from the fire Although the philosophy teacher had begun sending his letters directly to the old hedge, Sophie nevertheless looked in the mailbox on Monday morning, more out of habit than anything else. It was empty, not surprisingly. She began to walk down Clover Close. Suddenly she noticed a photograph lying on the sidewalk. It was a picture of a white jeep and a blue flag with the letters UN on it. Wasn't that the United Nations flag? Sophie turned the picture over and saw that it was a regular postcard. To "Hilde Moller Knag, c/o Sophie Amundsen ..." It had a Norwegian stamp and was postmarked "UN Battalion" Friday June 15, 1990. June 15! That was Sofie's birthday! The card read: Dear Hilde, I assume you are still celebrating your 15th birthday. Or is this the morning after? Anyway, it makes no difference to your present. In a sense, that will last a lifetime. But I'd like to wish you a happy birthday one more time. Perhaps you understand now why I send the cards to Sophie. I am sure she will pass them on to you. P.S. Mom said you had lost your wallet. I hereby promise to reimburse you the 150 crowns. You will probably be able to get another school I.D. before they close for the summer vacation. Love from Dad. Sophie stood glued to the spot. When was the previous card postmarked? She seemed to recall that the postcard of the beach was also postmarked June--even though it was a whole month off. She simply hadn't looked properly. She glanced at her watch and then ran back to the house. She would just have to be late for school today! Sophie let herself in and leaped upstairs to her room. She found the first postcard to Hilde under the red silk scarf. Yes! It was also postmarked June 15! Sophie's birthday and the day before the summer vacation. Her mind was racing as she ran over to the supermarket to meet Joanna. Who was Hilde? How could her father as good as take it for granted that Sophie would find her? In any case, it was senseless of him to send Sophie the cards instead of sending them directly to his daughter. It could not possibly be because he didn't know his own daughter's address. Was it a practical joke? Was he trying to surprise his daughter on her birthday by getting a perfect stranger to play detective and mailman? Was that why she was being given a month's headstart? And was using her as the go-between a way of giving his daughter a new girlfriend as a birthday present? Could she be the present that would "last a lifetime"? If this joker really was in Lebanon, how had he gotten hold of Sophie's address? Also, Sophie and Hilde had at least two things in common. If Hilde's birthday was June 15, they were both born on the same day. And they both had fathers who were on the other side of the globe. Sophie felt she was being drawn into an unnatural world. Maybe it was not so dumb after all to believe in fate. Still--she shouldn't be jumping to conclusions; it could all have a perfectly natural explanation. But how had Alberto Knox found Hilde's wallet when Hilde lived in Lillesand? Lillesand was hundreds of miles away. And why had Sophie found this postcard on her sidewalk? Did it fall out of the mailman's bag just as he got to Sophie's mailbox? If so, why should he drop this particular card? "Are you completely insane?" Joanna burst out when Sophie finally made it to the supermarket. "Sorry!" Joanna frowned at her severely, like a schoolteacher. "You'd better have a good explanation." "It has to do with the UN," said Sophie. "I was detained by hostile troops in Lebanon." "Sure ... You're just in love!" They ran to school as fast as their legs could carry them. The Religious Knowledge test that Sophie had not had time to prepare for was given out in the third period. The sheet read: PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE AND TOLERANCE 1. Make a list of things we can know. Then make a list of things we can only believe. 2. Indicate some of the factors contributing to a person's philosophy of life. 3. What is meant by conscience? Do you think conscience is the same for everyone? 4. What is meant by priority of values? Sophie sat thinking for a long time before she started to write. Could she use any of the ideas she had learned from Alberto Knox? She was going to have to, because she had not opened her Religious Knowledge book for days. Once she began to write, the words simply flowed from her pen. She wrote that we know the moon is not made of green cheese and that there are also craters on the dark side of the moon, that both Socrates and Jesus were sentenced to death, that everybody has to die sooner or later, that the great temples on the Acropolis were built after the Persian wars in the fifth century B.C. and that the most important oracle in ancient Greece was the oracle at Delphi. As examples of what we can only believe, Sophie mentioned the questions of whether or not there is life on other planets, whether God exists or not, whether there is life after death, and whether Jesus was the son of God or merely a wise man. "We can certainly not know where the world came from," she wrote, completing her list. "The universe can be compared to a large rabbit pulled out of a top hat. Philosophers try to climb up one of the fine hairs of the rabbit's fur and stare straight into the eyes of the Great Magician. Whether they will ever succeed is an open question. But if each philosopher climbed onto another one's back, they would get even higher up in the rabbit's fur, and then, in my opinion, there would be some chance they would make it some day. P.S. In the Bible there is something that could have been one of the fine hairs of the rabbit's fur. The hair was called the Tower of Babel, and it was destroyed because the Magician didn't want the tiny human insects to crawl up that high out of the white rabbit he had just created." Then there was the next question: "Indicate some of the factors contributing to a person's philosophy of life." Upbringing and environment were important here. People living at the time of Plato had a different philosophy of life than many people have today because they lived in a different age and a different environment. Another factor was the kind of experience people chose to get themselves. Common sense was not determined by environment. Everybody had that. Maybe one could compare environment and social situation with the conditions that existed deep down in Plato's cave. By using their intelligence individuals can start to drag themselves up from the darkness. But a journey like that requires personal courage. Socrates is a good example of a person who managed to free himself from the prevailing views of his time by his own intelligence. Finally, she wrote: "Nowadays, people of many lands and cultures are being intermingled more and more. Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists may live in the same apartment building. In which case it is more important to accept each other's beliefs than to ask why everyone does not believe the same thing." Not bad, thought Sophie. She certainly felt she had covered some ground with what she had learned from her philosophy teacher. And she could always supplement it with a dash of her own common sense and what she might have read and heard elsewhere. She applied herself to the third question: "What is meant by conscience? Do you think conscience is the same for everyone?" This was something they had discussed a lot in class. Sophie wrote: Conscience is people's ability to respond to right and wrong. My personal opinion is that everyone is endowed with this ability, so in other words, conscience is innate. Socrates would have said the same. But just what conscience dictates can vary a lot from one person to the next. One could say that the Sophists had a point here. They thought that right and wrong is something mainly determined by the environment the individual grows up in. Socrates, on the other hand, believed that conscience is the same for everyone. Perhaps both views were right. Even if everybody doesn't feel guilty about showing themselves naked, most people will have a bad conscience if they are really mean to someone. Still, it must be remembered that having a conscience is not the same as using it. Sometimes it looks as if people act quite unscrupulously, but I believe they also have a kind of conscience somewhere, deep down. Just as it seems as if some people have no sense at all, but that's only because they are not using it. P.S. Common sense and conscience can both be compared to a muscle. If you don't use a muscle, it gets weaker and weaker." Now there was only one question left: "What is meant by priority of values?" This was another thing they had discussed a lot lately. For example, it could be of value to drive a car and get quickly from one place to another. But if driving led to deforestation and polluting the natural environment, you were facing a choice of values. After careful consideration Sophie felt she had come to the conclusion that healthy forests and a pure environment were more valuable than getting to work quickly. She gave several more examples. Finally she wrote: "Personally, I think Philosophy is a more important subject than English Grammar. It would therefore be a sensible priority of values to have Philosophy on the timetable and cut down a bit on English lessons." In the last break the teacher drew Sophie aside. "I have already read your Religion test," he said. "It was near the top of the pile." "I hope it gave you some food for thought." "That was exactly what I wanted to talk to you about. It was in many ways very mature. Surprisingly so. And self-reliant. But had you done your homework, Sophie?" Sophie fidgeted a little. "Well, you did say it was important to have a personal point of view." "Well, yes I did ... but there are limits." Sophie looked him straight in the eye. She felt she could permit herself this after all she had experienced lately. "I have started studying philosophy," she said. "It gives one a good background for personal opinions." "But it doesn't make it easy for me to grade your paper. It will either be a D or an A." "Because I was either quite right or quite wrong? Is that what you're saying?" "So let's say A," said the teacher. "But next time, do your homework!" When Sophie got home from school that afternoon, she flung her schoolbag on the steps and ran down to the den. A brown envelope lay on top of the gnarled roots. It was quite dry around the edges, so it must have been a long time since Hermes had dropped it. She took the envelope with her and let herself in the front door. She fed the animals and then went upstairs to her room. Lying on her bed, she opened Alberto's letter and read: HELLENISM Here we are again, Sophie! Having read about the natural philosophers and Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, you are now familiar with the foundations of European philosophy. So from now on we will drop the introductory questions which you earlier received in white envelopes. I imagine you probably have plenty of other assignments and tests at school. I shall now tell you about the long period from Aristotle near the end of the fourth century B.C. right up to the early Middle Ages around A.D. 400. Notice that we can now write both B.C. and A.D. because Christianity was in fact one of the most important, and the most mysterious, factors of the period. Aristotle died in the year 322 B.C., at the time when Athens had lost its dominant role. This was not least due to the political upheavals resulting from the conquests of Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.). Alexander the Great was the King of Macedonia. Aristotle was also from Macedonia, and for a time he was even the young Alexander's tutor. It was Alexander who won the final, decisive victory over the Persians. And moreover, Sophie, with his many conquests he linked both Egypt and the Orient as far east as India to the Greek civilization. This marked the beginning of a new epoch in the history of mankind. A civilization sprang up in which Greek culture and the Greek language played a leading role. This period, which lasted for about 300 years, is known as Hellenism. The term Hellenism refers to both the period of time and the Greek-dominated culture that prevailed in the three Hellenistic kingdoms of Macedonia, Syria, and Egypt. However, from about the year 50 B.C., Rome secured the upper hand in military and political affairs. The new superpower gradually conquered all the Hellenistic kingdoms, and from then on Roman culture and the Latin language were predominant from Spain in the west to far into Asia. This was the beginning of the Roman period, which we often refer to as Late Antiquity. But remember one thing--before the Romans managed to conquer the Hellenistic world, Rome itself was a province of Greek culture. So Greek culture and Greek philosophy came to play an important role long after the political influence of the Greeks was a thing of the past. Religion, Philosophy and ScienceHellenism was characterized by the fact that the borders between the various countries and cultures became erased. Previously the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Syrians, and the Persians had worshipped their own gods within what we generally call a "national religion." Now the different cultures merged into one great witch's caldron of religious, philosophical, -and scientific ideas. We could perhaps say that the town square was replaced by the world arena. The old town square had also buzzed with voices, bringing now different wares to market, now different thoughts and ideas. The new aspect was that town squares were being filled with wares and ideas from all over the world. The voices were buzzing in many different languages. We have already mentioned that the Greek view of life was now much more widespread than it had been in the former Greek cultural areas. But as time went on, Oriental gods were also worshipped in all the Mediterranean countries. New religious formations arose that could draw on the gods and the beliefs of many of the old nations. This is called syncretism or the fusion of creeds. Prior to this, people had felt a strong affinity with their own folk and their own city-state. But as the borders and boundaries became erased, many people began to experience doubt and uncertainty about their philosophy of life. Late Antiquity was generally characterized by religious doubts, cultural dissolution, and pessimism. It was said that "the world has grown old." A common feature of the new religious formations during the Hellenistic period was that they frequently contained teachings about how mankind could attain salvation from death. These teachings were often secret. By accepting the teachings and performing certain rituals, a believer could hope for the immortality of the soul and eternal life. A certain insight into the true nature of the universe could be just as important for the salvation of the soul as religious rituals. So much for the new religions, Sophie. But philosophy was also moving increasingly in the direction of "salvation" and serenity. Philosophic insight, it was now thought, did not only have its own reward; it should also free mankind from pessimism and the fear of death. Thus the boundaries between religion and philosophy were gradually eliminated. In general, the philosophy of Hellenism was not star-tlingly original. No new Plato or Aristotle appeared on the scene. On the contrary, the three great Athenian philosophers were a source of inspiration to a number of philosophic trends which I shall briefly describe in a moment. Hellenistic science, too, was influenced by a blend of knowledge from the various cultures. The town of Alexandria played a key role here as a meeting place between East and West. While Athens remained the center of philosophy with still functioning schools of philosophy after Plato and Aristotle, Alexandria became the center for science. With its extensive library, it became the center for mathematics, astronomy, biology, and medicine. Hellenistic culture could well be compared to the world of today. The twentieth century has also been influenced by an increasingly open civilization. In our own time, too, this opening out has resulted in tremendous upheavals for religion and philosophy. And just as in Rome around the beginning of the Christian era one could come across Greek, Egyptian, and Oriental religions, today, as we approach the end of the twentieth century, we can find in all European cities of any size religions from all parts of the world. We also see nowadays how a conglomeration of old and new religions, philosophies, and sciences can form the basis of new offers on the "view-of-life" market. Much of this "new knowledge" is actually the flotsam of old thought, some of whose roots go back to Hellenism. As I have said, Hellenistic philosophy continued to work with the problems raised by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Common to them all was their desire to discover how mankind should best live and die. They were concerned with ethics. In the new civilization, this became the central philosophical project. The main emphasis was on finding out what true happiness was and how it could be achieved. We are going to look at four of these philosophical trends. The Cynics The story goes that one day Socrates stood gazing at a stall that sold all kinds of wares. Finally he said, "What a lot of things I don't need!" This statement could be the motto for the Cynic school of philosophy, founded by Antisthenes in Athens around 400 B.C. Antisthenes had been a pupil of Socrates, and had become particularly interested in his frugality. The Cynics emphasized that true happiness is not found in external advantages such as material luxury, political power, or good health. True happiness lies in not being dependent on such random and fleeting things. And because happiness does not consist in benefits of this kind, it is within everyone's reach. Moreover, having once been attained, it can never be lost. The best known of the Cynics was Diogenes, a pupil of Antisthenes, who reputedly lived in a barrel and owned nothing but a cloak, a stick, and a bread bag. (So it wasn't easy to steal his happiness from him!) One day while he was sitting beside his barrel enjoying the sun, he was visited by Alexander the Great. The emperor stood before him and asked if there was anything he could do for him. Was there anything he desired? "Yes," Diogenes replied. "Stand to one side. You're blocking the sun." Thus Diogenes showed that he was no less happy and rich than the great man before him. He had everything he desired. The Cynics believed that people did not need to be concerned about their own health. Even suffering and death should not disturb them. Nor should they let them-selves be tormented by concern for other people's woes. Nowadays the terms "cynical" and "cynicism" have come to mean a sneering disbelief in human sincerity, and they imply insensitivity to other people's suffering. The Stoics The Cynics were instrumental in the development of the Stoic school of philosophy, which grew up in Athens around 300 B.C. Its founder was Zeno, who came originally from Cyprus and joined the Cynics in Athens after being shipwrecked. He used to gather his followers under a portico. The name "Stoic" comes from the Greek word for portico (stoo). Stoicism was later to have great significance for Roman culture. Like Heraclitus, the Stoics believed that everyone was a part of the same common sense--or "logos." They thought that each person was like a world in miniature, or "microcosmos," which is a reflection of the "macro-cosmos." This led to the thought that there exists a universal right-ness, the so-called natural law. And because this natural law was based on timeless human and universal reason, it did not alter with time and place. In this, then, the Stoics sided with Socrates against the Sophists. Natural law governed all mankind, even slaves. The Stoics considered the legal statutes of the various states merely as incomplete imitations of the "law" embedded in nature itself. In the same way that the Stoics erased the difference between the individual and the universe, they also denied any conflict between "spirit" and "matter." There is only one nature, they averred. This kind of idea is called monism (in contrast to Plato's clear dualism or two-fold reality). As true children of their time, the Stoics were distinctly "cosmopolitan," in that they were more receptive to contemporary culture than the "barrel philosophers" (the Cynics). They drew attention to human fellowship, they were preoccupied with politics, and many of them, notably the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 121-180), were active statesmen. They encouraged Greek culture and philosophy in Rome, one of the most distinguished of them being the orator, philosopher, and statesman Cicero (106-43 B.C.). It was he who formed the very concept of "humanism"--that is, a view of life that has the individual as its central focus. Some years later, the Stoic Seneca (4 B.C.-A.D. 65) said that "to mankind, mankind is holy." This has remained a slogan for humanism ever since. The Stoics, moreover, emphasized that all natural processes, such as sickness and death, follow the unbreakable laws of nature. Man must therefore learn to accept his destiny. Nothing happens accidentally. Everything happens through necessity, so it is of little use to complain when fate comes knocking at the door. One must also accept the happy events of life unperturbed, they thought. In this we see their kinship with the Cynics, who claimed that all external events were unimportant. Even today we use the term "stoic calm" about someone who does not let his feelings take over. The Epicureans As we have seen, Socrates was concerned with finding out how man could live a good life. Both the Cynics and the Stoics interpreted his philosophy as meaning that man had to free himself from material luxuries. But Socrates also had a pupil named Aristippus. He believed that the aim of life was to attain the highest possible sensory enjoyment. "The highest good is pleasure," he said, "the greatest evil is pain." So he wished to develop a way of life whose aim was to avoid pain in all forms. (The Cynics and the Stoics believed in enduring pain of all kinds, which is not the same as setting out to avoid pain.) Around the year 300 B.C., Epicurus (341-270) founded a school of philosophy in Athens. His followers were called Epicureans. He developed the pleasure ethic of Aristippus and combined it with the atom theory of Democritus. The story goes that the Epicureans lived in a garden. They were therefore known as the "garden philosophers." Above the entrance to this garden there is said to have hung a notice saying, "Stranger, here you will live well. Here pleasure is the highest good." Epicurus emphasized that the pleasurable results of an action must always be weighed against its possible side effects. If you have ever binged on chocolate you know what I mean. If you haven't, try this exercise: Take all your saved-up pocket money and buy two hundred crowns' worth of chocolate. (We'll assume you like chocolate.) It is essential to this exercise that you eat it all at one time. About half an hour later, when all that delicious chocolate is eaten, you will understand what Epicurus meant by side effects. Epicurus also believed that a pleasurable result in the short term must be weighed against the possibility of a greater, more lasting, or more intense pleasure in the long term. (Maybe you abstain from eating chocolate for a whole year because you prefer to save up all your pocket money and buy a new bike or go on an expensive vacation abroad.) Unlike animals, we are able to plan our lives. We have the ability to make a "pleasure calculation." Chocolate is good, but a new bike or a trip to England is better. Epicurus emphasized, though, that "pleasure" does not necessarily mean sensual pleasure--like eating chocolate, for instance. Values such as friendship and the appreciation of art also count. Moreover, the enjoyment of life required the old Greek ideals of self-control, temperance, and serenity. Desire must be curbed, and serenity will help us to endure pain. Fear of the gods brought many people to the garden of Epicurus. In this connection, the atom theory of Democritus was a useful cure for religious superstitions. In order to live a good life it is not unimportant to overcome the fear of death. To this end Epicurus made use of Democritus's theory of the "soul atoms." You may perhaps remember that Democritus believed there was no life after death because when we die, the "soul atoms" disperse in all directions. "Death does not concern us," Epicurus said quite simply, "because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist." (When you think about it, no one has ever been bothered by being dead.) Epicurus summed up his liberating philosophy with what he called the four medicinal herbs: The gods are not to be feared. Death is nothing to worry about. Good is easy to attain. The fearful is easy to endure. From a Greek point of view, there was nothing new in comparing philosophical projects with those of medical science. The intention was simply that man should equip himself with a "philosophic medicine chest" containing the four ingredients I mentioned. In contrast to the Stoics, the Epicureans showed little or no interest in politics and the community. "Live in seclusion!" was the advice of Epicurus. We could per-haps compare his "garden" with our present-day communes. There are many people in our own time who have sought a "safe harbor"--away from society. After Epicurus, many Epicureans developed an overemphasis on self-indulgence. Their motto was "Live for the moment!" The word "epicurean" is used in a negative sense nowadays to describe someone who lives only for pleasure. Neoplatonism As I showed you, Cynicism, Stoicism, and Epicureanism all had their roots in the teaching of Socrates. They also made use of certain of the pre-Socratics like Heraclitus and Democritus. But the most remarkable philosophic trend in the late Hellenistic period was first and foremost inspired by Plato's philosophy. We therefore call it Neoplatonism. The most important figure in Neoplatonism was Plotinus (c. 205-270), who studied philosophy in Alexandria but later settled in Rome. It is interesting to note that he came from Alexandria, the city that had been the central meeting point for Greek philosophy and Oriental mysticism for several centuries. Plotinus brought with him to Rome a doctrine of salvation that was to compete seriously with Christianity when its time came. However, Neoplatonism also became a strong influence in mainstream Christian theology as well. Remember Plato's doctrine of ideas, Sophie, and the way he distinguished between the world of ideas and the sensory world. This meant establishing a clear division between the soul and the body. Man thus became a dual creature: our body consisted of earth and dust like everything else in the sensory world, but we also had an immortal soul. This was widely believed by many Greeks long before Plato. Plotinus was also familiar with similar ideas from Asia. Plotinus believed that the world is a span between two poles. At one end is the divine light which he calls the One. Sometimes he calls it God. At the other end is absolute darkness, which receives none of the light from the One. But Plotinus's point is that this darkness actually has no existence. It is simply the absence of light--in other words, it is not. All that exists is God, or the One, but in the same way that a beam of light grows progressively dimmer and is gradually extinguished, there is somewhere a point that the divine glow cannot reach. According to Plotinus, the soul is illuminated by the light from the One, while matter is the darkness that has no real existence. But the forms in nature have a faint glow of the One. Imagine a great burning bonfire in the night from which sparks fly in all directions. A wide radius of light from the bonfire turns night into day in the immediate area; but the glow from the fire is visible even from a distance of several miles. If we went even further away, we would be able to see a tiny speck of light like a far-off lantern in the dark, and if we went on moving away, at some point the light would not reach us. Somewhere the rays of light disappear into the night, and when it is completely dark we see nothing. There are neither shapes nor shadows. Imagine now that reality is a bonfire like this. That which is burning is God--and the darkness beyond is the cold matter that man and animals are made of. Closest to God are the eternal ideas which are the primal forms of all creatures. The human soul, above all, is a "spark from the fire." Yet everywhere in nature some of the divine light is shining. We can see it in all living creatures; even a rose or a bluebell has its divine glow. Furthest away from the living God are earth and water and stone. I am saying that there is something of the divine mystery in everything that exists. We can see it sparkle in a sunflower or a poppy. We sense more of this unfathomable mystery in a butterfly that flutters from a twig--or in a goldfish swimming in a bowl. But we are closest to God in our own soul. Only there can we become one with the great mystery of life. In truth, at very rare moments we can experience that we ourselves are that divine mystery. Plotinus's metaphor is rather like Plato's myth of the cave: the closer we get to the mouth of the cave, the closer we get to that which all existence springs from. But in contrast to Plato's clear two-fold reality, Plotinus's doctrine is characterized by an experience of wholeness. Everything is one--for everything is God. Even the shadows deep down in Plato's cave have a faint glow of the One. On rare occasions in his life, Plotinus experienced a fusion of his soul with God. We usually call this a mystical experience. Plotinus is not alone in having had such experiences. People have told of them at all times and in all cultures. The details might be different, but the essential features are the same. Let us take a look at some of these features. Mysticism A mystical experience is an experience of merging with God or the "cosmic spirit." Many religions emphasize the gulf between God and Creation, but the mystic experiences no such gulf. He or she has experienced being "one with God" or "merging" with Him. The idea is that what we usually call "I" is not the true "I." In short glimpses we can experience an identification with a greater "I." Some mystics call it God, others call it the cosmic spirit, Nature, or the Universe. When the fusion happens, the mystic feels that he is "losing himself"; he disappears into God or is lost in God in the same way that a drop of water loses itself when it merges with the sea. An Indian mystic once expressed it in this way: "When I was, God was not. When God is, I am no more." The Christian mystic Angelus Silesius (1624-1677) put it another way: Every drop becomes the sea when it flows oceanward, just as at last the soul ascends and thus becomes the Lord. Now you might feel that it cannot be particularly pleasant to "lose oneself." I know what you mean. But the point is that what you lose is so very much less than what you gain. You lose yourself only in the form you have at the moment, but at the same time you realize that you are something much bigger. You are the universe. In fact, you are the cosmic spirit itself, Sophie. It is you who are God. If you have to lose yourself as Sophie Amundsen, you can take comfort in the knowledge that this "everyday I" is something you will lose one day anyway. Your real "I"-- which you can only experience if you are able to lose yourself--is, according to the mystics, like a mysterious fire that goes on burning to all eternity. But a mystical experience like this does not always come of itself. The mystic may have to seek the path of "purification and enlightenment" to his meeting with God. This path consists of the simple life and various meditation techniques. Then all at once the mystic achieves his goal, and can exclaim, "I am God" or "I am You." Mystical trends are found in all the great world religions. And the descriptions of mystical experiences given by the mystics show a remarkable similarity across all cultural boundaries. It is in the mystic's attempt to provide a religious or philosophic interpretation of the mystical experience that his cultural background reveals itself. In Western mysticism--that is, within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--the mystic emphasizes that his meeting is with a personal God. Although God is present both in nature and in the human soul, he is also far above and beyond the world. In Eastern mysticism--that is, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Chinese religion--it is more usual to emphasize that the mystic experiences a total fusion with God or the "cosmic spirit." "I am the cosmic spirit," the mystic can exclaim, or "I am God." For God is not only present in the world; he has nowhere else to be. In India, especially, there have been strong mystical movements since long before the time of Plato. Swami Vivekenanda, an Indian who was instrumental in bringing Hinduism to the west, once said, "Just as certain world religions say that people who do not believe in a personal God outside themselves are atheists, we say that a person who does not believe in himself is an atheist. Not believing in the splendor of one's own soul is what we call atheism." A mystical experience can also have ethical significance. A former president of India, Sarvepalli Radhak-rishnan, said once, "Love thy neighbor as thyself because you ore your neighbor. It is an illusion that makes you think that your neighbor is someone other than yourself." People of our own time who do not adhere to a particular religion also tell of mystical experiences. They have suddenly experienced something they have called "cosmic consciousness" or an "oceanic feeling." They have felt themselves wrenched out of Time and have experienced the world "from the perspective of eternity." Sophie sat up in bed. She had to feel whether she still had a body. As she read more and more about Plato and the mystics, she had begun to feel as though she were floating around in the room, out of the window and far off above the town. From there she had looked down on all the people in the square, and had floated on and on over the globe that was her home, over the North Sea and Europe, down over the Sahara and across the African savanna. The whole world had become almost like a living person, and it felt as if that person were Sophie herself. The world is me, she thought. The great big universe that she had often felt to be unfathomable and terrifying--was her own "I." Now, too, the universe was enormous and majestic, but now it was herself who was so big. The extraordinary feeling was fleeting, but Sophie was sure she would never forget it. It felt as if something inside her had burst through her forehead and become merged with everything else, the way a drop of color can tint a whole jug of water. When it was all over, it was like waking up with a headache after a wonderful dream. Sophie registered with a touch of disillusionment that she had a body which was trying to sit up in bed. Lying on her stomach reading the pages from Alberto Knox had given her a backache. But she had experienced something unforgettable. Eventually she pulled herself together and stood up. The first thing she did was to punch holes in the pages and file them in her ring binder together with the other lessons. Then she .went into the garden. The birds were singing as if the world had just been born. The pale green of the birches behind the old rabbit hutches was so intense that it seemed as though the Creator had not yet finished blending the color. Could she really believe that everything was one divine "I"? Could she believe that she carried within her a soul that was a "spark from the fire"? If it was true, then she was truly a divine creature. 希腊文化    ……一丝火花…… 虽然哲学老师已经开始把信直接送到老树篱内,但星期一早晨苏菲仍习惯性地看了看信箱。 里面是空的,这并不让人意外,她开始沿着苜蓿巷往前走。 突然间她看到人行道上有一张照片。照片中有一辆白色的吉普车,上面插着一支印有联合国字样的蓝色旗帜。那不是联合国的旗帜吗? 苏菲把照片翻过来,发现这是一张普通的明信片。上面写着“请苏菲代转席德”,贴着挪威邮票,并盖着一九九O年六月十五日星期五“联合国部队”的邮戳。 六月十五日!这天正是苏菲的生日呀! 明信片上写着: 亲爱的席德: 我猜想你可能仍在庆祝你的十五岁生日。或者你接到信时,已经是第二天的早上了。无论如何,你都会收到我的礼物。就某个角度看,那是一份可以用一辈子的礼物。不过,我想向你再说一声生日快乐。也许你现在已经明白我为何把这些明信片寄给苏菲了。我相信她一定会把它们转交给你的。 P.S:妈妈说你把你的皮夹弄丢了。我答应你我会给你一百五十块钱做为补偿。还有,在学校放暑假前你也许可以重办一张学生证。 爱你的爸爸 苏菲站在原地不动。上一张明信片邮戳上的日期是几号?她隐约记得那张海滩风景明信片上的邮戳日期也是六月——虽然这两张明信片相隔了一个月。不过她并没有看清楚。 她看了一下腕表,然后便跑回家中。她今天上学是非迟到不可了。 苏菲进了门便飞奔到楼上的房间,在那条红色丝巾的下面找到了第一张写给席德的明信片。是的,上面的日期也是六月十五日,就是苏菲的生日,也是学校放暑假的前一天。 她跑到超级市场去和乔安会合时,心里涌出无数个问号。 这个席德是谁?她爸爸为什么会认定苏菲可以找到她?无论如何,他把明信片寄给苏菲,而不直接寄给他的女儿是说不通的。 苏菲想这绝不可能是因为他不知道自己女儿的地址。会是谁在恶作剧吗?他是不是想找一个陌生人来当侦探和信差,以便在女儿生日那天给她一个惊喜呢?这就是他提前一个月让她准备的原因吗? 他是不是想让她这个中间人成为他女儿的新朋友,并以此做为送给她的生日礼物呢?难道她就是那个“可以用一辈子”的礼物吗? 如果这个开玩笑的人真的在黎巴嫩,他何以能够得知苏菲的地址?还有,苏菲和席德至少有两件事是相同的。第一,如果席德的生日也是六月十五日,那她们俩就是同一天出生的。第二,她们俩的父亲都远在天边。 苏菲觉得自己被拉进一个不真实的世界。也许,有时候人还真的不得不相信命运。不过,她还不能太早下结论。这件事可能仍然有个缘故。但是,如果席德住在黎乐桑,艾伯特是如何找到她的皮夹的呢?黎乐桑离这儿有好几百英里呀!同时,这张明信片为什么会躺在苏菲家门口的人行道上?它是不是在邮差来到苏菲家的信箱时由他的邮袋里掉出来的?如果这样,为什么他别的不掉,偏偏掉这一张? 在超市等候的乔安好不容易才看到苏菲出现。她忍不住说: “你疯了吗?” “对不起!” 乔安紧紧皱起眉头,像学校老师一样。 “你最好给我解释清楚。” “都是联合国的缘故。”苏菲说。“我在黎巴嫩被敌方部队拘留了。” “少来。我看你是谈恋爱了。” 她们没命似的跑到学校。 第三节课时考了苏菲昨天没有时间准备的宗教知识这门课。 题目如下: 生命与容忍的哲学    1.试列举我们可以确实知道的一些事物。然后再列举一些我们只能相信的事物。 2.请说明影响一个人的生活哲学的因素。 3.“良知”的意义为何?你认为每一个人都有同样的良知吗? 4.何谓价值的轻重? 苏菲坐在那儿想了很久才开始作答。她可以运用她从艾伯特那儿学到的观念吗?她不得不这样做,因为她已经有好几天没有打开宗教知识的教科书了。她一开始作答后,答案仿佛自然而然就从她的笔端流出来一般。 她写道:我们可以确定的事包括月亮不是由绿乳酪做成的、月球较黑的那一面也有坑洞、苏格拉底和耶稣基督两人都被判死刑、每一个人都迟早会死、希腊高城宏伟的神殿是在公元前五世纪波斯战争后兴建的,还有古希腊最重要的神论是戴尔菲的神论。至于我们不能确知的事物,苏菲举的例子包括;其他星球上是否有生物存在、世间是否真有上帝、人死后是否还有生命、耶稣是上帝之子或者只是一个聪明人。在举出这些例子后,苏菲写道:“我们当然无法确知这世界从何而来。宇宙就好像是一只被魔术师从帽子里拉出来的大白兔。哲学家努力沿着兔子毛皮中的一根细毛往上爬,希望能一睹伟大魔术师的真面目。虽然他们不一定会成功,但如果所有哲学家都像叠罗汉一般一层一层往上叠,则他们就可以愈接近兔子毛皮的顶端。果真如此,在我认为,有一天他们也许真的可以爬到顶端。P.S:圣经中有一个东西很像是兔子的细毛,那就是巴别塔。这个塔最后被伟大的魔术师摧毁了,因为他不希望这些微不足道的人类爬出他一手创造出的兔子的毛皮。” 第二个问题是:“请说明影响一个人的生活哲学的因素。”苏菲认为教养与环境很重要。生在柏拉图时代的人们所具有的生活哲学与现代人不同,因为他们生活的时代和环境与我们的不同。另外一个因素是人们选择的经验种类。一般常识不是由环境决定的,而是每一个人都具备的。也许我们可以把我们的环境和社会情况与柏拉图的洞穴相比较。一个人若运用他的聪明才智,将可以使自己脱离黑暗。不过这样的路程需要一些勇气,苏格拉底就是一个很好的例子,显示一个人如何运用自己的聪明才智使自己不受当时思想主流的影响。最后,苏菲写道:“在当今这个时代,来自各个地方、各种文化的人们交流日益密切。基督徒、伊斯兰教徒与佛教徒可能住在同一栋公寓中。在这种情况下,接受彼此的信仰要比去问为什么大家不能有一致的信仰更加重要。” 嗯,答得不坏!苏菲心想。她觉得自己已经运用她从哲学老师 那儿学来的知识答出了一些重点,她只要加上一些自己的常识与她从别处听来或读到的东西就成了。 现在,她专心答第三道问题:“良知是什么?你认为每个人都有同样的良知吗?” 这个问题他们在课堂上已经讨论过很多次了。苏菲答道:“良知是人们辨别善恶是非的能力。我个人的看法是:“每一个人天生都具备这种能力。换句话说,良知是与生俱来的。苏格拉底应该也会持同样的看法。不过良心对人的影响因人而异。在这方面我们可以说诡辩学振的主张不无道理。他们认为是非的观念主要是由个人成长环境决定的。相反的,苏格拉底则相信每一个人的良心都一样。也许这两种观点都没有错。虽然并不是每一个人在大庭广 众之下赤身露体时都会感到羞愧,但大多数人在欺负别人后多少都会良心不安。不过,我们也不要忘记,具有良知和运用良知是两回事。有时有些人做起事来一副无耻的模样,但我相信他们内心深处还是有某种良知存在的。就像某些人看起来似乎没有大脑的样子,但这只是因为他们不用脑筋罢了。P.S:常识和良心不像肌肉一样。你不去用它,它就会愈来愈萎缩。” 现在只剩下一个问题了:“何谓价值的轻重?”这也是他们最近—时常讨论的一个主题。举例来说,开着车子迅速往来各地也许是很重要的,但如果驾驶车辆会导致森林遭到砍伐、自然环境受到污染等后果,我们就必须要作个选择。在仔细考量之后,苏菲的结论是: 维护森林的健康和环境的纯净要比能够节省上班途中的交通时间更有价值。她另外又举了一些例子。最后,她写道:“我个人认为哲学这门课要比英文文法更重要。因此,如果学校能将哲学课列入课程,并且略微减少英文课的时间,他们对价值轻重的判断就是正确的。” 最后一次课间休息时,老师把苏菲拉到一旁。 “我已经看过了你宗教课考试的试卷。”他说,“你那一份放在整沓试卷的最上面。” “我希望它能给你一些启发。” “这就是我要跟你谈的。你的答案在许多方面都很成熟,让我非常讶异。同时你有很多自己的想法。不过,苏菲,你有没有做作业呢?” 苏菲有点心虚。 “嗯,你不是说一个人要有自己的看法吗?” “是啊,我是说过……不过这总有个限度。” 苏菲看着老师的眼睛。她觉得在最近经历了这些事情后,她应该可以这样做。 “我已经开始研究哲学了。”她说,“这使我有了一些形成自己意见的基础。” “不过这让我很难给你的考卷打分数。要不是D,要不就是A。” “因为我要不就答得很对,要不就错得很多。你的意思是这样吗?” “那就算你A好了。”老师说。“不过下一次你可要做作业。” 那天下午苏菲放学后一回到家,把书包丢在门前台阶上后,就马上跑到密洞中。果然有一个棕色的信封躺在虬结的树根上。信封的边缘已经干了。可以想见汉密士已经把信送来很久了。 她拿了信,进了前门,喂宠物后就上楼。回房后,她躺床上拆阅艾伯特的信:    希腊文化 苏菲,我们又上课了。在读完有关自然派哲学家、苏格拉底、柏拉图与亚理斯多德的理论后,你对欧洲哲学的基础应该已经很熟悉了。因此,从现在起,我将省略掉用白色的信封所装的前导式问题。更何况,我想学校给你们的作业和考试可能已经够多了。 今天我要介绍的是从公元前第四世纪末亚理斯多德时期,一直到公元四百年左右中世纪初期的这一段很长的时期。请注意,我们如今讲公元前、公元后乃是以耶稣降生的前后来区分,而事实上,基督教也是这个时期内最重要、最神秘的因素之一。 亚理斯多德于公元前三二二年去世,当时雅典人已经失去了挽治者的地位。这一部分原因是亚历山大大帝(公元前三五六~公元前三二三年)征服各地后引发的政治动乱所致。 亚历山大大帝是马其顿的国王。亚理斯多德也是马其顿人,甚至曾经担任亚历山大小时候的私人教师。亚历山大后来打赢了对波斯人的最后一场决定性的战役。更重要的是,他征服各地的结果使得埃及、东方(远至印度)的文明与希腊的文明得以结合在一起。 在人类的历史上,这是一个新纪元的开始。一个新文明诞生了。在这个文明中,希腊的文化与希腊的语言扮演了主导的角色。 这段时期维持了大约三百年,被称为“希腊文化”。这个名词除了指这段时期外,也指在马其顿、叙利亚与埃及这三个希腊王国风行的以希腊为主的文化。 然而,自从大约公元前五O年以后,罗马在军事与政治上逐渐占了上风。这个新的超级强权逐渐征服了所有的希腊王国。从此以后,从西边的西班牙到东边的亚洲等地,都以罗马文化与拉丁文为主。这是罗马时期(也就是我们经常所说的“近古时期”)的开始。 不过,我们不可以忘记一件事:在罗马人征服希腊世界之前,罗马本身也受到希腊文化的影响。因此,直到希腊人的政治势力衰微很久以后,希腊文化与希腊哲学仍然继续扮演了很重要的角色。 宗教、哲学与科学 希腊文化的特色在于国与国、文化与文化之间的界线泯灭了。 过去希腊、罗马、埃及、巴比伦、叙利亚、波斯等各民族各有我们一般所说的“国教”,各自崇奉不同的神明。但如今这些不同的文化都仿佛在女巫的咒语之下熔成一炉,汇聚形成各种宗教、哲学与科学概念。 我们可以说希腊过去的市中心广场已经被世界舞台所取代。 从前的市镇广场是一片人声嘈杂的景象,有人贩售各种商品,有人 宣扬各种思想与概’念。如今的市镇广场依旧充斥着来自世界各地的货品与思想,只不过嘈杂的人声中夹杂了各国的语言。 我们曾经提到在这个时候,希腊人的人生哲学影响的地区与范围已经比过去扩大许多。不过,逐渐的,地中海地区的各个国家也开始崇奉东方的神祗。也许是在众多古国原有宗教信仰的交互影响之下,新的宗教兴起了。 我们称这种现象为“信仰的混合”(syncretism)或“信仰的交互激荡”(the fusion of creeds)。 在此之前,人们都认同自己所属的城邦。但随着疆界之分逐渐泯灭,许多人开始怀疑自己的社会所持的生命哲学。一般而言,近古时期的特色就是充满了宗教质疑、文化解体与悲观主义。当时的人说:“世界已经衰老了。”希腊文化时期形成的各宗教信仰有一个共同的特征,就是他们经常教导人应该如何获得救赎,免予一死。 这些教义通常都是以秘密的方式传授。信徒只要接受这些教导,并进行某些仪式,就可望获得不朽的灵魂与永远的生命。但为了达成灵魂的救赎,除了举行宗教仪式外,也有必要对宇宙真实的本质有 某种程度的了解。 关于新宗教,我们就谈到这里了。不过在这个时期,哲学也逐渐朝“救赎”与平安的方向发展。当时的人认为,哲学的智慧不仅本身有其好处,也应该能使人类脱离悲观的心态与对死亡的恐惧。因此,宗教与哲学之间的界线逐渐消失了。 整体来说,我们不得不承认希腊文化的哲学并没有很大的原创性。在这个时期中,并未再出现一个柏拉图或亚理斯多德。相反的,许多学派乃是受到雅典三大哲学家的启发。待会儿,我将略微描述这些学派。 希腊的科学同样地也受到各种不同文化的影响。亚力山卓(A1exandria)由于位居东西方的交会点,因此在这方面扮演了关键性的角色。在这个时期,由于雅典城内有一些继柏拉图与亚理斯多德之后的哲学学派,因此雅典仍是哲学中心,而亚力山卓则成为科学中心。那里有规模宏大的图书馆,使得亚力山卓成为数学、天文学、生物学与医学的重镇。 当时的希腊文化可与现代世界相提并论。二十世纪的文明愈趋开放后,造成了宗教与哲学百花齐放的现象。在基督纪元开始前后,生活在罗马的人们也可以见识到希腊、埃及与东方的各种宗教,就像在二十世纪末期的我们可以在欧洲各大小城市发现来自世界各地的宗教一般。 今天我们也可以看到新旧宗教、哲学与科学融合之后,如何形成了新的生命哲学。这些所谓的“新知识”实际上只是旧思想的残渣而已,其中有些甚至可以追溯至希腊时代。 正如我刚才所说的,希腊哲学仍旧致力于解决苏格拉底、柏拉图与亚理斯多德等人提出的问题。他们都同样亟欲找寻人类最佳的生、死之道。他们关心人的伦理与道德。在这个新的文明中,这个问题成为哲学家研讨的重心。他们最关心的乃是何谓真正的幸福以及如何获致这种幸福。下面我们将认识其中四个学派。 犬儒学派 据说,有一天苏格拉底站在街上,注视着一个贩卖各种商品的摊子。最后他说:“这些东西中有太多是我根本不需要的啊!” 这句话可以做为犬儒派哲学的注解。这个学派是在公元前四百年左右由雅典的安提塞尼斯(Antisthenes)所创。安提塞尼斯曾受教于苏格拉底门下,对于苏格拉底节俭的生活方式特别有兴趣,犬儒派学者强调,真正的幸福不是建立在外在环境的优势——如丰裕的物质、强大的政治力量与健壮的身体——之上。真正幸福的人不依赖这些稍纵即逝的东西。同时,由于幸福不是由这类福祉构成的,因此每一个人都可以获致幸福,更重要的是,一旦获得了这种幸福,就不可能失去它。 最著名的犬儒派人士是安提塞尼斯的弟子戴奥基尼斯(Dio—gzenes),据说他住在一个木桶中,除了一袭斗篷、一支棍子与一个面包袋之外,什么也没有,(因此要偷取他的幸福可不容易!)有一天他坐在木桶旁,舒服地晒着太阳时,亚历山大大帝前来探望他。 亚历山大站在他的前面,告诉他只要他想要任何东西,他都可以赐予他。戴奥基尼斯答道:“我希望你闪到旁边,让我可以晒到太阳。” 就这样,戴奥基尼斯证明他比亚历山大这位伟大的将军要更富裕,也更快乐,因为他已经拥有了自己想要的一切。 犬儒学派相信,人们毋需担心自己的健康,不应该因生老病死而苦恼,也不必担心别人的痛苦而让自己活受罪。 于是,到了今天,“犬儒主义”这些名词的意思变成是对人类真诚的轻蔑不信,暗含对别人的痛苦无动于衷的态度与行为。 斯多葛学派 犬儒学派促进了斯多葛学派的发展。后者在公元三百年左右兴起于雅典。它的创始人是季诺(Zeno)。此人最初住在塞浦勒斯,在一次船难后来到雅典,加入犬儒学派。他经常在门廊上聚集徒众。斯多葛(Stoic)这个字就是源自希腊文stoa(门廊)这个字。这个学派后来对于罗马文化有很大的影响。 就像赫拉克里特斯一样,斯多葛派人士相信每一个人都是宇宙常识的一小部分,每一个人都像是一个“小宇宙”(microcosmos),乃是“大宇宙”(macrocosmos)的缩影。 他们因此相信宇宙间有公理存在,亦即所谓“神明的律法”。由于此一神明律法是建立在亘古长存的人类理性与宇宙理性之上,因此不会随时空而改变。在这方面,斯多葛学派的主张与苏格拉底 相同,而与诡辩学派相异。 斯多葛学派认为,全体人类(包括奴隶在内)都受到神明律法的管辖。在他们眼中,当时各国的法律条文只不过是模仿大自然法则的一些不完美法条罢了。 斯多葛学派除了否认个人与宇宙有别之外,也不认为“精神”与“物质”之间有任何冲突。他们主张宇宙间只有一个大自然。这种想法被称为“一元论”(monism),与柏拉图明显的“二元论”(du—alism)或“双重实在论”正好相反。 斯多葛学派人士极富时代精神,思想非常开放。他们比那些“木桶哲学家”(犬儒学派)更能接受当代文化,他们呼吁人们发扬“民胞物与”的精神,也非常关心政治。他们当中有许多人后来都成为活跃的政治家,其中最有名的是罗马皇帝奥瑞里亚斯(MarcusAurelluS,公元一二一年~一八O年)。他们在罗马提倡希腊文化与希腊哲学,其中最出类拔萃的是集演讲家、哲学家与政治家等各种头衔于一身的西塞罗(Cicero,公元前一O六年~公元前四三年),所谓“人本主义”(一种主张以个人为人类生活重心的哲学)就是由他创立的。若干年后,同为斯多葛学派的塞尼卡(Seneca,公元前四年~公元六五年)表示:“对人类而言,人是神圣的。”这句话自此成为人本主义的口号。 此外,斯多葛学派强调,所有的自然现象,如生病与死亡,都只是遵守大自然不变的法则罢了,因此人必须学习接受自己的命运。 没有任何事物是偶然发生的,每一件事物发生都有其必要性,因此当命运来敲你家大门时,抱怨也没有用。他们认为,我们也不能为生活中一些欢乐的事物所动。在这方面,他们的观点与犬儒学派相似,因为后者也宣称所有外在事物都不重要。到了今天,我们仍用“斯多葛式的冷静”(stoic calm)来形容那些不会感情用事的人。 伊比鸠鲁学派    如上所述,苏格拉底关心的是人如何能够过着良好的生活,犬儒学派与斯多葛学派将他的哲学解释成“人不能沉溺于物质上的享受”。不过,苏格拉底另外一个弟子阿瑞斯提普斯(Aristippus)则认为人生的目标就是要追求最高度的感官享受。“人生至善之事乃是享乐。”他说,“至恶之事乃是受苦。”因此他希望发展出一种生活方式,以避免所有形式的痛苦为目标。(犬儒学派与斯多葛学派认为人应该忍受各种痛苦,这与致力避免痛苦是不同的。) 公元前三百年左右,伊比鸠鲁(Epicurus,公元前三四一年-- 公元前二七O年)在雅典创办了“伊比鸠鲁学派”。他将阿瑞斯提普斯的享乐主义加以发展,并与德谟克里特斯的原于论结合起来。 由于传说中伊比鸠鲁住在一座花园里,因此这个学派的人士又被称为“花园哲学家”。据说,在这座花园的入口处上方有二块告示牌写着:“陌生人,你将在此地过着舒适的生活。在这里享乐乃是至善之事物。” 伊比鸠鲁学派强调在我们考量一个行动是否有乐趣时,必须同时斟酌它可能带来的副作用。如果你曾经放怀大嚼巧克力,你就会明白我的意思。如果你不曾这样做过,那么你可以做以下练习: 把你存的两百元零用钱全部拿来买巧克力(假设你很爱吃巧克力),而且把它一次吃完(这是这项练习的重点)。大约半个小时以后当所有美味的巧克力都吃光了之后,你就会明白伊比鸠鲁所谓的“副作用”是什么意思了。 伊比鸠鲁并且相信在追求较短暂的快乐时,必须考虑是否另有其他方式可以获致更大、更持久或更强烈的快乐(譬如你决定一年不吃巧克力,因为你想把零用钱存起来买一辆新的脚踏车或去海外度一次豪华假期)。人类不像动物,因为我们可以规划自己的生活。我们有能力从事“乐趣的计算”。巧克力固然好吃,但买一辆新脚踏车或去英国旅游一趟更加美妙。 尽管如此,伊比鸠鲁强调,所谓“乐趣”并不一定指感官上的快乐,如吃巧克力等。交朋友与欣赏艺术等也是一种乐趣。此外,我们若要活得快乐,必须遵守古希腊人自我规范、节制与平和等原则。自我的欲望必须加以克制,而平和的心境则可以帮助我们忍受痛苦。 当时有许多人由于惧怕神明而来到伊比鸠鲁的花园。这是因为德谟克里特斯的原子理论可以有效祛除宗教迷信,而为了好好生活,克服自己对死亡的恐惧是很重要的。于是,伊比鸠鲁便运用德谟克里特斯有关“灵魂原于”的理论来达到这个目的。你也许还记得,德谟克里特斯相信人死后没有生命,因为当我们死时,“灵魂原子”就四处飞散。 “死亡和我们没有关系,”伊比鸠鲁扼要地说,“因为只要我们存在一天,死亡就不会来临。而当死亡来临时,我们也不再存在了。”(说到这点,我们好像从没听说过有谁得了死亡这种病。) 伊比鸠鲁以他所谓的“四种药草”来总结他的哲学: “神不足惧,死不足忧,祸苦易忍,福乐易求。” 对于希腊人而言,伊比鸠鲁将哲学与医学相提并论的做法并不新鲜。他的主旨是:人应该拥有一个“哲学的药柜”,储存以上四种药方。 与斯多葛学派截然不同的是,伊比鸠鲁学派对于政治或团体生活并不感兴趣。伊比鸠鲁劝人要“离群索居”。我们也许可以将他的“花园”比做时下的一些公社。我们这个时代确实也有许多人离开社会,前往某处去寻求“避风的港湾”。 在伊比鸠鲁之后,许多伊比鸠鲁学派的人士逐渐沉溺于自我放纵。他们的格言是“今朝有酒今朝醉”。Epicurean这个字如今已具有贬意,被人们用来形容那些专门追求享乐的人。 新柏拉图派哲学 我们已经了解犬儒学派、斯多葛学派及伊比鸠鲁学派与苏格拉底哲学的渊源。当然这些学派也采纳了若干苏格拉底之前的哲学家——如赫拉克里特斯与德谟克里特斯等人——的学说。 然而,希腊文化末期最令人瞩目的哲学学派主要仍是受到柏拉图学说的启发,因此我们称之为新柏拉图派哲学。 新柏拉图派哲学最重要的人物是普罗汀(Plotinus,约公元二O五年~二七O年)。他早年在亚力山卓研读哲学,后来在罗马定居;当时,亚力山卓成为希腊哲学与东方神秘主义的交会点已经有好几百年了。普罗汀从那儿将他的“救赎论”(doctrine of salvation)带到罗马。此一学说后来成为基督教的劲敌。不过,新柏拉图派哲 学对基督教神学也具有很大的影响力。 苏菲,你还记得柏拉图的理型论吗?你应该记得他将宇宙分为理型世界与感官世界。这表示他将肉体与灵魂区分得很清楚。在这种情况下,人乃成为二元的造物:我们的身体就像感官世界,所有的事物一般是由尘与土所构成,但我们的灵魂却是不朽的。早在粕拉图之前,许多希腊人就已经持此观念,而亚洲人也有类似的看法。普罗汀对这点相当熟悉。 普罗汀认为,世界横跨两极。一端是他称为“上帝”的神圣之光,另一端则是完全的黑暗,接受不到任何来自上帝的亮光。不过,普罗汀的观点是:这个黑暗世界其实并不存在,它只是缺乏亮光照射而已。世间存在的只有上帝。就像光线会逐渐变弱,终至于熄灭一样,世间也有一个角落是神圣之光无法普照的。 根据普罗汀的说法,灵魂受到此一神圣之光的照耀,而物质则位于并不真正存在的黑暗世界,至于自然界的形式则微微受到神圣之光的照射。 让我们想象夜晚升起一堆野火的景象。此时,火花四散,火光将黑夜照亮。从好几英里外望过来,火光清晰可见。但如果我们再走远一些,就只能看到一小点亮光,就像黑暗中远处的灯笼一样。 如果我们再继续走下去,到了某一点时,我们就再也看不见火光了。此时火光已消失在黑夜中。在这一片黑暗之中,我们看不见任何事物,看不见任何形体或影子。 你可以想象真实世界就像这样一堆野火。发出熊熊火光的是“上帝”,火光照射不到的黑暗之处则是构成人与动物的冷冷的物质。最接近上帝的是那些永恒的观念。它们是所有造物据以做成的根本形式。而人的灵魂则是那飞散的“火花”。大自然的每一处或多或少都受到这神圣之光的照耀。我们在所有的生物中都可以见到这种光,就连一朵玫瑰或一株风铃草也不例外。离上帝最远的则是那些泥土、水与石头。 我的意思是说:世间存在的每一样事物都有这种神秘的神圣之光。我们可以看到它在向日葵或罂粟花中闪烁着光芒。在一只飞离枝头的蝴蝶或在水缸中漫游穿梭的金鱼身上,我们可以看到更多这种深不可测的神秘之光。然而,最靠近上帝的还是我们的灵魂。唯有在灵魂中,我们才能与生命的伟大与神秘合而为一。事实上,在某些很偶然的时刻中,我们可以体验到自我就是那神圣的神秘之光。 昔罗汀的比喻很像柏拉图所说的洞穴神话:我们愈接近洞,就愈接近宇宙万物的源头。不过,与柏拉图的二元论相反的是,普罗汀理论的特色在于万物一体的经验。宇宙间万事万物都是一体,因为上帝存在于万事万物之中。即使在柏拉图所说的洞穴深处的影子中也有微弱的上帝之光。 普罗汀一生中曾有一两次灵魂与上帝合而为一的体验,我们通常称此为神秘经验。除了普罗汀之外,也有人有过这种经验。事实上,古今中外都有人宣称他们有过同样的体验。细节也许不同,但都具有同样的特征。现在让我们来看看这些特征。 神秘 神秘经验是一种与上帝或“天地之心”合而为一的体验。许多宗教都强调上帝与整个宇宙之间的差距,但在神秘主义者的体验中,这种差距并不存在。他(她)们有过与“上帝”合而为一的经验。 他们认为,我们通常所称的“我”事实上并不是真正的“我”。有时在一刹那间,我们可以体验到一个更大的“我”的存在。有些神秘主义者称这个“我”为“上帝”,也有人称之为“天地之心”、“大自然”或“宇宙”。当这种物我交融的情况发生时,神秘主义者觉得他们失去了自我”,像一滴水落入海洋一般进入上帝之中。一位印度的神秘主义者有一次如此形容他的经验:“过去,当我的自我存在时,我感觉不到上帝。如今我感觉到上帝的存在,自我就消失了。”基督教的神秘主义者塞伦西亚斯(Silesius,公元一六二四年~一六七七年)则另有一种说法:“每一滴水流入海洋后,就成为海洋。同样的,当灵魂终于上升时,则成为上帝。” 你也许会反驳说,“失去自我”不可能是一种很愉快的经验。我明白你的意思。但重点是,你所失去的东西比起你所得到的东西是显得多么微不足道。你所失去的只是眼前这种形式的自我,但同时你却会发现自己变得更广大。你就是宇宙。事实上,你就是那天地之心,这时你也就是上帝。如果你失去了“苏菲”这个自我,有一点可以让你觉得比较安慰的是:这个“凡俗的自我”乃是你我无论如何终有一天会失去的。而根据神秘主义者的说法,你的真正的“自我”——这个你唯有放弃自我才能感受到的东西——却像一股神秘的火焰一般,会燃烧到永恒。 不过,类似这样的神秘经验并不一定会自动产生。神秘主义者也许必须透过“净化与启蒙”才能与上帝交流。其方式包括过着简朴的生活以及练习静坐。之后,也许有一天他们可以达到目标,并宣称:“我就是上帝。” 神秘主义在世界各大宗教中都见得到。来自各种不同文化的人们所描述的神秘经验往往极为相似。唯有在神秘主义者试图为他们的神秘经验寻求宗教或哲学上的解释时,文化差异才会显现出来。 西方(犹太教、基督教与伊斯兰教)的神秘主义者强调,他们见到的是一个人形的上帝。他们认为,尽管上帝存在于大自然与人的灵魂中,但他也同时超越万物之上。东方(印度教、佛教与中国的宗教)的神秘主义者则较强调他们的神秘经验乃是一种与上帝或“天地之心”水乳交融的经验。 神秘主义者可以宣称:“我就是天地之心”或“我即上帝”,因为上帝不仅存在于天地万物之中,他本身就是天地万物。 神秘主义在印度尤其盛行。早在柏拉图之前,印度就已经有了浓厚的神秘主义色彩。曾促使印度教传入西方的一位印度人余维卡南达(SwamiVivekenanda)有一次说道: “世界上有些宗教将那些不相信上帝以人形存在于众生之外的人称为无神论者。同样的,我们也说那些不相信自己的人是无神论者。因为,我们认为,所谓无神论就是不相信自己灵魂的神圣与可贵。” 神秘经验也具有道德价值。曾任印度总统的拉德哈克里希南(SarvepalliRadhakrishnan)曾说:“你当爱邻如己,因你的邻人就是你,你是在幻觉中才将他当成别人。” 我们这个时代有些不信仰任何特定宗教的人也曾有过神秘经验。他们会突然感受到某种他们称之为“宇宙意识”或“大感觉”(oceanicfeeUng)的事物,觉得自己脱离时空,“从永恒的观点”来感受这个世界。 苏菲坐在床上,想感受一下自己的身体是否仍然存在。当她读着柏拉图与神秘主义的哲学时,开始觉得自己在房间内到处飘浮,飘到窗外、愈飘愈远,浮在城镇的上空,从那儿向下看着广场上的人群,然后不断飘着,飘到地球的上方、飘到北海和欧洲的上空,再继续飘过撒哈拉沙漠与非洲大草原。 她觉得整个世界就好像一个人一般,而感觉上这个人就是她自己。她心想,世界就是我。那个她过去经常觉得深不可测、令人害怕的辽阔宇宙,乃是她的“自我”。如今,宇宙依然庄严辽阔,但这个广大的宇宙却是她自己。 这种不寻常的感觉稍纵即逝,但苏菲相信她永远也忘不了。那种感觉就像是她体内的某种东西从她的额头进裂而出,与宇宙万物融合在一起,就像一滴颜料使整罐水染上色彩一般。 这种感觉过后,人就像作了一个美梦,醒来时感到头痛一般,当苏菲意识到自己的躯壳仍然存在,且正坐在床上时,内心不免略微感到失望。由于刚才一直趴在床上看信,她的背现在隐隐作痛。 不过,至少她已经体验到这种令她难忘的感觉了。 最后,她振作精神,站了起来。她所做的第一件事就是在信纸上打洞。并把它放进讲义夹内。然后,便走到花园里去。 花园中鸟儿们正在歌唱,仿佛世界才刚诞生。老旧兔笼后的几株桦树叶子是如此嫩绿,仿佛造物主尚未完成调色的工作。 世间万物果真都是一个神圣的“自我”吗?她的灵魂果真是那神圣之火的“火花”吗?苏菲心想,如果这一切都是真的,那么她确实是一个神圣的造物了。 The Postcards I'm imposing a severe censorship on myself Several days went by without any word from the philosophy teacher. Tomorrow was Thursday, May 17-- Norway's national day. School would be closed on the 18th as well. As they walked home after school Joanna suddenly exclaimed, "Let's go camping!" Sophie's immediate reaction was that she couldn't be away from the house for long. But then she said, "Sure, why not?" A couple of hours later Joanna arrived at Sophie's door with a large backpack. Sophie had packed hers as well, and she also had the tent. They both had bedrolls and sweaters, groundsheets and flashlights, large-size thermos bottles and plenty of their favorite food. When Sophie's mother got home around five o'clock, she gave them a sermon about what they must and must not do. She also insisted on knowing where they were going to set up camp. They told her they intended to make for Grouse Top. They might be lucky enough to hear the mating call of the grouse next morning. Sophie had an ulterior motive for choosing that particular spot. She thought that Grouse Top must be pretty close to the major's cabin. Something was urging her to return to it, but she didn't dare go alone. The two girls walked down the path that led from the little cul-de-sac just beyond Sophie's garden gate. They chatted about this and that, and Sophie enjoyed taking a little time off from everything having to do with philosophy. By eight o'clock they had pitched their tent in a clearing by Grouse Top. They had prepared themselves for the night and their bedrolls were unfolded. When they had eaten their sandwiches, Sophie asked, "Have you ever heard of the major's cabin?" "The major's cabin?" "There's a hut in the woods somewhere near here ... by a little lake. A strange man lived there once, a major, that's why it's called the major's cabin." "Does anyone live there now?" "Do you want to go and see?" "Where is it?" Sophie pointed in among the trees. Joanna was not particularly eager, but in the end they set out. The sun was low in the sky. They walked in between the tall pine trees at first, but soon they were pushing their way through bush and thicket. Eventually they made their way down to a path. Could it be the path Sophie had followed that Sunday morning? It must have been--almost at once she could point to something shining between the trees to the right of the path. "It's in there," she said. They were soon standing at the edge of the small lake. Sophie gazed at the cabin across the water. All the windows were now shuttered up. The red building was the most deserted place she had seen for ages. Joanna turned toward her. "Do we have to walk on the water?" "Of course not. We'll row." Sophie pointed down into the reeds. There lay the rowboat, just as before. "Have you been here before?" Sophie shook her head. Trying to explain her previous visit would be far too complicated. And then she would have to tell her friend about Alberto Knox and the philosophy course as well. They laughed and joked as they rowed across the water. When they reached the opposite bank, Sophie made sure they drew the boat well up on land. They went to the front door. As there was obviously nobody in the cabin, Joanna tried the door handle. "Locked... you didn't expect it to be open, did you?" "Maybe we can find a key," said Sophie. She began to search in the crevices of the stonework foundation. "Oh, let's go back to the tent instead," said Joanna after a few minutes. But just then Sophie exclaimed, "Here it is! I found it!" She held up the key triumphantly. She put it in the lock and the door swung open. The two friends sneaked inside as if they were up to something criminal. It was cold and dark in the cabin. "We can't see a thing!" said Joanna. But Sophie had thought of that. She took a box of matches out of her pocket and struck one. They only had time to see that the cabin was deserted before the match went out. Sophie struck another, and this time she noticed a stump of candle in a wrought-iron candlestick on top of the stove. She lit it with the third match and the little room became light enough for them to look around. "Isn't it odd that such a small candle can light up so much darkness?" said Sophie. Her friend nodded. "But somewhere the light disappears into the dark," Sophie went on. "Actually, darkness has no existence of its own. It's only a lack of light." Joanna shivered. "That's creepy! Come on, let's go..." "Not before we've looked in the mirror." Sophie pointed to the brass mirror hanging above the chest of drawers, just as before. "That's really pretty!" said Joanna. "But it's a magic mirror." "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?" "I'm not kidding, Joanna. I am sure you can look in it and see something on the other side." "Are you sure you've never been here before? And why is it so amusing to scare me all the time?" Sophie could not answer that one. "Sorry." Now it was Joanna who suddenly discovered something lying on the floor in the corner. It was a small box. Joanna picked it up. "Postcards," she said. Sophie gasped. "Don't touch them! Do you hear--don't you dare touch them!" Joanna jumped. She threw the box down as if she had burnt herself. The postcards were strewn all over the floor. The next second she began to laugh. "They're only postcards!" Joanna sat down on the floor and started to pick them up. After a while Sophie sat down beside her. "Lebanon ... Lebanon ... Lebanon ... They are all postmarked in Lebanon," Joanna discovered. "I know," said Sophie. Joanna sat bolt upright and looked Sophie in the eye. "So you have been here before!" "Yes, I guess I have." It suddenly struck her that it would have been a whole lot easier if she had just admitted she had been here before. It couldn't do any harm if she let her friend in on the mysterious things she had experienced during the last few days. "I didn't want to tell you before we were here." Joanna began to read the cards. "They are all addressed to someone called Hilde Moller Knag." Sophie had not touched the cards yet. "What address?" Joanna read: "Hilde Moller Knag, c/o Alberto Knox, Lillesand, Norway." Sophie breathed a sigh of relief. She was afraid they would say c/o Sophie Amundsen. She began to inspect them more closely. "April 28 ... May 4 ... May 6 ... May 9 ... They were stamped a few days ago." "But there's something else. All the postmarks are Norwegian! Look at that... UN Battalion ... the stamps are Norwegian too!" "I think that's the way they do it. They have to be sort of neutral, so they have their own Norwegian post office down there." "But how do they get the mail home?" "The air force, probably." Sophie put the candlestick on the floor, and the two friends began to read the cards. Joanna arranged them in chronological order and read the first card: Dear Hilde, I can't wait to come home to Lillesand. I expect to land at Kjevik airport early evening on Midsummer Eve. I would much rather have arrived in time for your 15th birthday but I'm under military command of course. To make up for it, I promise to devote all my loving care to the huge present you are getting for your birthday. With love from someone who is always thinking about his daughter's future. P.S. I'm sending a copy of this card to our mutual friend. I know you understand, Hilde. At the moment I'm being very secretive, but you will understand. Sophie picked up the next card: Dear Hilde, Down here we take one day at a time. If there is one thing I'm going to remember from these months in Lebanon, it's all this waiting. But I'm doing what I can so you have as great a 15th birthday as possible. I can't say any more at the moment. I'm imposing a severe censorship on myself. Love, Dad. The two friends sat breathless with excitement. Neither of them spoke, they just read what was written on the cards: My dear child, What I would like best would be to send you my secret thoughts with a white dove. But they are all out of white doves in Lebanon. If there is anything this war-torn country needs, it is white doves. I pray the UN will truly manage to make peace in the world some day. P.S. Maybe your birthday present can be shared with other people. Let's talk about that when I get home. But you still have no idea what I'm talking about, right? Love from someone who has plenty of time to think for the both of us. When they had read six cards, there was only one left. It read: Dear Hilde, I am now so bursting with all these secrets for your birthday that I have to stop myself several times a day from calling home and blowing the whole thing. It is something that simply grows and grows. And as you know, when a thing gets bigger and bigger it's more difficult to keep it to yourself. Love from Dad. P.S. Some day you will meet a girl called Sophie. To give you both a chance to get to know more about each other before you meet, I have begun sending her copies of all the cards I send to you. I expect she will soon begin to catch on, Hilde. As yet she knows no more than you. She has a girlfriend called Joanna. Maybe site can be of help? After reading the last card, Joanna and Sophie sat quite still staring wildly at each other. Joanna was holding Sophie's wrist in a tight grip. "I'm scared," she said. "So am I." "When was the last card stamped?" Sophie looked again at the card. "May 16," she said. "That's today." "It can't be!" cried Joanna, almost angrily. They examined the postmark carefully, but there was no mistaking it... 05-16-90. "It's impossible," insisted Joanna. "And I can't imagine who could have written it. It must be someone who knows us. But how could they know we would come here on this particular day?" Joanna was by far the more scared of the two. The business with Hilde and her father was nothing new to Sophie. "I think it has something to do with the brass mirror." Joanna jumped again. "You don't actually think the cards come fluttering out of the mirror the minute they are stamped in Lebanon?" "Do you have a better explanation?" "No." Sophie got to her feet and held the candle up in front of the two portraits on the wall. Joanna came over and peered at the pictures. "Berkeley and Bjerkely. What does that mean?" "I have no idea." The candle was almost burnt down. "Let's go," said Joanna. "Come on!" "We must just take the mirror with us." Sophie reached up and unhooked the large brass mirror from the wall above the chest of drawers. Joanna tried to stop her but Sophie would not be deterred. When they got outside it was as dark as a May night can get. There was enough light in the sky for the clear outlines of bushes and trees to be visible. The small lake lay like a reflection of the sky above it. The two girls rowed pensively across to the other side. Neither of them spoke much on the way back to the tent, but each knew that the other was thinking intensely about what they had seen. Now and then a frightened bird would start up, and a couple of times they heard the hooting of an owl. As soon as they reached the tent, they crawled into their bedrolls. Joanna refused to have the mirror inside the tent. Before they fell asleep, they agreed that it was scary enough, knowing it was just outside the tent flap. Sophie had also taken the postcards and put them in one of the pockets of her backpack. They woke early next morning. Sophie was up first. She put her boots on and went outside the tent. There lay the large mirror in the grass, covered with dew. Sophie wiped the dew off with her sweater and gazed down at her own reflection. It was as if she was looking down and up at herself at the same time. Luckily she found no early morning postcard from Lebanon. Above the broad clearing behind the tent a ragged morning mist was drifting slowly into little wads of cotton. Small birds were chirping energetically but Sophie could neither see nor hear any grouse. The girls put on extra sweaters and ate their breakfast outside the tent. Their conversation soon turned to the major's cabin and the mysterious cards. After breakfast they folded up the tent and set off for home. Sophie carried the large mirror under her arm. From time to time she had to rest--Joanna refused to touch it. As they approached the outskirts of the town they heard a few sporadic shots. Sophie recalled what Hilde's father had written about war-torn Lebanon, and she realized how lucky she was to have been born in a peaceful country. The "shots" they heard came from innocent fireworks celebrating the national holiday. Sophie invited Joanna in for a cup of hot chocolate. Her mother was very curious to know where they had found the mirror. Sophie told her they had found it outside the major's cabin, and her mother repeated the story about nobody having lived there for many years. When Joanna had gone, Sophie put on a red dress. The rest of the Norwegian national day passed quite normally. In the evening, the TV news had a feature on how the Norwegian UN battalion had celebrated the day in Lebanon. Sophie's eyes were glued to the screen. One of the men she was seeing could be Hilde's father. The last thing Sophie did on May 17 was to hang the large mirror on the wall in her room. The following morning there was a new brown envelope in the den. She tore it open at once and began to read. 明信片    ......我对自己实施严格的检查制度 ...... 好几天过去了,哲学老师都没有来信。明天就是五月十七日星期四,挪威的国庆日了。学校从这天起放假,一直放到十八日。 放学回家途中,乔安突然说:“我们去露营吧!” 苏菲本来想说她不能离家太久,但不知怎的,她却说道:“好呀!” 几个小时后,乔安背了一个大登山背包来到苏菲家门口。苏菲已经打包完毕。她带了一顶帐篷,他们两人也都各自带了睡袋、毛衣、睡垫、手电筒、大热水瓶,以及很多心爱的食物。 五点钟左右,苏菲的妈妈回到家。她谆谆告诫两人,要求她们遵守一些应该注意的事项。她并且坚持要知道她们扎营的地点。 于是,她们告诉她两人计划到松鸡顶去。如果运气好的话,也许第二天早上可以听到松鸡求偶的叫声。 事实上,苏菲之所以选择去松鸡顶是有“阴谋”的。在她印象中,松鸡顶离少校的小木屋不远。她心里有一股冲动要回到那座木屋,不过她也明白自己不敢一个人去。 于是,她们两人从苏菲家花园门口那条小小的死巷子出发,沿着一条小路走下去。一路上,她们谈天说地。苏菲觉得暂时不用思考哲学之类问题的感觉还真不错。 探险 八点时,她们已经在松鸡顶上的一块平地搭好帐篷,准备过夜了。她们的睡袋已经打开。吃完三明治后,苏菲说;“乔安,你有没有听说过少校的小木屋?” “少校的小木屋?” “这附近的树林里有一座木屋……就在一座小湖边。以前曾经有一个怪人住在那里,是一个少校。所以人家才叫它‘少校的小木屋’。” “现在有没有人住呢?” “我们去看看好不好?” “在哪里呢?” 苏菲指着树林间。 乔安不是非常热中,但最后她们还是去了。这时夕阳已经低垂天际。 最初,她们在高大的松树间走着,不久就经过一片浓密的灌木林,最后走到了下面的一条小路。苏菲心想,这是我星期天早上走的那条路吗?一定是的。她几乎立刻就看到路右边的树林间有某个东西在闪烁。 “就在那儿。”她说。 很快地她们就到了小湖边。苏菲站在那儿,看着对岸的木屋。 红色的小木屋如今门窗紧闭,一片荒凉景象。 乔安转过身来,看着她。 “我们要怎么过湖?用走的吗?” “当然不了,我们可以划船过去。” 苏菲指着下面的芦苇丛。小舟就像从前一般躺在那儿。 “你来过吗?” 苏菲摇摇头。她不想提上次的事,因为那太复杂了,怎么也说不清楚。同时,如果说了,她也不得不告诉乔安有关艾伯特和哲学课的事。 她们划船过湖,一路说说笑笑。当她们抵达对岸时,苏菲特别小心地把小舟拉上岸。 她们走到小屋的前门。屋里显然没有人,因此乔安试着转动门柄。 “锁住了……你不会以为门是开着的吧?” “也许我们可以找到钥匙。” 于是她开始在屋子底下的石缝间搜寻。 几分钟后,乔安说:“算了,我们回帐篷去吧就在这时,苏菲叫了一声:“我找到了。、就在这儿!” 她得意地高举着那把钥匙。然后,她把它插进锁里,门就开了。 两人蹑手蹑脚地走进去,好像做什么坏事一般。木屋里又冷又黑。 “什么也看不到!”乔安说。 不过,苏菲是有备而来。她从口袋里拿出了一盒火柴擦亮一根。在火光熄灭之前的那一刹那,她们看清楚小屋内空无一人。苏菲擦亮另一根火柴,这次她注意到炉子上有一座锻铁做的烛台,上面有半截蜡烛。她用第三根火柴把蜡烛点亮,于是小屋里才有了一点光线,让她们可以看清四周。 “这样一根小小的蜡烛却可以照亮如此的黑暗,这不是很奇怪吗?”苏菲说。 乔安点点头。 “不过你看在某个地方光芒就消失了。”她继续说。 “事实上黑暗本身是不存在的。它只是缺少光线的照射罢了。” 乔安打了一个冷颤。“有点恐怖耶!我们走吧!” “我们要看看镜子才能走。” 苏菲指着依旧挂在五斗柜上方的那面铜镜。 “很漂亮耶广乔安说。 “可是它是一面魔镜。” “魔镜!魔镜!告诉我,这世界上谁最美丽?” “乔安,我不是开玩笑。我敢说只要你看着它,就会看到镜子里有东西。” “你确定你没来过吗?还有,你为什么那么喜欢吓我?” 苏菲答不出来。 “对不起。” 这回是乔安突然发现靠墙角的地板上有个东西。那是个小盒子,乔安把它捡了起来。 “是明信片耶!”她说。 苏菲吃了一惊。 “别碰它!你听到了吗?千万不要碰!” 乔安跳了起来,像被火烧到一样赶紧把盒子丢掉。结果明信片撒了一地。乔安随即笑了起来。 “只不过是一些明信片罢了尸 乔安坐在地板上,开始把那些明信片捡起来。 过了一会儿,苏菲也坐在她身旁。 “黎巴嫩……黎巴嫩……黎巴嫩……他们全都盖着黎巴嫩的 邮戳。”乔安说。 “我知道。”苏菲说。 乔安猛然坐直,看着苏菲的眼睛。 “原来你到过这里。” “是的,我想是吧!” 苏菲突然想到,如果她承认来过这里,事情会变得容易得多。 即使她让乔安知道最近这几天来发生在她身上的神秘事情,也不会有什么坏处的。 “我们来之前,我并不想让你知道。” 乔安开始看那些明信片。 “这些卡片都是写给一个名叫席德的人。” 苏菲没碰那些卡片。 “地址是什么?” 乔安念了出来:“挪威Lillesand,请艾伯特代转席德。” 苏菲松了一口气。她刚才还怕信上会写“请苏菲代转”。 她开始仔细检查这些明信片。 “你看,四月二十八日……五月四日……五月六日……五月九日……这些邮票都是前几天才贴的。” “还有,上面盖的通通都是挪威的邮戳!你再看……联合国部队……连邮票也是挪威的!” “我想他们大概都是这样。为了要感觉自然一些,他们在那边也设了他们专用的挪威邮局。” “但他们是怎么把信寄回家的呢?” “也许是通过空军吧!” 他们在那边 苏菲把烛台放在地板上,两人开始看这些明信片。乔安把它们按照时间先后的顺序排好,先读第一张: 亲爱的席德: 我真的很盼望回到我们在黎乐桑的家。我预定仲夏节黄昏在凯耶维克机场着陆。虽然很想早些抵达以便参加你十五岁生日庆祝会,但我有军令在身。为了弥补这点,我答应你我会全心准备给你的那份大生日礼物。 爱你并总是考虑到你的前途的老爸P.S:我会把另一张同样的明信片送到我们共同的朋友那儿。 我想你会了解的,席德。目前的情况看起来虽然是充满了神秘,但我想你会明白的。 苏菲拿起了第二张: 亲爱的席德: 在这里,我们的时间过得很慢。如果这几个月在黎巴嫩的日子有什么事情值得记忆的话,那就是等待的感觉。不过我正尽全力使你有一个很棒的十五岁生日。 目前我不能说太多。我绝对不能泄漏天机。 爱你的老爸    苏菲与乔安坐在那儿,兴奋得几乎喘不过气来。两人都没有开口,专心看着明信片。 亲爱的孩子: 我最想做的事是用一只白鸽将我心里的秘密传递给你,不过黎巴嫩连一只白鸽也没有。我想这个备受战火摧残的国家最需要的也就是白鸽。我祈祷有一天联合国真的能够创造世界和平。 P.S:也许你可以与别人分享你的生日礼物。等我回到家再谈这件事好了。你还是不明白我在说些什么,对不对?我在这里可是有很多时间为咱俩打算呢! 老爸他们一连读了六张,现在只剩下最后一张了。上面写道: 亲爱的席德: 我现在内心满溢有关你生日的秘密,以致我一天里不得不好几次克制自己不要打电话回家,以免把事件搞砸了。那是一件会愈长愈大的事物。而你也知道,当一个东西愈长愈大,你就愈来愈难隐藏它了。 P.S:有一天你会遇见一个名叫苏菲的女孩。为了让你们两人在见面前有机会认识,我已经开始将我写给你的明信片寄一份给她。我想她应该可以很快赶上。目前她知道得不比你多。她有一个朋友名叫乔安,也许她可以帮得上忙。 读了最后一张明信片后,乔安与苏菲静静坐着不动,彼此瞪大了眼睛对望。乔安紧紧地抓着苏菲的手腕。 “我有点害怕。”她说。 “我也是。” “最后一张明信片盖的是什么时候的邮戳?” 苏菲再看看卡片。 “五月十六日,”她说。“就是今天。” “不可能!”乔安大声说,语气中几乎有些愤怒。 他们仔细地看了邮戳。没错,上面的日期的确是一九九O五月十六日。 “这是不可能的。” 乔安坚持。“何况我也想不出来这会是谁写的。一定是一个认识我们两个的人。但他是怎么知道我们会在今天来到这里的?” 乔安比苏菲更害怕,苏菲却已经习惯了。 “我想这件事一定与那面铜镜有关。” 乔安再度跳起来。 “你的意思不是说这些卡片在黎巴嫩盖了邮戳后就从镜子里飞出来吧?” “难道你有更好的解释吗?” “没有。” 苏菲站起身来,举起蜡烛照着墙上的两幅画。 “‘柏克莱’和‘柏客来’这是什么意思?” “我也不知道。” 蜡烛快要烧完了。 “我们走吧广乔安说。“走呀!” “我们得把镜子带走才行。” 苏菲踮起脚尖,把那面大铜镜从墙壁的钩子上取下。乔安想要 阻止她,但苏菲可不理会。 当她们走出木屋时,天色就像寻常五月的夜晚一样黑。天边仍 有一些光线,因此她们可以很清楚地看到灌木与树林的轮廓。小湖 静静躺着,仿佛是天空的倒影。划向彼岸时,两个人都心事重重。 回到帐篷途中,乔安与苏菲都不太说话,但彼此心里明白对方一定满脑子都是方才所见的事。沿途不时有受惊的鸟呱喇飞起。有几次她们还听到猫头鹰“咕!咕!”的叫声。 她们一到帐篷就爬进睡袋中。乔安不肯把镜子放在帐篷里。入睡前,两人一致认为那面镜子是满可怕的,虽然它只是放在帐篷人口。苏菲今天也拿走了那些明信片,她把它们放在登山背包的口袋里。 第二天上午她们起得很早。苏菲先醒过来。她穿上靴子,走出帐篷。那面镜子就躺在草地上,镜面沾满了露水。 苏菲用毛衣把镜子上的露水擦干,然后注视着镜中的自己。她感觉仿佛自己正同时向下、向上地看着自己。还好她今天早晨没有收到从黎巴嫩寄来的明信片。 在帐篷后面的平原上方,迷离的晨雾正缓缓飘移,逐渐形成许多小小片的棉絮。小鸟儿一度哗然,仿佛受到惊吓,但苏菲既未看到也未听见任何猛禽的动静。 两人各加了一两件毛衣后,便在帐篷外用早餐。她们谈话的内容很快转到少校的小木屋和那些神秘的明信片。 吃完早餐后,她们卸下帐篷,打道回府。苏菲手臂下挟着那面大镜子。她不时得停下来休息一下,因为乔安根本不愿碰它。 她们快走到市郊时,听到间歇的枪声。苏菲想起席德的父亲提到的那备受战火摧残的黎巴嫩。她突然发现自己是多么幸运,能够生在一个和平的国家。后来,她才发现那些“枪声”原来是有人放烟火庆祝仲夏节的声音。 到家后,苏菲邀请乔安进屋里喝一杯热巧克力。苏菲的妈妈很好奇她们是在哪里发现那面镜子的,苏菲说他们是在少校的木屋外面捡到的,妈妈于是又说了一遍那里已有许多年无人居住等等的话。 乔安走后,苏菲穿上一件红洋装。那天虽是仲夏节,但与平常也没什么两样。到了晚上,电视新闻有个专题报道描写挪威驻黎巴嫩的联合国部队如何庆祝仲夏节。苏菲的眼睛一直盯着荧屏不放,她想她看到的那些人中有一个可能是席德的父亲。 五月十七日那天,苏菲做的最后一件事便是把那面大镜子挂在她房间的墙上。第二天早上,密洞中又放了一个棕色的信封,苏菲将信打开,开始看了起来。 Two Cultures ... the only way to avoid floating in a vacuum  It won't be long now before we meet, my dear Sophie. I thought you would return to the major's cabin--that's why I left all the cards from Hilde's father there. That was the only way they could be delivered to her. Don't worry about how she will get them. A lot can happen before June 15. We have seen how the Hellenistic philosophers recycled the ideas of earlier philosophers. Some even attempted to turn their predecessors into religious prophets. Plotinus came close to acclaiming Plato as the savior of humanity. But as we know, another savior was born during the period we have just been discussing--and that happened outside the Greco-Roman area. I refer to Jesus of Nazareth. In this chapter we will see how Christianity gradually began to permeate the Greco-Roman world--more or less the same way that Hilde's world has gradually begun to permeate ours. Jesus was a jew, and the Jews belong to Semitic culture. The Greeks and the Romans belong to Indo-European culture. European civilization has its roots in both cultures. But before we take a closer look at the way Christianity influenced Greco-Roman culture, we must examine these roots. THE INDO-EUROPEANS By Indo-European we mean all the nations and cultures that use Indo-European languages. This covers all European nations except those whose inhabitants speak one of the Finno-Ugrian languages (Lapp, Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian) or Basque. In addition, most Indian and Iranian languages belong to the Indo-European family of languages. About 4,000 years ago, the primitive Indo-Europeans lived in areas bordering on the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. From there, waves of these Indo-European tribes began to wander southeast into Iran and India, southwest to Greece, Italy, and Spain, westward through Central Europe to France and Britain, northwestward to Scandinavia and northward to Eastern Europe and Russia. Wherever they went, the Indo-Europeans assimilated with the local culture, although Indo-European languages and Indo-European religion came to play a dominant role. The ancient Indian Veda scriptures and Greek philosophy, and for that matter Snorri Sturluson's mythology are all written in related languages. But it is not only the languages that are related. Related languages often lead to related ideas. This is why we usually speak of an Indo-European "culture." The culture of the Indo-Europeans was influenced most of all by their belief in many gods. This is called polytheism. The names of these gods as well as much of the religious terminology recur throughout the whole Indo-European area. I'll give you a few examples: The ancient Indians worshipped the celestial god Dyaus, which in Sanskrit means the sky, day, heaven/ Heaven. In Greek this god is called Zeus, in Latin, Jupiter (actually iov-pater, or "Father Heaven"), and in Old Norse, Tyr. So the names Dyaus, Zeus, lov, and Tyr are dialectal variants of the same word. You probably learned that the old Vikings believed in gods which they called Aser. This is another word we find recurring all over the Indo-European area. In Sanskrit, the ancient classical language of India, the gods are called asura and in Persian Ahura. Another word for "god" is deva in Sanskrit, claeva in Persian, deus in Latin and tivurr in Old Norse. In Viking times, people also believed in a special group of fertility gods (such as Niord, Freyr, and Freyja). These gods were referred to by a special collective name, vaner, a word that is related to the Latin name for the goddess of fertility, Venus. Sanskrit has the related word van/, which means "desire." There is also a clear affinity to be observed in some of the Indo-European myths. In Snorri's stories of the Old Norse gods, some of the myths are similar to the myths of India that were handed down from two to three thousand years earlier. Although Snorri's myths reflect the Nordic environment and the Indian myths reflect the Indian, many of them retain traces of a common origin. We can see these traces most clearly in myths about immortal potions and the struggles of the gods against the monsters of chaos. We can also see clear similarities in modes of thought across the Indo-European cultures. A typical likeness is the way the world is seen as being the subject of a drama in which the forces of Good and Evil confront each other in a relentless struggle. Indo-Europeans have therefore often tried to "predict" how the battles between Good and Evil will turn out. One could say with some truth that it was no accident that Greek philosophy originated in the Indo-European sphere of culture. Indian, Greek, and Norse mythology all have obvious leanings toward a philosophic, or "speculative," view of the world. The Indo-Europeans sought "insight" into the history of the world. We can even trace a particular word for "insight" or "knowledge" from one culture to another all over the Indo-European world. In Sanskrit it is vidya. The word is identical to the Greek word idea, which was so important in Plato's philosophy. From Latin, we have the word video, but on Roman ground the word simply means to see. For us, "I see" can mean "I understand," and in the cartoons, a light bulb can flash on above Woody Woodpecker's head when he gets a bright idea. (Not until our own day did "seeing" become synonymous with staring at the TV screen.) In English we know the words wise and wisdom--in German, wissen (to know). Norwegian has the word viten, which has the same root as the Indian word vidya, the Greek idea, and the Latin video. All in all, we can establish that sight was the most important of the senses for Indo-Europeans. The literature of Indians, Greeks, Persians, and Teutons alike was characterized by great cosmic visions. (There is that word again: "vision" comes from the Latin verb "video."} It was also characteristic for Indo-European culture to make pictures and sculptures of the gods and of mythical events. Lastly, the Indo-Europeans had a cyc//c view of history. This is the belief that history goes in circles, just like the seasons of the year. There is thus no beginning and no end to history, but there are different civilizations that rise and fall in an eternal interplay between birth and death. Both of the two great Oriental religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, are Indo-European in origin. So is Greek philosophy, and we can see a number of clear parallels between Hinduism and Buddhism on the one hand and Greek philosophy on the other. Even today, Hinduism and Buddhism are strongly imbued with philosophical reflection. Not infrequently we find in Hinduism and Buddhism an emphasis on the fact that the deity is present in all things (pantheism) and that man can become one with God through religious insight. (Remember Plotinus, Sophie?) To achieve this requires the practice of deep self-communion or meditation. Therefore in the Orient, passivity and seclusion can be religious ideals. In ancient Greece, too, there were many people who believed in an ascetic, or religiously secluded, way of life for the salvation of the soul Many aspects of medieval monastic life can be traced back to beliefs dating from the Greco-Roman civilization. Similarly, the transmigration of the soul, or the cycle of rebirth, is a fundamental belief in many Indo-European cultures. For more than 2,500 years, the ultimate purpose of life for every Indian has been the release from the cycle of rebirth. Plato also believed in the transmigration of the soul. The Semites Let us now turn to the Semites, Sophie. They belong to a completely different culture with a completely different language. The Semites originated in the Arabian Peninsula, but they also migrated to different parts of the world. The Jews lived far from their home for more than 2,000 years. Semitic history and religion reached furthest away from its roots by way of Christendom, although Semitic culture also became widely spread via Islam. All three Western religions--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--share a Semitic background. The Muslims' holy scripture, the Koran, and the Old Testament were both written in the Semitic family of languages. One of the Old Testament words for "god" has the same semantic root as the Muslim Allah. (The word "allah" means, quite simply, "god.") When we get to Christianity the picture becomes more complicated. Christianity also has a Semitic background, but the New Testament was written in Greek, and when the Christian theology or creed was formulated, it was influenced by Greek and Latin, and thus also by Hellenistic philosophy. The Indo-Europeans believed in many different gods. It was just as characteristic for the Semites that from earliest times they were united in their belief in one God. This is called monotheism. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all share the same fundamental idea that there is only one God. The Semites also had in common a linear view of history. In other words, history was seen as an ongoing line. In the beginning God created the world and that was the beginning of history. But one day history will end and that will be Judgment Day, when God judges the living and the dead. The role played by history is an important feature of these three Western religions. The belief is that God intervenes in the course of history--even that history exists in order that God may manifest his will in the world, just as he once led Abraham to the "Promised Land," he leads mankind's steps through history to the Day of Judgment. When that day comes, all evil in the world will be destroyed. With their strong emphasis on God's activity in the course of history, the Semites were preoccupied with the writing of history for many thousands of years. And these historical roots constitute the very core of their holy scriptures. Even today the city of Jerusalem is a significant religious center for Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. This indicates something of the common background of these three religions. The city comprises prominent (Jewish) synagogues, (Christian) churches, and (Islamic) mosques. It is therefore deeply tragic that Jerusalem should have become a bone of contention--with people killing each other by the thousand because they cannot agree on who is to have ascendancy over this "Eternal City." May the UN one day succeed in making Jerusalem a holy shrine for all three religions! (We shall not go any further into this more practical part of our philosophy course for the moment. We will leave it entirely to Hilde's father. You must have gathered by now that he is a UN observer in Lebanon. To be more precise, I can reveal that he is serving as a major. If you are beginning to see some connection, that's quite as it should be. On the other hand, let's not anticipate events!) We said that the most important of the senses for Indo-Europeans was sight. How important hearing was to the Semitic cultures is just as interesting. It is no accident that the Jewish creed begins with the words: "Hear, O Israel!" In the Old Testament we read how the people "heard" the word of the Lord, and the Jewish prophets usually began their sermons with the words: "Thus spake Jehovah (God)." "Hearing" the word of God is also emphasized in Christianity. The religious ceremonies of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are all characterized by reading aloud or "reciting." I also mentioned that the Indo-Europeans always made pictorial representations or sculptures of their gods. It was just as characteristic for the Semites that they never did. They were not supposed to create pictures or sculptures of God or the "deity." The Old Testament commands that the people shall not make any image of God. This is still law today both for Judaism and Islam. Within Islam there is moreover a general aversion to both photography and art, because people should not compete with God in "creating" anything. But the Christian churches are full of pictures of Jesus and God, you are probably thinking. True enough, Sophie, but this is just one example of how Christendom was influenced by the Greco-Roman world. (In the Greek Orthodox Church--that is, in Greece and in Russia-- "graven images," or sculptures and crucifixes, from Bible stories are still forbidden.) In contrast to the great religions of the Orient, the three Western religions emphasize that there is a distance between God and his creation. The purpose is not to be released from the cycle of rebirth, but to be redeemed from sin and blame. Moreover, religious life is characterized more by prayer, sermons, and the study of the scriptures than by self-communion and meditation. Israel I have no intention of competing with your religion teacher, Sophie, but let us just make a quick summary of Christianity's Jewish background. It all began when God created the world. You can read how that happened on the very first page of the Bible. Then mankind began to rebel against God. Their punishment was not only that Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden--Death also came into the world. Man's disobedience to God is a theme that runs right through the Bible. If we go further on in the Book of Genesis we read about the Flood and Noah's Ark. Then we read that God made a covenant with Abraham and his seed. This covenant--or pact--was that Abraham and all his seed would keep the Lord's commandments. In exchange God promised to protect all the children of Abraham. This covenant was renewed when Moses was given the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai around the year 1200 B.C. At that time the Israelites had long been held as slaves in Egypt, but with God's help they were led back to the land of Israel. About 1,000 years before Christ--and therefore long before there was anything called Greek philosophy--we hear of three great kings of Israel. The first was Saul, then came David, and after him came Solomon. Now all the Israelites were united in one kingdom, and under King David, especially, they experienced a period of political, military, and cultural glory. When kings were chosen, they were anointed by the people. They thus received the title Messiah, which means "the anointed one." In a religious sense kings were looked upon as a go-between between God and his people. The king could therefore also be called the "Son of God" and the country could be called the "Kingdom of God." But before long Israel began to lose its power and the kingdom was divided into a Northern kingdom (Israel) and a Southern kingdom (Judea). In 722 B.C. the Northern kingdom was conquered by the Assyrians and it lost all political and religious significance. The Southern kingdom fared no better, being conquered by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. Its temple was destroyed and most of its people were carried off to slavery in Babylon. This "Babylonian captivity" lasted until 539 B.C. when the people were permitted to return to Jerusalem, and the great temple was restored. But for the rest of the period before the birth of Christ the Jews continued to live under foreign domination. The question Jews constantly asked themselves was why the Kingdom of David was destroyed and why catastrophe after catastrophe rained down on them, for God had promised to hold Israel in his hand. But the people had also promised to keep God's commandments. It gradually became widely accepted that God was punishing Israel for her disobedience. From around 750 B.C. various prophets began to come forward preaching God's wrath over Israel for not keeping his commandments. One day God would hold a Day of Judgment over Israel, they said. We call prophecies like these Doomsday prophecies. In the course of time there came other prophets who preached that God would redeem a chosen few of his people and send them a "Prince of Peace" or a king of the House of David. He would restore the old Kingdom of David and the people would have a future of prosperity. "The people that walked in darkness will see a great light," said the prophet Isaiah, and "they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined." We call prophecies like these prophecies of redemption. To sum up: The children of Israel lived happily under King David. But later on when their situation deteriorated, their prophets began to proclaim that there would one day come a new king of the House of David. This "Messiah," or "Son of God," would "redeem" the people, restore Israel to greatness, and found a "Kingdom of God." Jesus I assume you are still with me, Sophie? The key words are "Messiah," "Son of God," and "Kingdom of God." At first it was all taken politically. In the time of Jesus, there were a lot of people who imagined that there would come a new "Messiah" in the sense of a political, military, and religious leader of the caliber of King David. This "savior" was thus looked upon as a national deliverer who would put an end to the suffering of the Jews under Roman domination. Well and good. But there were also many people who were more farsighted. For the past two hundred years there had been prophets who believed that the promised "Messiah" would be the savior of the whole world. He would not simply free the Israelites from a foreign yoke, he would save all mankind from sin and blame--and not least, from death. The longing for "salvation" in the sense of redemption was widespread all over the Hellenistic world. So along comes Jesus of Nazareth. He was not the only man ever to have come forward as the promised "Messiah." Jesus also uses the words "Son of God," the "Kingdom of God," and "redemption." In doing this he maintains the link with the old prophets. He rides into Jerusalem and allows himself to be acclaimed by the crowds as the savior of the people, thus playing directly on the way the old kings were installed in a characteristic "throne accession ritual." He also allows himself to be anointed by the people. "The time is fulfilled," he says, and "the Kingdom of God is at hand." But here is a very important point: Jesus distinguished himself from the other "messiahs" by stating clearly that he was not a military or political rebel. His mission was much greater. He preached salvation and God's forgiveness for everyone. To the people he met on his way he said "Your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake." Handing out the "remission of sins" in this way was totally unheard of. And what was even worse, he addressed God as "Father" (Abba). This was absolutely un-precedented in the Jewish community at that time. It was therefore not long before there arose a wave of protest against him among the scribes. So here was the situation: a great many people at the time of Jesus were waiting for a Messiah who would reestablish the Kingdom of God with a great flourish of trumpets (in other words, with fire and sword). The expression "Kingdom of God" was indeed a recurring theme in the preachings of Jesus--but in a much broader sense. Jesus said that the "Kingdom of God" is loving thy neighbor, compassion for the weak and the poor, and forgiveness of those who have erred. This was a dramatic shift in the meaning of an age-old expression with warlike overtones. People were expecting a military leader who would soon proclaim the establishment of the Kingdom of God, and along comes Jesus in kirtle and sandals telling them that the Kingdom of God-- or the "new covenant"--is that you must "love thy neighbor as thyself." But that was not all, Sophie, he also said that we must love our enemies. When they strike us, we must not retaliate; we must even turn the other cheek. And we must forgive--not seven times but seventy times seven. Jesus himself demonstrated that he was not above talking to harlots, corrupt usurers, and the politically subversive. But he went even further: he said that a good-for-nothing who has squandered all his father's inheritance-- or a humble publican who has pocketed official funds-- is righteous before God when he repents and prays for forgiveness, so great is God's mercy. But hang on--he went a step further: Jesus said that such sinners were more righteous in the eyes of God and more deserving of God's forgiveness than the spotless Pharisees who went around flaunting their virtue. Jesus pointed out that nobody can earn God's mercy. We cannot redeem ourselves (as many of the Greeks believed). The severe ethical demands made by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount were not only to teach what the will of God meant, but also to show that no man is righteous in the eyes of God. God's mercy is boundless, but we have to turn to God and pray for his forgiveness. I shall leave a more thorough study of Jesus and his teachings to your religion teacher. He will have quite a task. I hope he will succeed in showing what an excep-tional man Jesus was. In an ingenious way he used the language of his time to give the old war cries a totally new and broader content. It's not surprising that he ended on the Cross. His radical tidings of redemption were at odds with so many interests and power factors that he had to be removed. When we talked about Socrates, we saw how dangerous it could be to appeal to people's reason. With Jesus we see how dangerous it can be to demand unconditional brotherly love and unconditional forgiveness. Even in the world of today we can see how mighty powers can come apart at the seams when confronted with simple demands for peace, love, food for the poor, and amnesty for the enemies of the state. You may recall how incensed Plato was that the most righteous man in Athens had to forfeit his life. According to Christian teachings, Jesus was the only righteous person who ever lived. Nevertheless he was condemned to death. Christians say he died for the sake of humanity. This is what Christians usually call the "Passion" of Christ Jesus was the "suffering servant" who bore the sins of humanity in order that we could be "atoned" and saved from God's wrath. Paul A few days after Jesus had been crucified and buried, rumors spread that he had risen from the grave. He thereby proved that he was no ordinary man. He truly was the "Son of God." We could say that the Christian Church was founded on Easter Morning with the rumors of the resurrection of Jesus. This is already established by Paul: "And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain and your faith is also vain." Now all mankind could hope for the resurrection of the body, for it was to save us that Jesus was crucified. But, dear Sophie, remember that from a Jewish point of view there was no question of the "immortality of the soul" or any form of "transmigration"; that was a Greek--and therefore an Indo-European--thought. According to Christianity there is nothing in man--no "soul," for example-- that is in itself immortal. Although the Christian Church believes in the "resurrection of the body and eternal life," it is by God's miracle that we are saved from death and "damnation." It is neither through our own merit nor through any natural--or innate--ability. So the early Christians began to preach the "glad tidings" of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. Through his mediation, the "Kingdom of God" was about to be-come a reality. Now the entire world could be won for Christ. (The word "christ" is a Greek translation of the Hebrew word "messiah," the anointed one.) A few years after the death of Jesus, the Pharisee Paul converted to Christianity. Through his many missionary journeys across the whole of the Greco-Roman world he made Christianity a worldwide religion. We hear of this in the Acts of the Apostles. Paul's preaching and guidance for the Christians is known to us from the many epistles written by him to the early Christian congregations. He then turns up in Athens. He wanders straight into the city square of the philosophic capital. And it is said that "his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry." He visited the Jewish synagogue in Athens and conversed with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. They took him up to the Areopagos hill and asked him: "May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is? For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean." Can you imagine it, Sophie? A Jew suddenly appears in the Athenian marketplace and starts talking about a savior who was hung on a cross and later rose from the grave. Even from this visit of Paul in Athens we sense a coming collision between Greek philosophy and the doctrine of Christian redemption. But Paul clearly succeeds in getting the Athenians to listen to him. From the Areopa-gos--and beneath the proud temples of the Acropolis-- he makes the following speech: "Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things. And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him and find him, though he be not far from every one of us. For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent: Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given as-surance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead." Paul in Athens, Sophie! Christianity has begun to penetrate the Greco-Roman world as something else, something completely different from Epicurean, Stoic, or Neoplatonic philosophy. But Paul nevertheless finds some common ground in this culture. He emphasizes that the search for God is natural to all men. This was not new to the Greeks. But what was new in Paul's preaching is that God has also revealed himself to mankind and has in truth reached out to them. So he is no longer a "philosophic God" that people can approach with their understanding. Neither is he "an image of gold or silver or stone"--there were plenty of those both on the Acropolis and down in the marketplace! He is a God that "dwelleth not in temples made with hands." He is a personal God who intervenes in the course of history and dies on the Cross for the sake of mankind. When Paul had made his speech on the Areopagos, we read in the Acts of the Apostles, some mocked him for what he said about the resurrection from the dead. But others said: "We will hear thee again of this matter." There were also some who followed Paul and began to believe in Christianity. One of them, it is worth noting, was a woman named Damaris. Women were amongst the most fervent converts to Christianity. So Paul continued his missionary activities. A few decades after the death of Jesus, Christian congregations were already established in all the important Greek and Roman cities--in Athens, in Rome, in Alexandria, in Ephesos, and in Corinth. In the space of three to four hundred years, the entire Hellenistic world had become Christian. The Creed It was not only as a missionary that Paul came to have a fundamental significance for Christianity. He also had great influence within the Christian congregations. There was a widespread need for spiritual guidance. One important question in the early years after Jesus was whether non-Jews could become Christians without first becoming Jews. Should a Greek, for instance, observe the dietary laws? Paul believed it to be unnecessary. Christianity was more than a Jewish sect. It addressed itself to everybody in a universal message of salvation. The "Old Covenant" between God and Israel had been replaced by the "New Covenant" which Jesus had established between God and mankind. However, Christianity was not the only religion at that time. We have seen how Hellenism was influenced by a fusion of religions. It was thus vitally necessary for the church to step forward with a concise summary of the Christian doctrine, both in order to distance itself from other religions and to prevent schisms within the Christian Church. Therefore the first Creed was established, summing up the central Christian "dogmas" or tenets. One such central tenet was that Jesus was both God and man. He was not the "Son of God" on the strength of his actions alone. He was God himself. But he was also a "true man" who had shared the misfortunes of mankind and actually suffered on the Cross. This may sound like a contradiction. But the message of the church was precisely that God became man. Jesus was not a "demigod" (which was half man, half god). Belief in such "demigods" was quite widespread in Greek and Hellenistic religions. The church taught that Jesus was "perfect God, perfect man." Postscript Let me try to say a few words about how all this hangs together, my dear Sophie. As Christianity makes its entry into the Greco-Roman world we are witnessing a dramatic meeting of two cultures. We are also seeing one of history's great cultural revolutions. We are about to step out of antiquity. Almost one thousand years have passed since the days of the early Greek philosophers. Ahead of us we have the Christian Middle Ages, which also lasted for about a thousand years. The German poet Goethe once said that "he who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth." I don't want you to end up in such a sad state. I will do what I can to acquaint you with your historical roots. It is the only way to become a human being. It is the only way to become more than a naked ape. It is the only way to avoid floating in a vacuum. "It is the only way to become a human being. It is the only way to become more than a naked ape ..." Sophie sat for a while staring into the garden through the little holes in the hedge. She was beginning to understand why it was so important to know about her historical roots. It had certainly been important to the Children of Israel. She herself was just an ordinary person. But if she knew her historical roots, she would be a little less ordinary. She would not be living on this planet for more than a few years. But if the history of mankind was her own history, in a way she was thousands of years old. 两种文化    ……避免在真空中飘浮的唯一方式…… 亲爱的苏菲: 我们相见的日子已经不远了。我想你大概会回到少校的小木屋,所以我才把席德的父亲寄来的明信片留在那儿,这是把那些明信片转给她的唯一方式。你毋需担心她如何才能拿到它们,在六月十五日以前有许多事可能会发生呢! 我们已经谈过希腊文化时期的哲学家如何重新利用早期哲学家的学说,其中有人还把这些哲学家当成宗教先知。普罗汀就只差没有把柏拉图说成人类的救星。 说到救星,我们知道,在这个时期,另外一位救星诞生了。这件事情发生在希腊罗马地区以外的地方,我们所说的这位救星就是拿撒勒的耶稣。在这一章中我们会谈到基督教如何逐渐渗透希腊罗马地区,就像席德的世界逐渐渗透我们的世界一样。 耶稣是犹太人,而犹大人属于闪族文化。 希腊人与罗马人则属于印欧文化。我们可以断言欧洲文明曾同时受到这两种文化的孕育。不过,在我们详细讨论基督教如何影响希腊罗马地区之前,必须先了解一下这两种文化。 印欧民族 所谓印欧民族指的是所有使用印欧语言的民族与文化,包括所有的欧洲国家,除了那些讲菲诺攸格里克(Finno一Ugrian)语族语言(包括斯堪地那维亚半岛最北端的拉普兰语、芬兰语、爱沙尼亚语和匈牙利语)或巴斯克语的民族之外。除此之外,印度和伊朗地区的大多数语言也属于印欧语系。 大约四千年前,原始的印欧民族住在邻近黑海与里海的地区。 后来他们陆续向四方迁徙。他们往东南进入伊朗与印度,往西南到达希腊、意大利与西班牙,往西经过中欧,到达法国与英国,往西北进入斯堪地那维亚半岛,往北进入东欧与俄罗斯。无论到什么地方,这些印欧民族都努力吸收当地文化,不过在语言和宗教方面还是以印欧语和印欧宗教较占优势。 无论是古印度的吠陀经、希腊的哲学或史特卢森(SnorriSturluson)的神话都是以相近的印欧语言撰写的。但相近的不只是语言而已,因为相近的语言往往导致相近的思想,这是我们为何经常谈到印欧“文化”的缘故。 印欧民族相信宇宙间有许多天神(此即所谓的“多神论”),这对他们的文化有很深远的影响。这些天神的名字和许多宗教词汇曾出现在印欧文化所及的各个地区。下面我将举一些例子: 古印度人尊奉的天神是戴欧斯(Dyaus),希腊文称他为宙斯(Zeus),拉丁文称他为朱彼得(Jupitter)(事实上是iov—pater,或“法父”之意),古斯堪地那维亚文则称之为泰尔(Tyr)。这些名字事实上指的是同一个字,只是各地称呼不同罢了。你可能读过古代维京人相信他们所谓的Aser(诸神)的事,Aser这个字也出现在各印欧文化地区。在印度古代的传统语言“梵语”中,诸神被称为asura,在波斯文中则被称为ahura。梵语中另外一个表示“神”的字为deva,在波斯文中为daeve,在拉丁文中为deus,在古斯堪地那维亚文中则为tivurr. 古代的北欧人也相信有一群掌管万物生育、生长的神(如尼欧德与芙瑞雅)。这些神有一个通称,叫做vaner,这个字与拉丁文中代表生育之神的字Venus(维纳斯)相近。梵语中也有一个类似的宇叫Vani为“欲望”之意。 有些印欧神话也很明显有相近之处。在Sn。ni有关古代北欧诸神的故事中,有些与两三千午前印度流传下来的神话非常相似。 尽管Snorri的神话反映的是古代北欧的环境,印度神话则反映印度当地的环境,但其中许多神话都有若干痕迹显示他们具有共同的渊源。其中最明显的是那些关于长生不老仙丹与诸神对抗浑沌妖魔的神话故事。 此外,很明显的,各印欧文化也有相近的思想模式。最典型的例于是他们都将世界看成善与恶无休无止相互对抗的场所,因此舟欧民族才会经常试图“预测”世界未来的前途。 我们可以说,希腊哲学源自印欧文化并非偶然。印度、希腊与古代北欧的神话明显都有一种以哲学或“思索”的观点来看这个世界的倾向。 印欧人希望能够“洞察”世界的历史。我们甚至可以发现在各舟欧文化中都有一个特别的字来表示“洞见”或“知识”。在梵语中,这个字是vidya,这个字的意思与希腊文中的idea这个字相当。而idea船此字在柏拉图的哲学中占有很重要的分量。在拉丁文中这个字是video,不过对罗马人来说,这个字只是“看见”的意思。在英文中,Isee可能表示“我懂了”。在卡通影片中,啄木鸟想到一个聪明的办法时,脑袋上方会有灯泡发亮。(到了现代,seeing这个字才变成“盯着电视看”的同义字。)英文中有wise和wisdom这两个字。 在德文中有wissen(知道)这个字,在挪威文中则有viten。这些字的来源与印度文中的vidya、希腊文中的idea与拉丁文中的video这些字相同。 总而言之,我们可以断定对印欧人而言,视觉乃是最重要的感官。印度、希腊、波斯与条顿民族(Teut。ns)的文学都以宏大的宇宙观(cosmicvision)为特色(在这里vision这个字源自拉丁文中的Video这个动词)。此外,印欧文化的另一个特色是经常制作描绘诸神以及神话事件的图画和雕刻。 最后一点,印欧民族认为历史是循环的。他们相信历史就像四季一样会不断循环。因此历史既没有开始,也没有结束,只不过在无尽的生生死死中有不同的文明兴亡消长罢了。 印度教与佛教这两大东方宗教都源自印欧文化,希腊哲学亦然。我们可以看到这两者间有明显相似的痕迹。到了今天,印度教与佛教仍然充满了哲学式的省思。 我们可以发现,印度教与佛教都强调万物皆有神性(此即“泛神论”),并主张人悟道后就可以成佛。(还记得普罗汀的说法吗?)为了要悟道,人必须深深自省或打坐冥想。因此,在东方,清净无为、退隐山林可以成为一种宗教理想。同样的,在古代的希腊,许多人也相信禁欲苦修或不食人间烟火的生活可以使灵魂得救。中世纪僧侣的生活在许多方面就是受到希腊罗马观念的影响。 此外,许多印欧文化也有“灵魂转生”或“生命轮回”的观念。 两千五百多年来,每一个印度人的生命终极目的就是要挣脱轮回。柏拉图也相信灵魂可以转生。    闪族文化 现在让我们来谈一谈闪族文化。这是一个完全不同的文化,他们的语言也和印欧语系完全不同。闪族人源自阿拉伯半岛,不过他们后来同样也迁徙到世界各地。两千多年来,这些犹大人一直过着离乡背井的生活。透过基督教与回教,闪族文化(历史与宗教)的影响遍及各地。 西方三大宗教——犹太教、基督教(编按:Christianity,系包括所有信奉基督的教派,最重要的有四种: 主要是天主教、基督教、东正教、英国圣公会,其中基督教又称新教,是十六世纪宗教革命后才分出来的)与伊斯兰教——都源出闪族。伊斯兰教的圣经古兰经与基督教的旧约圣经都是以闪族语系的语言写成的。旧约中代表神”的一个字和伊斯兰文中的Allah(“阿拉”,就是“神”的意思)同样都源自闪语。 谈到基督教时,情况就变得比较复杂了。基督教虽然也是源自闪族文化,但新约则是以希腊文撰写,同时,基督教的教义神学成形时,曾受到希腊与拉丁文化的影响,因此当然也就受到希腊哲学的影响。 我们说过,印欧民族乃是多神论者,但闪族一开始就相信宇宙间只有一个上帝,这就是所谓的“一神论”。犹大教、基督教与伊斯兰教都是一神论的宗教。 闪族文化另外一个共同的特色是相信历史乃是呈直线式发展,捷句话说,他们认为历史是一条不断延伸的线。神在鸿濛大初时创造了世界,历史从此展开,但终于有一天它会结束,而这一天就是所谓的“最后审判日”,届时神将会对所有生者与死者进行审判。 历史扮演的角色乃是这西方三大宗教中一个很重要的特色。 他们相信,上帝会干预历史发展的方向,他们甚至认为历史存在的目的,是为了让上帝可以完成他在这世界的旨意。就像他曾经带领亚伯拉罕到“应许之地”一般,他将带领人类通过历史,迈向“最后审判日”。当这一天来临时,世界上所有的邪恶都将被摧毁。 由于强调上帝在历史过程中所扮演的角色,闪族人数千年来一直非常注重历史的纪录。这些历史文献后来成为圣经的核心。 到了今天,耶路撒冷城仍是犹太人、基督徒与伊斯兰教徒共同的重要宗教中心。这显示三大宗教显然具有某种相同的背景。 我们曾经说过,对印欧人而言,最重要的感官乃是视觉。而有趣的是,闪族文化中最重要的感官则是听觉,因此犹大人的圣经一开始就是“听哪!以色列”。在旧约圣经中我们也读到人们如何“听到”上帝的话语,而犹太先知通常也以“耶和华(上帝)说”这几个字开始他们的布道。同样的,基督教也强调信徒应“听从”上帝的话语。无论基督教、犹太教或伊斯兰教,同样都有大声朗诵经文的习惯。 此外,我曾提到印欧人经常以图画或雕刻来描绘诸神的形象。 在这一点上闪族人正好相反,他们从来不这样做,对闪族人而言,描绘或雕凿神像是不可以的。旧约曾训诫人们不要制作任何神像。 你也许会想: “可是,基督教会的教堂却到处都是耶稣与上帝的画像呀广没错,确是如此。不过,这是基督教受到希腊罗马文化影响的结果(希腊与俄罗斯等地的希腊正教至今仍不许信徒制作有关圣经故事的雕像)。 与东方各大宗教相反的是,西方三大宗教强调上帝与造物之间有一段距离。对他们而言,生命的目的不在脱离轮回,而在于从罪恶与谴责中得救。此外,西方的宗教生活较偏重祈祷、布道和研究圣经,而不在于自省与打坐。    以色列 苏菲,我无意与你的宗教课老师互别苗头,但现在我想简短地谈一下基督教与犹大文化的渊源。 一切都是从上帝创造世界时开始。你可以在圣经第一页看到这件事的始末。后来人类开始反抗上帝,为了惩罚他们,上帝不但将亚当与夏娃逐出伊甸园,并且从此让人类面对死亡。 人类对上帝的反抗乃是贯穿整部圣经的主题,旧约创世记中记载洪水与诺亚方舟的故事。然后我们读到上帝与亚伯拉罕以及他的子孙立约,要求亚伯拉罕与他的世代子孙都必须遵守上帝的戒律。为了奖赏他们,上帝答应保护亚伯拉罕的后裔。公元前一二00年左右,上帝在西乃山上向摩西颁布十诫时,又再次与他立约。那时以色列人在埃及已经当了很久的奴隶,但借着上帝的帮助,他们在摩西的领导下终于回到了以色列的土地。 约公元前一千年时(在希腊哲学诞生很久很久之前)有三位伟大的以色列王。第一位是扫罗王,第二位是大卫王,第三位是所罗门王。当时,所有的以色列子孙已经在这个王国之下团结起来。尤其是大卫王统治时期,以色列在政治、军事与文化上都卓然有成。 依当时的习俗,国王被遴选出来时,要由人民行涂油礼,因此他们被赋予“弥赛亚”(意为“受膏者”)的称号。在宗教的意义上,国王被视为上帝与他的子民间的媒介,因此国王也称为“上帝之子”,而他的王国则可称为“天国”。 然而,不久之后,以色列的国力开始式微,国家也分裂成南北•两国,南国为“犹太”,北国则仍称“以色列”。公元前七二二年时北国被亚述人征服,失去了政治与宗教的影响力。南国的命运也好不了多少。它在公元前五八六午时被巴比伦人征服,圣殿被毁,大多数人民也被运往巴比伦充当奴隶。这段“巴比伦奴隶时期”一直持续了四十余年,直到公元前五三九年时以色列人民才获准返回耶路撒冷,重建圣殿。然而,一直到基督降生,犹太人都生活在异族统治之下。 犹太人经常提出的一个问题是: 上帝既已答应保护以色列,为何大卫的王国会被摧毁?犹太人又为何一次次遭逢劫难?不过,话说回来,人们也曾答应要遵守上帝的诫律。因此,愈来愈多人相信,上帝是因为以色列不遵守诫律才加以惩罚。 公元前七五O年左右,有多位先知开始宣称上帝已因以色列不遵守诫律而发怒。他们说,总有一天上帝会对以色列进行最后的审判。我们称这类预言为“末日预言”。 后来,又另有一些先知预言上帝将拯救少数的子民,并且派遣一位“和平之子”或大卫家族的国王协助他们重建大卫的王国,使这些人民享受繁荣的生活。 先知以赛亚说: “那坐在黑暗里的百姓,看见了大光,坐在死荫之地的人,有光发现照着他们。”我们称这类预言为“救赎预言”。 总而言之,以色列的予民原来在大卫王的统治之下安居乐业,但后来当情形每下愈况时,他们的先知开始宣称有一天将会出现一位大卫家族的新国王。这位“弥赛亚”或“上帝之予”将“拯救”人民,使以色列重新成为一个伟大的国家,并建立“天国”。    耶稣 苏菲,你还在看吗?我刚才说的关键字是“弥赛亚”、“上帝之子”与“天国”。最初人们只是从政治角度来解释这些字眼。在耶稣的时代,有很多人想象将来会出现一位“救世主”(像大卫王一样有才干的政治、军事与宗教领袖)。这位“救世主”被视为国家救星,可以使犹大人脱离受罗马人统治之苦。 这固然是一件美事,但也有许多人把眼光放得较远。在那两百年间,不断有先知预言上帝应许派来的“救世主”将会拯救全世界。 他不仅将使以色列人挣脱异族的桎梏,并将拯救所有世人,使其免于罪草与上帝的责罚,得到永生。这种渴望救赎的想法在希腊文化影响所及的各地区也很普遍。 于是拿撒勒的耶稣出现了。他不是唯一以“救世主”姿态出现的人,但他同时也使用“上帝之予”、“天国”与“救赎”等字眼,因此保持了他与旧先知之间的联系。他骑马进入耶路撒冷,接受群众赞颂为人民救星,仿佛从前的国王在登基时例行的“加冕典礼”一般。 他并接受民众涂油。他说: “时候到了,天国近了。” 这些都很重要,但请你注意:耶稣不同于其他“救世主”,因为他声明他并非军事或政治叛徒。他的任务要比这伟大得多。他宣称每一个人都可以得到上帝的拯救与赦免,因此他可以置身沿途所见的人群中,对他们说: “你们的罪已经得到赦免了。” 这种“赦免罪恶”的方式是当时人闻所未闻的。更糟的是他称上帝为“天父”。对于当时的犹太人而言,这是从未有过的事。于是,不久后,律法学者便一致起而反对他。他们一步一步地准备将他处决。 当时的情况是这样: 耶稣那个时代有许多人等待一位“救世主”在嘹亮的军号声中(换句话说,就是大举挥军)重建“天国”。耶稣传道时的确也时常提到“天国”这个字眼,但意义要宽广得多。耶稣说,“天国”就是爱你的邻居、同情病弱穷困者,并宽恕犯错之人。 ”’于是,“天国”这样一个原本具有战争意味的古老字眼,到了耶稣口中便在意义上有了一百八十度的转变。人们原本期待的是一位很快能够建立“天国”的军事领袖,但他们看到的却是穿着短袍、凉鞋,告诉他们“天国”——或“新约”——就是要“爱邻如己”的耶稣。除此之外,耶稣还说我们必须爱我们的敌人,当他们打我们时,我们不得报复,不但如此,我们还要“把另外一边脸转过来”让他们打,同时我们必须宽恕,不止宽恕七次,更要宽恕七十个七次。 耶稣用他一生的行动显示,他并不以和妓女,贪污、放高利贷的人与政治颠覆分子交谈为耻。但他所行之事还不止于此;他说一个把父亲的家财挥霍净尽的浪子或一个侵吞公款的卑微税吏只要肯悔改并祈求上帝宽恕,在上帝眼中就是一个义人,因为上帝的恩典浩瀚广大。 然而,耶稣还认为,像浪子与税吏这般的罪人在上帝眼中比那些到处炫耀自己德行的法利赛人要更正直,更值得宽恕。 耶稣指出,没有人能够获得上帝的怜悯,我们也不能(像许多希腊人相信的)拯救自己。耶稣在《登山宝训》中要求人们遵守的严格道德规范不仅显示上帝的旨意,也显示在上帝眼中,没有人是正直的。上帝的恩典无垠无涯,但我们必须向他祈祷,才能获得宽恕。 有关耶稣与他的教诲的细节,我还是留给你的宗教老师来讲授吧。这可不是一件容易的事。我希望他能够让你们了解耶稣是一个多么伟大不凡的人。他很巧妙地用那个时代的语言,赋予一个古老的战争口号崭新而宽广的意义。无怪乎他会被钉上十字架,因为他那些有关救赎的崭新信息已经威胁到当时许多人的利益与在位者的权势,因此他们非铲除他不可。 在谈到苏格拉底时,我们发现,如果有人诉诸人们的理性,对某些人可能会造成很大的威胁。同样的,在耶稣的身上,我们也发现要求人们无条件地爱别人、无条件地宽恕别人,也可能对于某些人造成极大的威胁。即使在今天,我们也可以看到,当人民开始要求和平与爱、要求让穷人免于饥饿、要求当权者赦免政敌时,强权也可能因此在一夕之间倾覆。 你也许还记得柏拉图对于苏格拉底这位雅典最正直的人居然被处死一事如何忿忿不平。根据基督教的教义,耶稣也是世上唯一正直的人。然而他最后还是被判了死刑。基督徒说他是为了人类而死,这就是一般所称的“基督受难记”。耶稣是“受苦的仆人” (sulfenngservant),背负起人类所有的罪孽,以使我们能够得到“救赎”,并免受上帝的责罚。 保罗耶稣被钉上十字架后就下葬了。几天后有人传言他已经从坟墓中复活。因此证明他并非凡人,而真正是“上帝之子”。 我们可以说复活节当天早上,人们传言耶稣复活之时就是基督教会创始之日。保罗已经断言: “若基督没有复活,则我们所传的便是枉然,你们所信的也是枉然。” 如今全人类都可以盼望“肉体的复活”,因为耶稣正是为了拯救我们才被钉上十字架。不过,苏菲,你不要忘了: 从犹太人的观点来看,世间并没有“不朽的灵魂”,也没有任何形式的“转生”。这些都是希腊人和整个印欧民族的想法。基督教认为人并没有什么东西(如灵魂)是生来就不朽的。虽然基督教会相信“人的肉体将复活并得到永生”,但我们之所以能免于死亡与“天谴”,乃是由于上帝所行的神迹之故,并非由于我们自身的努力或先天的能力。 秉持着这种信念,早期的基督徒开始传扬相信耶稣基督即可得救的“福音”。他们宣称,在耶稣居间努力之下,“天国”即将实现。 他们想使全世界归于基督的名下。(Christ"基督”这个字是希腊文救世主”的意思。在希伯来文中,此字为messlah,即“弥赛亚”。)耶稣去世数年后,法利赛人保罗改信基督教。他在希腊罗马各地游历布道,使基督教义传遍世界各地。我们在圣经使徒行传中可以读到有关的记载。从他写给早期教会会众的多封使徒书信中,我们可以了解保罗传扬的教义。 后来,保罗来到了雅典。他直接前往这个哲学首府的市中心广场,据说当时他“看见满城都是偶像,就心里着急”。他拜访了雅典城内的犹太教会堂,并与伊比鸠鲁学派和斯多葛学派的哲学家谈话。他们带他到最高法院所在的一座小丘上,问他: “你所讲的这新道,我们也可以知道吗?因为你有些奇怪的事传到我们耳中,我们愿意知道这些事是什么意思。” 苏菲,你可以想象吗?一个犹太人突然出现在雅典的市集,并开始谈到一个被钉在十字架上而后从坟墓里复活的救星。从保罗这次造访雅典,我们便可察觉到希腊哲学与基督教救赎的教义间即将发生的冲突。不过保罗显然办到了一件事: 他使得雅典人倾听他的言论。在最高法院小丘——卫城的宏伟神殿下——他发表了以下演讲: 众位雅典人哪,我看你们凡事很敬畏鬼神。我游行的时候,观看你们所敬拜的,遇见一座坛,上面写着未识之神。你们所不认识而敬拜的,我现在告诉你们。 创造宇宙和其中万物的神,既是天地的主,就不住人手所造的殿,也不用人手服侍,好像缺少什么,自己倒将生命、气息、万物赐给万人。他从一本造出万族的人,住在全地上,并且预先定准他们的年限和所住的疆界。要叫他们寻求神,或者可以揣摩而得,其实他离我们各人不远。我们生活、动作、存留都在乎他。就如你们作诗的,有人说,我们也是他所生的。我们既是神所生的,就不当以为神的神性像人用手艺、心思所雕刻的金、银、石。世人蒙昧无知的时候,神并不监察,如今却吩咐各处的人都要悔改。 因为他已经定了日子,要借着他所设立的人,按公义审判天下。并且叫他从死里复活,给万人作可信的凭据。 从保罗到雅典传教开始,基督教会就逐渐渗透希腊罗马地区。 它虽不同于希腊原有的伊比鸠鲁学派、斯多葛学派或新柏拉图哲学,但保罗仍然在两者间找到了共同点。他强调世人皆试图寻找上帝。对希腊人而言这并非新的概念,但是保罗声称上帝已经向人类显现他自己,并且实际上已经把手伸给人类,因此他不再是一位人们可用理性来了解的“哲学的上帝”,也不是“金、银、石雕刻的偶像”(这两者在希腊的卫城与市集中到处都是),而是一位“不住人手所造殿”的神,也是一位会干预历史发展方向,并为世人而死在十字架上的人形的神。 根据使徒行传的记载,保罗在最高法院小丘发表演讲,提到耶稣死而复活的事时,有人就讥笑他,但也有人说: “我们再听你讲这个吧。”有些人后来追随保罗,开始信奉基督教,其中有一个女人名叫大马哩(Damaris)。这件事之所以特别值得一提,是因为妇女是最热切信奉基督教的族群之一。 就这样,保罗继续他的传教活动。耶稣受难数十年后,雅典、罗马、亚力山卓、以弗所(Ephesus)与哥林多(Corinth)等重要的希腊罗马城市都成立了基督教会。在后来的三四百年之间,整个希腊文化地区都成为基督教的世界。 教义保罗对基督教的贡献不仅是做一个传教士而已,他对基督教的教会也有很大的影响。因为当时的教徒普遍需要灵性上的指引。 耶稣受难后的最初几年中,基督教面临一个很重要的问题是: 非犹太人(外邦人)是否可以成为基督徒?还是一定要先归化为犹太人才可以?又,外邦人——如希腊人——应该遵守十诫吗?保罗认为,外邦人不一定要成为犹太人才可以信奉基督教,因为基督教不只是犹太人的宗教。它的目标在拯救全体世人。上帝与以色列订的“旧约”已经由耶稣代表上帝与人类订的“新约”所取代。 无论如何,基督教并非当时唯一的宗教。我们已经看到希腊文化如何受到各种宗教的影响,因此,为了显示与其他宗教有别,也为了防止教会内部分裂,基督教会认为有必要提出一套简明扼要的教义。因此他们写成了第一部《使徒信经》(Creed),总结基督徒教义的中心“信条”或主要教义。 其中一条是: 耶稣是神,也是人。他不仅是凭借上帝之力的“上帝之子”,他也是上帝本身。然而,他同时也是一个为人类分担灾祸并因此在十字架上受苦的“真人”。 乍听之下,这话也许有自相矛盾之嫌,但教会的意思正是: 上帝已经变成了人,耶稣不是一位“半人半神”(当时希腊与地中海东岸的许多宗教都相信宇宙有此类“半人半神”的存在),教会宣称耶稣乃是“完全的神,完全的人”。 后记亲爱的苏菲,让我再描述一下当时的整个情况。当基督教进入希腊罗马地区后,两种文化于是浩浩荡荡地交会融合,形成了历史上的一大文化革命。 此时,距早期希腊哲学家的年代已经大约有一千年了。古代时期就要过去,历史将进入以基督教为重心的中世纪。这段期间同样维持了将近一千年之久。 德国诗人歌德曾经说过: “不能汲取三千年历史经验的人没有未来可言。”我不希望你成为这些人当中之一。我将尽我所能,让你熟悉你在历史上的根。这是人之所以为人(而不仅是一只赤身露体的猿猴)的唯一方式,也是我们避免在虚空中飘浮的唯一方式。 “这是人之所以为人(而不仅仅是一只赤身露体的猿猴)的唯一方式……” 苏菲坐了一会儿,从树篱的小洞中凝视着花园。她开始了解为何人必须要了解自己在历史上的根。对于以色列的子民来说,这当然是很重要的。 她只是一个平凡的人而已。不过,如果她了解自己在历史上的根,她就不至于如此平凡了。 同时,她生活在地球上的时间也不会只有几年而已。如果人类的历史就是她的历史,那么从某方面来说,她已经有好几千岁了。 苏菲拿着所有的信纸,爬出密洞,蹦蹦跳跳地穿过花园,回到楼上的房间。 The Middle Ages ... going only part of the way is not the same as going the wrong way A week passed without Sophie hearing from Alberto Knox. There were no more postcards from Lebanon either, although she and Joanna still talked about the cards they found in the major's cabin. Joanna had had the fright of her life, but as nothing further seemed to hap-pen, the immediate terror faded and was submerged in homework and badminton. Sophie read Alberto's letters over and over, looking for some clue that would throw light on the Hilde mystery. Doing so also gave her plenty of opportunity to digest the classical philosophy. She no longer had difficulty in distinguishing Democritus and Socrates, or Plato and Aristotle, from each other. On Friday, May 25, she was in the kitchen fixing dinner before her mother got home. It was their regular Friday agreement. Today she was making fish soup with fish balls and carrots. Plain and simple. Outside it was becoming windy. As Sophie stood stirring the casserole she turned toward the window. The birch trees were waving like cornstalks. Suddenly something smacked against the window-pane. Sophie turned around again and discovered a card sticking to the window. It was a postcard. She could read it through the glass: "Hilde Moller Knag, c/o Sophie Amundsen." She thought as much! She opened the window and took the card. It could hardly have blown all the way from Lebanon! This card was also dated June 15. Sophie removed the casserole from the stove and sat down at the kitchen table. The card read: Dear Hilde, I don't know whether it will still be your birthday when you read this card. I hope so, in a way; or at least that not too many days have gone by. A week or two for Sophie does not have to mean just as long for us. I shall be coming home for Midsummer Eve, so we can sit together for hours in the glider, looking out over the sea, Hilde. We have so much to talk about. Love from Dad, who sometimes gets very depressed about the thousand-year-long strife between Jews, Christians, and Muslims. I have to keep reminding myself that all three religions stem from Abraham. So I suppose they all pray to the same God. Down here, Cain and Abel have not finished killing each other. P.S. Please say hello to Sophie. Poor child, she still doesn't know how this whole thing hangs together. But perhaps you do? Sophie put her head down on the table, exhausted. One thing was certain--she had no idea how this thing hung together. But Hilde did, presumably. If Hilde's father asked her to say hello to Sophie, it had to mean that Hilde knew more about Sophie than Sophie did about Hilde. It was all so complicated that Sophie went back to fixing dinner. A postcard that smacked against the kitchen window all by itself! You could call that airmail! As soon as she had set the casserole on the stove again, the telephone rang. Suppose it was Dad! She wished desperately that he would come home so she could tell him everything that had happened in these last weeks. But it was probably only Joanna or Mom. Sophie snatched up the phone. "Sophie Amundsen," she said. "It's me," said a voice. Sophie was sure of three things: it was not her father. But it was a man's voice, and a voice she knew she had heard before. "Who is this?" "It's Alberto." "Ohhh!" Sophie was at a loss for words. It was the voice from the Acropolis video that she had recognized. "Are you all right?" "Sure." "From now on there will be no more letters." "But I didn't send you a frog!" "We must meet in person. It's beginning to be urgent, you see." "Why?" "Hilde's father is closing in on us." "Closing in how?" "On all sides, Sophie. We have to work together now." "How...?" "But you can't help much before I have told you about the Middle Ages. We ought to cover the Renaissance and the seventeenth century as well. Berkeley is a key figure..." "Wasn't he the man in the picture at the major's cabin?" "That very same. Maybe the actual struggle will be waged over his philosophy." "You make it sound like a war." "I would rather call it a battle of wills. We have to attract Hilde's attention and get her over on our side before her father comes home to Lillesand." "I don't get it at all." "Perhaps the philosophers can open your eyes. Meet me at St. Mary's Church at eight o'clock tomorrow morning. But come alone, my child." "So early in the morning?" The telephone clicked. "Hello?" He had hung up! Sophie rushed back to the stove just before the fish soup boiled over. St. Mary's Church? That was an old stone church from the Middle Ages. It was only used for concerts and very special ceremonies. And in the summer it was sometimes open to tourists. But surely it wasn't open in the middle of the night? When her mother got home, Sophie had put the card from Lebanon with everything else from Alberto and Hilde. After dinner she went over to Joanna's place. "We have to make a very special arrangement," she said as soon as her friend opened the door. She said no more until Joanna had closed her bedroom door. "It's rather problematic," Sophie went on. "Spit it out!" "I'm going to have to tell Mom that I'm staying the night here." "Great!" "But it's only something I'm saying, you see. I've got to go somewhere else." "That's bad. Is it a guy?" "No, it's to do with Hilde." Joanna whistled softly, and Sophie looked her severely in the eye. "I'm coming over this evening," she said, "but at seven o'clock I've got to sneak out again. You've got to cover for me until I get back." "But where are you going? What is it you have to do?" "Sorry. My lips are sealed." Sleepovers were never a problem. On the contrary, almost. Sometimes Sophie got the impression that her mother enjoyed having the house to herself. "You'll be home for breakfast, I suppose?" was her mother's only remark as Sophie left the house. "If I'm not, you know where I am." What on earth made her say that? It was the one weak spot. Sophie's visit began like any other sleepover, with talk until late into the night. The only difference was that when they finally settled down to sleep at about two o'clock, Sophie set the alarm clock to a quarter to seven. Five hours later, Joanna woke briefly as Sophie switched off the buzzer. "Take care," she mumbled. Then Sophie was on her way. St. Mary's Church lay on the outskirts of the old part of town. It was several miles walk away, but even though she had only slept for a few hours she felt wide awake. It was almost eight o'clock when she stood at the entrance to the old stone church. Sophie tried the massive door. It was unlocked! Inside the church it was as deserted and silent as the church was old. A bluish light filtered in through the stained-glass windows revealing a myriad of tiny particles of dust hovering in the air. The dust seemed to gather in thick beams this way and that inside the church. Sophie sat on one of the benches in the center of the nave, staring toward the altar at an old crucifix painted with muted colors. Some minutes passed. Suddenly the organ began to play. Sophie dared not look around. It sounded like an ancient hymn, probably from the Middle Ages. There was silence again. Then she heard footsteps approaching from behind her. Should she look around? She chose instead to fix her eyes on the Cross. The footsteps passed her on their way up the aisle and she saw a figure dressed in a brown monk's habit. Sophie could have sworn it was a monk right out of the Middle Ages. She was nervous, but not scared out of her wits. In front of the altar the monk turned in a half-circle and then climbed up into the pulpit. He leaned over the edge, looked down at Sophie, and addressed her in Latin: "Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper et in saecula saeculorum. Amen." "Talk sense, silly!" Sophie burst out. Her voice resounded all around the old stone church. Although she realized that the monk had to be Alberto Knox, she regretted her outburst in this venerable place of worship. But she had been nervous, and when you're nervous its comforting to break all taboos. "Shhh!" Alberto held up one hand as priests do when they want the congregation to be seated. "Middle Ages began at four," he said. "Middle Ages began at four?" asked Sophie, feeling stupid but no longer nervous. "About four o'clock, yes. And then it was five and six and seven. But it was as if time stood still. And it got to be eight and nine and ten. But it was still the Middle Ages, you see. Time to get up to a new day, you may think. Yes, I see what you mean. But it is still Sunday, one long endless row of Sundays. And it got to be eleven and twelve and thirteen. This was the period we call the High Gothic, when the great cathedrals of Europe were built. And then, some time around fourteen hours, at two in the afternoon, a cock crowed--and the Middle Ages began to ebb away." "So the Middle Ages lasted for ten hours then," said Sophie. Alberto thrust his head forward out of the brown monk's cowl and surveyed his congregation, which consisted of a fourteen-year-old girl. "If each hour was a hundred years, yes. We can pretend that Jesus was born at midnight. Paul began his missionary journeys just before half past one in the morning and died in Rome a quarter of an hour later. Around three in the morning the Christian church was more or less banned, but by A.D. 313 it was an accepted religion in the Roman Empire. That was in the reign of the Emperor Constantine. The holy emperor himself was first baptized on his deathbed many years later. From the year 380 Christianity was the official religion throughout the entire Roman Empire." "Didn't the Roman Empire fall?" "It was just beginning to crumble. We are standing before one of the greatest changes in the history of culture. Rome in the fourth century was being threatened both by barbarians pressing in from the north and by disintegration from within. In A.D. 330 Constantine the Great moved the capital of the Empire from Rome to Constantinople, the city he had founded at the approach to the Black Sea. Many people considered the new city the "second Rome." In 395 the Roman Empire was divided in two--a Western Empire with Rome as its center, and an Eastern Empire with the new city of Constantinople as its capital. Rome was plundered by bar-barians in 410, and in 476 the whole of the Western Empire was destroyed. The Eastern Empire continued to exist as a state right up until 1453 when the Turks conquered Constantinople." "And its name got changed to Istanbul?" "That's right! Istanbul is its latest name. Another date we should notice is 529. That was the year when the church closed Plato's Academy in Athens. In the same year, the Benedictine order, the first of the great monastic orders, was founded. The year 529 thus became a symbol of the way the Christian Church put the lid on Greek philosophy. From then on, monasteries had the monopoly of education, reflection, and meditation. The clock was ticking toward half past five ..." Sophie saw what Alberto meant by all these times. Midnight was 0, one o'clock was 100 years after Christ, six o'clock was 600 years after Christ, and 14 hours was 1,400 years after Christ... Alberto continued: "The Middle Ages actually means the period between two other epochs. The expression arose during the Renaissance. The Dark Ages, as they were also called, were seen then as one interminable thousand-year-long night which had settled over Europe between antiquity and the Renaissance. The word 'medieval' is used negatively nowadays about anything that is over-authoritative and inflexible. But many historians now consider the Middle Ages to have been a thousand-year period of germination and growth. The school system, for instance, was developed in the Middle Ages. The first convent schools were opened quite early on in the period, and cathedral schools followed in the twelfth century. Around the year 1200 the first universities were founded, and the subjects to be studied were grouped into various 'faculties,' just as they are today." "A thousand years is a really long time." "Yes, but Christianity took time to reach the masses. Moreover, in the course of the Middle Ages the various nation-states established themselves, with cities and citizens, folk music and folktales. What would fairy tales and folk songs have been without the Middle Ages? What would Europe have been, even? A Roman province, perhaps. Yet the resonance in such names as England, France, or Germany is the very same boundless deep we call the Middle Ages. There are many shining fish swimming around in those depths, although we do not always catch sight of them. Snorri lived in the Middle Ages. So did Saint Olaf and Charlemagne, to say nothing of Romeo and Juliet, Joan of Arc, Ivanhoe, the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and many mighty princes and majestic kings, chivalrous knights and fair damsels, anonymous stained-glass window makers and ingenious organ builders. And I haven't even mentioned friars, crusaders, or witches." "You haven't mentioned the clergy, either." "Correct. Christianity didn't come to Norway, by the way, until the eleventh century. It would be an exaggeration to say that the Nordic countries converted to Christianity at one fell swoop. Ancient heathen beliefs persisted under the surface of Christianity, and many of these pre-Christian elements became integrated with Christianity. In Scandinavian Christmas celebrations, for example, Christian and Old Norse customs are wedded even to this day. And here the old saying applies, that married folk grow to resemble each other. Yuletide cookies, Yuletide piglets, and Yuletide ale begin to resemble the Three Wise Men from the Orient and the manger in Bethlehem. But without doubt, Christianity gradually became the predominant philosophy of life. Therefore we usually speak of the Middle Ages as being a unifying force of Christian culture." "So it wasn't all gloom, then?" "The first centuries after the year 400 really were a cultural decline. The Roman period had been a high culture, with big cities that had sewers, public baths, and libraries, not to mention proud architecture. In the early centuries of the Middle Ages this entire culture crum-bled. So did its trade and economy. In the Middle Ages people returned to payment in kind and bartering. The economy was now characterized by feudalism, which meant that a few powerful nobles owned the land, which the serfs had to toil on in order to live. The population also declined steeply in the first centuries. Rome had over a million inhabitants in antiquity. But by 600, the population of the old Roman capital had fallen to 40,000, a mere fraction of what it had been. Thus a relatively small population was left to wander among what remained of the majestic edifices of the city's former glory. When they needed building materials, there were plenty of ruins to supply them. This is naturally a source of great sorrow to present-day archeologists, who would rather have seen medieval man leave the ancient monuments untouched." "It's easy to know better after the fact." "From a political point of view, the Roman period was already over by the end of the fourth century. However, the Bishop of Rome became the supreme head of the Roman Catholic Church. He was given the title 'Pope'--in Latin 'papa,' which means what it says-- and gradually became looked upon as Christ's deputy on earth. Rome was thus the Christian capital throughout most of the medieval period. But as the kings and bishops of the new nation-states became more and more powerful, some of them were bold enough to stand up to the might of the church." "You said the church closed Plato's Academy in Athens. Does that mean that all the Greek philosophers were forgotten?" "Not entirely. Some of the writings of Aristotle and Plato were known. But the old Roman Empire was gradually divided into three different cultures. In Western Europe we had a Latinized Christian culture with Rome as its capital. In Eastern Europe we had a Greek Christian culture with Constantinople as its capital. This city began to be called by its Greek name, Byzantium. We therefore speak of the Byzantine Middle Ages as opposed to the Roman Catholic Middle Ages. However, North Africa and the Middle East had also been part of the Roman Empire. This area developed during the Middle Ages into an Arabic-speaking Muslim culture. After the death of Muhammad in 632, both the Middle East and North Africa were won over to Islam. Shortly thereafter, Spain also became part of the world of Islamic culture. Islam adopted Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, and Bagdad as holy cities. From the point of view of cultural history, it is interesting to note that the Arabs also took over the ancient Hellenistic city of Alexandria. Thus much of the old Greek science was inherited by the Arabs. All through the Middle Ages, the Arabs were predominant hi sciences such as mathematics, chemistry, astronomy, and medicine. Nowadays we still use Arabic figures. In a number of areas Arabic culture was superior to Christian culture." "I wanted to know what happened to Greek philosophy." "Can you imagine a broad river that divides for a while into three different streams before it once again becomes one great wide river?" "Yes." "Then you can also see how the Greco-Roman culture was divided, but survived through the three cultures: the Roman Catholic in the west, the Byzantine in the east, and the Arabic in the south. Although it's greatly oversimplified, we could say that Neoplatonism was handed down in the west, Plato in the east, and Aristotle to the Arabs in the south. But there was also something of them all in all three streams. The point is that at the end of the Middle Ages, all three streams came together in Northern Italy. The Arabic influence came from the Arabs in Spain, the Greek influence from Greece and the Byzantine Empire. And now we see the beginning of the Renaissance, the 'rebirth' of antique culture. In one sense, antique culture had survived the Dark Ages." "I see." "But let us not anticipate the course of events. We mast first talk a little about medieval philosophy. I shall not speak from this pulpit any more. I'm coming down." Sophie's eyes were heavy from too little sleep. When she saw the strange monk descending from the pulpit of St. Mary's Church, she felt as if she were dreaming. Alberto walked toward the altar rail. He looked up at the altar with its ancient crucifix, then he walked slowly toward Sophie. He sat down beside her on the bench of the pew. It was a strange feeling, being so close to him. Under his cowl Sophie saw a pair of deep brown eyes. They belonged to a middle-aged man with dark hair and a little pointed beard. Who are you, she wondered. Why have you turned my life upside down? "We shall become better acquainted by and by," he said, as if he had read her thoughts. As they sat there together, with the light that filtered into the church through the stained-glass windows becoming sharper and sharper, Alberto Knox began to talk about medieval philosophy. "The medieval philosophers took it almost for granted that Christianity was true," he began. "The question was whether we must simply believe the Christian revelation or whether we can approach the Christian truths with the help of reason. What was the relationship between the Greek philosophers and what the Bible said? Was there a contradiction between the Bible and reason, or were belief and knowledge compatible? Almost all medieval philosophy centered on this one question." Sophie nodded impatiently. She had been through this in her religion class. "We shall see how the two most prominent medieval philosophers dealt with this question, and we might as well begin with St. Augustine, who lived from 354 to 430. In this one person's life we can observe the actual transition from late antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. Augustine was born in the little town of Tagaste in North Africa. At the age of sixteen he went to Carthage to study. Later he traveled to Rome and Milan, and lived the last years of his life in the town of Hippo, a few miles west of Carthage. However, he was not a Christian all his life. Augustine examined several different religions and philosophies before he became a Christian." "Could you give some examples?" "For a time he was a Manichaean. The Manichaeans were a religious sect that was extremely characteristic of late antiquity. Their doctrine was half religion and half philosophy, asserting that the world consisted of a dualism of good and evil, light and darkness, spirit and matter. With his spirit, mankind could rise above the world of matter and thus prepare for the salvation of his soul. But this sharp division between good and evil gave the young Augustine no peace of mind. He was completely preoccupied with what we like to call the 'problem of evil.' By this we mean the question of where evil comes from. For a time he was influenced by Stoic philosophy, and according to the Stoics, there was no sharp division between good and evil. However, his principal leanings were toward the other significant philosophy of late antiquity, Neoplatonism. Here he came across the idea that all existence is divine in nature." "So he became a Neoplatonic bishop?" "Yes, you could say that. He became a Christian first, but the Christianity of St. Augustine is largely influenced by Platonic ideas. And therefore, Sophie, therefore you have to understand that there is no dramatic break with Greek philosophy the minute we enter the Christian Middle Ages. Much of Greek philosophy was carried over to the new age through Fathers of the Church like St. Augustine." "Do you mean that St. Augustine was half Christian and half Neoplatonist?" "He himself believed he was a hundred-percent Christian although he saw no real contradiction between Christianity and the philosophy of Plato. For him, the similarity between Plato and the Christian doctrine was so apparent that he thought Plato must have had knowl-edge of the Old Testament. This, of course, is highly improbable. Let us rather say that it was St. Augustine who 'christianized' Plato." "So he didn't turn his back on everything that had to do with philosophy when he started believing in Christianity?" "No, but he pointed out that there are limits to how far reason can get you in religious questions. Christianity is a divine mystery that we can only perceive through faith. But if we believe in Christianity, God will 'illuminate' the soul so that we experience a sort of supernatural knowledge of God. St. Augustine had felt within himself that there was a limit to how far philosophy could go. Not before he became a Christian did he find peace in his own soul. 'Our heart is not quiet until it rests in Thee,' he writes." "I don't quite understand how Plato's ideas could go together with Christianity," Sophie objected. "What about the eternal ideas?" "Well, St. Augustine certainly maintains that God created the world out of the void, and that was a Biblical idea. The Greeks preferred the idea that the world had always existed. But St. Augustine believed that before God created the world, the 'ideas' were in the Divine mind. So he located the Platonic ideas in God and in that way preserved the Platonic view of eternal ideas." "That was smart." "But it indicates how not only St. Augustine but many of the other Church Fathers bent over backward to bring Greek and Jewish thought together. In a sense they were of two cultures. Augustine also inclined to Neoplatonism in his view of evil. He believed, like Plotinus, that evil is the 'absence of God.' Evil has no independent existence, it is something that is not, for God's creation is in fact only good. Evil comes from mankind's disobedience, Augustine believed. Or, in his own words, 'The good will is God's work; the evil will is the falling away from God's work.' " "Did he also believe that man has a divine soul?" "Yes and no. St. Augustine maintained that there is an insurmountable barrier between God and the world. In this he stands firmly on Biblical ground, rejecting the doctrine of Plotinus that everything is one. But he nevertheless emphasizes that man is a spiritual being. He has a material body--which belongs to the physical world which 'moth and rust doth corrupt'--but he also has a soul which can know God." "What happens to the soul when we die?" "According to St. Augustine, the entire human race was lost after the Fall of Man. But God nevertheless decided that certain people should be saved from perdition." "In that case, God could just as well have decided that everybody should be saved." "As far as that goes, St. Augustine denied that man has any right to criticize God, referring to Paul's Epistle to the Romans: 'O Man, who art thou that replies! against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it; why hast thou made me thus? or Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?' " "So God sits up in his Heaven playing with people? And as soon as he is dissatisfied with one of his creations, he just throws it away." "St. Augustine's point was that no man deserves God's redemption. And yet God has chosen some to be saved from damnation, so for him there was nothing secret about who will be saved and who damned. It is preordained. We are entirely at his mercy." "So in a way, he returned to the old belief in fate." "Perhaps. But St. Augustine did not renounce man's responsibility for his own life. He taught that we must live in awareness of being among the chosen. He did not deny that we have free will. But God has 'foreseen' how we will live." "Isn't that rather unfair?" asked Sophie. "Socrates said that we all had the same chances because we all had the same common sense. But St. Augustine divides people into two groups. One group gets saved and the other gets damned." "You are right in that St. Augustine's theology is considerably removed from the humanism of Athens. But St. Augustine wasn't dividing humanity into two groups. He was merely expounding the Biblical doctrine of salvation and damnation. He explained this in a learned work called the City of God." "Tell me about that." "The expression 'City of God,' or 'Kingdom of God,' comes from the Bible and the teachings of Jesus. St. Augustine believed that all human history is a struggle between the 'Kingdom of God' and the 'Kingdom of the World.' The two 'kingdoms' are not political kingdoms distinct from each other. They struggle for mastery inside every single person. Nevertheless, the Kingdom of God is more or less clearly present in the Church, and the Kingdom of the World is present in the State--for example, in the Roman Empire, which was in decline at the time of St. Augustine. This conception became increasingly clear as Church and State fought for supremacy throughout the Middle Ages. There is no salvation outside the Church,' it was now said. St. Augustine's 'City of God' eventually became identical with the es-tablished Church. Not until the Reformation in the sixteenth century was there any protest against the idea that people could only obtain salvation through the Church." "It was about time!" "We can also observe that St. Augustine was the first philosopher we have come across to draw history into his philosophy. The struggle between good and evil was by no means new. What was new was that for Augustine the struggle was played out in history. There is not much of Plato in this aspect of St. Augustine's work. He was more influenced by the linear view of history as we meet it in the Old Testament: the idea that God needs all of history in order to realize his Kingdom of God. History is necessary for the enlightenment of man and the de-struction of evil. Or, as St. Augustine put it, 'Divine foresight directs the history of mankind from Adam to the end of time as if it were the story of one man who gradually develops from childhood to old age.' " Sophie looked at her watch. "It's ten o'clock," she said. "I'll have to go soon." "But first I must tell you about the other great medieval philosopher. Shall we sit outside?" Alberto stood up. He placed the palms of his hands together and began to stride down the aisle. He looked as if he was praying or meditating deeply on some spiritual truth. Sophie followed him; she felt she had no choice. The sun had not yet broken through the morning clouds. Alberto seated himself on a bench outside the church. Sophie wondered what people would think if anyone came by. Sitting on a church bench at ten in the morning was odd in itself, and sitting with a medieval monk wouldn't make things look any better. "It is eight o'clock," he began. "About four hundred years have elapsed since St. Augustine, and now school starts. From now until ten o'clock, convent schools will have the monopoly on education. Between ten and eleven o'clock the first cathedral schools will be founded, followed at noon by the first universities. The great Gothic cathedrals will be built at the same time. This church, too, dates from the 1200s--or what we call the High Gothic period. In this town they couldn't afford a large cathedral." "They didn't need one," Sophie said. "I hate empty churches." "Ah, but the great cathedrals were not built only for large congregations. They were built to the glory of God and were in themselves a kind of religious celebration. However, something else happened during this period which has special significance for philosophers like us." Alberto continued: "The influence of the Arabs of Spain began to make itself felt. Throughout the Middle Ages, the Arabs had kept the Aristotelian tradition alive, and from the end of the twelfth century, Arab scholars began to arrive in Northern Italy at the invitation of the nobles. Many of Aristotle's writings thus became known and were translated from Greek and Arabic into Latin. This created a new interest in the natural sciences and infused new life into the question of the Christian revelation's relationship to Greek philosophy. Aristotle could obviously no longer be ignored in matters of science, but when should one attend to Aristotle the phi-losopher, and when should one stick to the Bible? Do you see?" Sophie nodded, and the monk went on: "The greatest and most significant philosopher of this period was St. Thomas Aquinas, who lived from 1225 to 1274. He came from the little town of Aquino, between Rome and Naples, but he also worked as a teacher at the University of Paris. I call him a philosopher but he was just as much a theologian. There was no great difference between philosophy and theology at that time. Briefly, we can say that Aquinas christianized Aristotle in the same way that St. Augustine christianized Plato in early medieval times." "Wasn't it rather an odd thing to do, christianizing philosophers who had lived several hundred years before Christ?" "You could say so. But by 'christianizing' these two great Greek philosophers, we only mean that they were interpreted and explained in such a way that they were no longer considered a threat to Christian dogma. Aquinas was among those who tried to make Aristotle's philosophy compatible with Christianity. We say that he created the great synthesis between faith and knowledge. He did this by entering the philosophy of Aristotle and taking him at his word." "I'm sorry, but I had hardly any sleep last night. I'm afraid you'll have to explain it more clearly." "Aquinas believed that there need be no conflict between what philosophy or reason teaches us and what the Christian Revelation or faith teaches us. Christendom and philosophy often say the same thing. So we can frequently reason ourselves to the same truths that we can read in the Bible." "How come? Can reason tell us that God created the world in six days or that Jesus was the Son of God?" "No, those so-called verities of faith are only accessible through belief and the Christian Revelation. But Aquinas believed in the existence of a number of 'natural theological truths.' By that he meant truths that could be reached both through Christian faith and through our innate or natural reason. For example, the truth that there is a God. Aquinas believed that there are two paths to God. One path goes through faith and the Christian Revelation, and the other goes through reason and the senses. Of these two, the path of faith and revelation is certainly the surest, because it is easy to lose one's way by trusting to reason alone. But Aquinas's point was that there need not be any conflict between a philosopher like Aristotle and the Christian doctrine." "So we can take our choice between believing Aristotle and believing the Bible?" "Not at all. Aristotle goes only part of the way because he didn't know of the Christian revelation. But going only part of the way is not the same as going the wrong way. For example, it is not wrong to say that Athens is in Europe. But neither is it particularly precise. If a book only tells you that Athens is a city in Europe, it would be wise to look it up in a geography book as well. There you would find the whole truth that Athens is the capital of Greece, a small country in southeastern Europe. If you are lucky you might be told a little about the Acropolis as well. Not to mention Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle." "But the first bit of information about Athens was true." "Exactly! Aquinas wanted to prove that there is only one truth. So when Aristotle shows us something our reason tells us is true, it is not in conflict with Christian teaching. We can arrive successfully at one aspect of the truth with the aid of reason and the evidence of our senses. For example, the kind of truths Aristotle refers to when he describes the plant and the animal kingdom. Another aspect of the truth is revealed to us by God through the Bible. But the two aspects of the truth overlap at significant points. There are many questions about which the Bible and reason tell us exactly the same thing." "Like there being a God?" "Exactly. Aristotle's philosophy also presumed the existence of a God--or a formal cause--which sets all natural processes going. But he gives no further description of God. For this we must rely solely on the Bible and the teachings of Jesus." "Is it so absolutely certain that there is a God?" "It can be disputed, obviously. But even in our day most people will agree that human reason is certainly not capable of disproving the existence of God. Aquinas went further. He believed that he could prove God's existence on the basis of Aristotle's philosophy." "Not bad!" "With our reason we can recognize that everything around us must have a 'formal cause,' he believed. God has revealed himself to mankind both through the Bible and through reason. There is thus both a 'theology of faith' and a 'natural theology.' The same is true of the moral aspect. The Bible teaches us how God wants us to live. But God has also given us a conscience which enables us to distinguish between right and wrong on a 'natural' basis. There are thus also 'two paths' to a moral life. We know that it is wrong to harm people even if we haven't read in the Bible that we must 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' Here, too, the surest guide is to follow the Bible's commandment." "I think I understand," said Sophie now. "It's almost like how we know there's a thunderstorm, by seeing the lightning and by hearing the thunder." "That's right! We can hear the thunder even if we are blind, and we can see the lightning even if we are deaf. It's best if we can both see and hear, of course. But there is no contradiction between what we see and what we hear. On the contrary--the two impressions reinforce each other." "I see." "Let me add another picture. If you read a novel-- John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, for example ..." "I've read that, actually." "Don't you feel you know something about the author just by reading his book?" "I realize there is a person who wrote it." "Is that all you know about him?" "He seems to care about outsiders." "When you read this book--which is Steinbeck's creation--you get to know something about Steinbeck's nature as well. But you cannot expect to get any personal information about the author. Could you tell from reading Of Mice and Men how old the author was when he wrote it, where he lived, or how many children he had?" "Of course not." "But you can find this information in a biography of John Steinbeck. Only in a biography--or an autobiography--can you get better acquainted with Steinbeck, the person." "That's true." "That's more or less how it is with God's Creation and the Bible. We can recognize that there is a God just by walking around in the natural world. We can easily see that He loves flowers and animals, otherwise He would not have made them. But information about God, the person, is only found in the Bible--or in God's 'autobiography,' if you like." "You're good at finding examples." "Mmmm..." For the first time Alberto just sat there thinking-- without answering. "Does all this have anything to do with Hilde?" Sophie could not help asking. "We don't know whether there is a 'Hilde' at all." "But we know someone is planting evidence of her all over the place. Postcards, a silk scarf, a green wallet, a stocking ..." Alberto nodded. "And it seems as if it is Hilde's father who is deciding how many clues he will plant," he said. "For now, all we know is that someone is sending us a lot of postcards. I wish he would write something about himself too. But we shall return to that later." "It's a quarter to eleven. I'll have to get home before the end of the Middle Ages." "I shall just conclude with a few words about how Aquinas adopted Aristotle's philosophy in all the areas where it did not collide with the Church's theology. These included his logic, his theory of knowledge, and not least his natural philosophy. Do you recall, for ex-ample, how Aristotle described the progressive scale of life from plants and animals to humans?" Sophie nodded. "Aristotle believed that this scale indicated a God that constituted a sort of maximum of existence. This scheme of things was not difficult to align with Christian theology. According to Aquinas, there was a progressive degree of existence from plants and animals to man, from man to angels, and from angels to God. Man, like animals, has a body and sensory organs, but man also has intelligence which enables him to reason things out. Angels have no such body with sensory organs, which is why they have spontaneous and immediate intelligence. They have no need to 'ponder,' like humans; they have no need to reason out conclusions. They know everything that man can know without having to learn it step by step like us. And since angels have no body, they can never die. They are not everlasting like God, because they were once created by God. But they have no body that they must one day depart from, and so they will never die." "That sounds lovely!" "But up above the angels, God rules, Sophie. He can see and know everything in one single coherent vision." "So he can see us now." "Yes, perhaps he can. But not 'now.' For God, time does not exist as it does for us. Our 'now' is not God's 'now.' Because many weeks pass for us, they do not necessarily pass for God." "That's creepy!" Sophie exclaimed. She put her hand over her mouth. Alberto looked down at her, and Sophie continued: "I got another card from Hilde's father yesterday. He wrote something like--even if it takes a week or two for Sophie, that doesn't have to mean it will be that long for us. That's almost the same as what you said about God!" Sophie could see a sudden frown flash across Alberto's face beneath the brown cowl. "He ought to be ashamed of himself!" Sophie didn't quite understand what Alberto meant. He went on: "Unfortunately, Aquinas also adopted Aristotle's view of women. You may perhaps recall that Aristotle thought a woman was more or less an incomplete man. He also thought that children only inherit the father's characteristics, since a woman was passive and receptive while the man was active and creative. According to Aquinas, these views harmonized with the message of the Bible--which, for example, tells us that woman was made out of Adam's rib." "Nonsense!" "It's interesting to note that the eggs of mammals were not discovered until 1827. It was therefore perhaps not so surprising that people thought it was the man who was the creative and lifegiving force in reproduction. We can moreover note that, according to Aquinas, it is only as nature-being that woman is inferior to man. Woman's soul is equal to man's soul. In Heaven there is complete equality of the sexes because all physical gender differences cease to exist." "That's cold comfort. Weren't there any women philosophers in the Middle Ages?" "The life of the church in the Middle Ages was heavily dominated by men. But that did not mean that there were no women thinkers. One of them was Hildegard of Bingen..." Sophie's eyes widened: "Does she have anything to do with Hilde?" "What a question! Hildegard lived as a nun in the Rhine Valley from 1098 to 1179. In spite of being a woman, she worked as preacher, author, physician, botanist, and naturalist. She is an example of the fact that women were often more practical, more scientific even, in the Middle Ages." "But what about Hilde?" "It was an ancient Christian and Jewish belief that God was not only a man. He also had a female side, or 'mother nature.' Women, too, are created in God's likeness. In Greek, this female side of God is called Sophia. 'Sophia' or 'Sophie' means wisdom." Sophie shook her head resignedly. Why had nobody ever told her that? And why had she never asked? Alberto continued: "Sophia, or God's mother nature, had a certain significance both for Jews and in the Greek Orthodox Church throughout the Middle Ages. In the west she was forgotten. But along comes Hildegard. Sophia appeared to her in a vision, dressed in a golden tunic adorned with costly jewels ..." Sophie stood up. Sophia had revealed herself to Hildegard in a vision ... "Maybe I will appear to Hilde." She sat down again. For the third time Alberto laid his hand on her shoulder. "That is something we must look into. But now it is past eleven o'clock. You must go home, and we are approaching a new era. I shall summon you to a meeting on the Renaissance. Hermes will come get you in the garden." With that the strange monk rose and began to walk toward the church. Sophie stayed where she was, thinking about Hildegard and Sophia, Hilde and Sophie. Suddenly she jumped up and ran after the monk-robed philosopher, calling: "Was there also an Alberto in the Middle Ages?" Alberto slowed his pace somewhat, turned his head slightly and said, "Aquinas had a famous philosophy teacher called Albert the Great..." With that he bowed his head and disappeared through the door of St. Mary's Church. Sophie was not satisfied with his answer. She followed him into the church. But now it was completely empty. Did he go through the floor? Just as she was leaving the church she noticed a picture of the Madonna. She went up to it and studied it closely. Suddenly she discovered a little drop of water under one of the Madonna's eyes. Was it a tear? Sophie rushed out of the church and hurried back to Joanna's. 中世纪    ……对了一部分并不等于错…… 一个星期过去了,艾伯特并没有来信,苏菲也没有再接到从黎巴嫩寄来的明信片。不过,她和乔安倒是还时常谈到她们在少校的小木屋中发现的那些明信片。那次乔安真的是被吓到了。不过由于后来也没有再发生什么事,于是当时的恐怖感就慢慢消退在功课与羽球之中了。 苏菲一遍遍重读艾伯特的来信,试图寻找一些线索以解答有关席德的谜,她因此有许多机会消化古典哲学。现在她已经能够轻易地辨别德谟克里特斯与苏格拉底的不同,以及柏拉图与亚理斯多德的差异了。 五月二十五日星期五那天,妈妈还没有回家。苏菲站在炉子前准备晚餐。这是他们母女订的协议。今天苏菲煮的是鱼丸萝卜汤,再简单不过了。 屋外的风愈来愈大。苏菲站在那儿搅拌着汤时,转身朝窗户看。窗外的桦树正像玉蜀黍茎一般地摇摆不定。 突然间,有个东西“啪”一声碰到窗框。苏菲再度转身来看,发现有一张卡片贴在窗户上。 那是一张明信片。即使透过玻璃,她也可以看清楚,上面写着:“请苏菲代转席德”。 她早料到了。她打开窗户取下那张明信片,它总不会是被风一路从黎巴嫩吹到这里来的吧?这张明信片的日期也是六月十五日。 苏菲把汤从炉子上端下来,然后坐在餐桌旁。明信片上写着: 亲爱的席德: 我不知道你看到这张卡片时,你的生日过了没有。我希望还没有,至少不要过大久。对于苏菲来说,一两个星期也许不像我们认为的那么漫长。我将回家过仲夏节。到时,我们就可以一起坐在秋汗上看海看几个小时。我有好多话要跟你说。对了,爸爸我有时对一千年来犹太人、基督徒与伊斯兰教徒之间的纷争感到非常沮丧。 我必须时常提醒自己,这三个宗教事实上都是从亚伯拉罕而来的。 因此,我想,他们应该都向同一个上帝祷告吧!在这里,该隐与亚伯仍然还未停止互相残杀。 P.S:请替我向苏菲打招呼。可怜的孩子,她还是不知道这到卜是怎么回事。不过我想你大概知道吧!苏菲把头趴在桌子上,觉得好累。她的确不知道这究竟是怎么回事。不过席德却好像知道。 如果席德的父亲要她向苏菲打招呼,这表示席德对苏菲的了解比苏菲对她的了解多。这件事情实在太复杂了。苏菲决定回去继续做晚饭。 居然有明信片会自己飞到厨房的窗户上来!这应该可以算是航空邮件了吧!她刚把汤锅放在炉子上,电话就响了起来。 如果是爸爸打来的该多好j她急切希望他赶快回家,她就可以告诉他这几个礼拜以来发生的事。不过她想很可能只是乔安或妈妈打来的……苏菲赶快拿起话筒。 “我是苏菲。”她说。 “是我。”电话里的声音说。 是一个男人的声音。苏菲可以确定这人不是她爸爸,而且这个声音她以前听过。 “你是哪一位?” “我是艾伯特。” “哦!” 苏菲讲不出话来。她这才想到原来自己是在高城的录影带上听过这个声音。 “你还好吗?” “我没事。” “从现在起,我不会再寄信给你了。” “不过,我并没有寄一只青蛙给你呀]” “我们必须见面。因为,情况开始变得比较急迫了“为什么?” “因为席德的爸爸正在向我们逼近。” “怎么逼近?” “从四面八方逼近。现在我们必须一起努力。” “怎么做呢?” “在我告诉你有关中世纪的事以前,你是帮不上什么忙的。还有,我们也应该谈一谈文艺复兴时期和十七世纪。柏克莱是最重要的人物……” “他不是少校的小木屋里那幅肖像画中的人吗?” “没错。也许这场对抗就是和他的哲学有关。” “听起来好像在打仗一样。” “我宁可说这是一场意志之战。我们必须吸引席德的注意力,并且设法使她在她父亲回到黎乐桑之前站在我们这边。” “我还是不懂。” “也许那些哲学家们能够让你明白。早上四点你到圣玛莉教堂来找我,不过你只能一个人来。” 中世纪“半夜去呀?” 电话“卡!”的响了一声。 “喂?” 电话里传来嗡嗡的声音。他把电话挂上了!苏菲冲回炉子旁,汤已经沸腾,差点溢了出来。 她把鱼丸和萝卜放进汤锅中,然后开小火。 圣玛莉教堂?那是一座中世纪的古老教堂,以石材建成,现在只有在开音乐会及特殊场合时才使用,夏天有时也会开放给游客参观。不过,半夜里它不可能会开门吧?午夜约会当妈妈进门时,苏菲已经把那张黎巴嫩寄来的明信片放在与艾伯特和席德有关的档案里。晚饭后,她便前往乔安家。 乔安刚开门,苏菲便对她说:“我们必须做一个很特别的安排” 然后她便不再作声,直到乔安把卧室的门关上为止。 “这问题有点麻烦。”苏菲说。 “你就说吧尸“我必须告诉我妈,我今天晚上要睡在你这里。” “好极了。” “但这只是一个借口而已,你懂吗?我必须到别的地方去。” “你好坏喔!要跟男生出去呀?” “才不是,这件事和席德有关。” 乔安轻轻地吹了一声口哨。苏菲严肃地看着她的眼睛。 “我今天晚上会过来,”她说。“不过明天凌晨三点时,我必须溜出去。你得帮我掩护,直到我回来为止。” “可是你要到哪里去呢?有什么事你非做不可?” “抱歉,不能告诉你。” 对于苏菲要在同学家过夜的事,妈妈一向不曾反对。事实上有{时苏菲觉得妈妈好像满喜欢一个人在家的样子。 当苏菲出门时,妈妈只问了一句:“你会回家吃早饭吧?” “如果没回来,那就是在乔安家。” 她为什么要这样说呢?这样可能会有破绽。 苏菲到了乔安家后,她俩就像一般的女孩一样,叽叽喳喳聊到深夜。只不过,到了晚上一点左右他们终于准备要睡觉时,苏菲把闹钟上到三点十五分。 两个小时后,苏菲把闹钟按掉,这时乔安醒了一下。 “你要小心。”她含含糊糊地说。 然后苏菲便上路了。到圣玛莉教堂要走好几英里路。不过虽然她晚上只睡了两三个小时,此刻她仍觉得自己很清醒。这时,东方的地平线上已经有一抹微红。 她到达圣玛莉教堂的入口时,已经快要四点了。苏菲推了一下那扇巨大的门,竟然没有上锁。 教堂里面安静而荒凉。一道淡蓝色的光透过彩色玻璃照进来。 照见了无数个在空中游移不定的细小尘粒。在光的照射下,这些尘粒在教堂内各处形成一道又一道粗大的光束。苏菲坐在本堂中央的一张木椅上,视线穿过祭坛,落在一个古老、已经褪色的耶稣受难像上。 几分钟过去了。突然间管风琴开始演奏,苏菲不敢环顾四周。 风琴奏出的曲调听起来颇为古老,也许是中世纪的乐曲。 不久,教堂内又恢复一片静寂,然后苏菲听到有脚步声从后面走来。她应不应该回头看呢?她决定把目光集中在十字架上的耶稣身上。 脚步声经过她,沿着侧廊前行。苏菲看到一个穿着棕色僧袍的身影乍看之下仿佛是直接从中世纪走来的一个僧侣。 她有点紧张但不很害怕。这个僧侣在祭坛前转了半圈,然后便爬上讲坛。他把身子前倾,俯视着苏菲,开始用拉丁文向她说话:“Gloria PatrietFilio etSpiritui sancto.Sicut eratin principio etnuncetsemperetinsaeculasaeculorum.Amen.” “谁听得懂嘛!呆子!”她忍不住脱口而出。 她的声音在整座教堂内回响。 虽然她确定这个僧侣就是艾伯特,但她还是很后悔自己在如此庄严神圣的地方说出这样不恭敬的话。不过,这都是因为她太紧张的缘故。一个人紧张时,如果能打破一些禁忌就会觉得比较自在些。 黑暗时代“嘘!”艾伯特举起一只手,就像神父要群众坐好时所做的动作。 “现在几点了,孩子?”他问。 “四点五分。”苏菲回答。她不再紧张了。 “时候到了,中世纪已经开始了。” “中世纪在四点钟开始呀?”苏菲问,觉得自己好蠢。 “是的,大约在四点钟时,然后是五点、六点、七点。不过时间就就好像静止不动一样。然后时间到了八点、九点与十点,但还是在中世纪。你也许会想,这是一个人起床展开新的一天的时刻。是的,我懂你的意思。不过,现在仍然是星期天,一长串无休无止的星期天。然后,时钟会走到十一点、十二点与十三点。这是我们所称的高歌德(HighGothic)的时期,也是欧洲各大教堂开始兴建的时候。然后,大约在十四点时,有一只公鸡开始啼叫,于是漫长的中世纪就逐渐消逝了。” “这么说中世纪维持了十个小时啰?”苏菲说。 艾伯特把头探出棕色僧袍的头罩,打量着他面前的听众(这时只有一个十四岁的女孩而已)。 “是的,如果每一个小时代表一百年的话。我们可以假装耶稣是在午夜诞生的,快到凌晨一点半时,保罗开始四处游历传教广刻钟后死于罗马。在接近凌晨三点时,基督教教会大致上仍遭到禁止,但到了公元后三一三年时,基督教已经被罗马帝国接受。这是在君士坦丁大帝统治的时候。许多年后,这位伟大的君主在临死前受洗成为基督徒。从公元三八O年起,基督教成为罗马帝国的国教。” “罗马帝国最后不是衰亡了吗?” “这时它才刚开始瓦解而已。这段时期是文化史上变动最大的时期之一。第四世纪时,罗马不但外有北方蛮族进攻的威胁,内部也处于分崩离析的状态。公元三三O午时,君士坦丁大帝将罗马帝国的首都由罗马迁到他在通往黑海之处所兴建的一个城市——君士坦丁堡。许多人把这座新城市当成‘第二个罗马’。三九五年时;罗马帝国一分为二:西方帝国以罗马为中心,东方帝国则以君士坦丁堡为首都。四一O年时,罗马遭蛮族劫掠。到四七六年,整个西方帝国都被摧毁了。东方帝国则继续存在,一直到一四五三年土耳其人征服君士坦丁堡为止。” “那时君士坦丁堡就改名为伊斯坦堡吗?” “没错!另外一个值得注意的年代是公元五二九年,也就是教会关闭雅典的柏拉图学园那一年。同年,圣本笃修会成立,成为历史上第一个大修会。这一年、因此成为基督教会箝制希腊哲学的一个象征。从此以后,修道院垄断了所有的教育与思想。这时,时钟正滴答走向五点半……” 苏菲很快便了解艾伯特的意思。午夜是零,一点钟是公元后一百年,六点钟是公元后六百年,十四点钟则是公元后一四00年。 艾伯特继续说:“中世纪事实上指的是界于两个时代之间的一个时期。这个名词是在文艺复兴时期出现的。另外,这个时期又被称为‘黑暗时代’,因为它是古代与文艺复兴时期之间笼罩欧洲的漫长的‘一千年的夜晚’。如今英文‘medieval’(中世纪)这个字仍被用来指那些过度权威、缺乏弹性的事物,具有贬意。不过,也有些人认为中世纪泥是各项体制萌芽成长的时期。例如,学校制度就是在中世纪建立韵。历史上第一批修道院学校在中世纪初期成立,教会学校则在十仁世纪成立。在公元一二OO年左右,历史上最早的几所大学成立了。当时学校研习的科目也像今天一样分成几个不同的‘学院’。” “一千年真的是很漫长的一段时间。” “是的,不过基督教也需要这样的一段时间来招揽信徒。此外,许多民族也在这段时间内相继建国,拥有自己的城市、公民、民俗音乐与民俗故事。如果没有中世纪,哪来的这些民俗故事与民俗音乐呢?甚至,没有中世纪,欧洲又会变成什么模样呢?也许仍然会是罗马的一个省份吧!英国、法国或德国这些名词就是在中世纪出现的。在中世纪这个浩瀚汪洋的深处,有许多闪闪发亮的鱼儿游来游去,只是我们不见得都能看到。史特卢森就是中世纪的人,圣欧雪夫(SaintOlaf)与查里曼大帝也是,更不用提罗密欧与朱丽叶、圣女贞德、艾文豪、穿花衣服的吹笛手以及那些强大的王侯与君主、侠义的骑士、美丽的少女、不知名的彩色玻璃工匠与灵巧的管风琴师傅了。再说,我还没提到那些修道士、十字军与女巫哩!” “你也没提到那些牧师和教士呀!” “对。基督教直到十一世纪才来到挪威。如果说北欧马上就信奉了基督教,那是过于夸大其辞了。那时在基督教的表面之下,一些古代异教徒的信仰仍然存在,而这些早期的信仰有许多后来融入了基督教。举例来说,在斯堪地那维亚半岛上,圣诞节的庆典中至今仍可以看到基督教与古代北欧风俗结合的痕迹。俗话说,夫妻结合之后会愈来愈彼此相像。这两种文化结合后也是如此。于是我们看到耶诞饼干、耶诞小猪与耶诞麦酒等风俗,开始愈来愈像东方三智者与伯利恒的马槽。无论如何,基督教逐渐成为北欧人主要的生活哲学。因此我们通常认为中世纪是一股以基督教文化来统一欧洲的力量。” “那么,中世纪也不算太糟啰?” “公元四OO年以后的第一个一百年间确实是一段文化式微的时期。你要知道,在此之前的罗马时期是一个‘高等文化’,有许多大城市,城市里有大型的排水沟、公共澡堂与图书馆等,还有许多宏伟的建筑。然而,到了中世纪最初的几百年间,这整个文化都;瓦解了,贸易与经济也崩溃了。中世纪的人们又回到以物易物的交易方式。当时的经济是以‘封建制度’为特色。所谓‘封建制度’就:是所有的田产都由少数势力强大的贵族拥有,农奴必须要辛勤耕:种才能生活。除此之外,在中世纪最初的数百年间,欧洲人口大量减少。举个例子,在古代时期,罗马的人口繁盛,一度超过一百万,但到了公元六OO年时,却减少到四万人左右,真是天壤之别。当时,这些人生活在这个曾经繁华一时、建筑宏伟的城市中,需要建材时,就从到处可见的废墟中取用。对于现代的考古学家而言,这是很可悲的现象。他们多希望中世纪的人们不曾破坏这些古迹。” “这都是后见之明呀!” “从政治方面来说,罗马时期在第四世纪末时就结束了。不过,当时罗马主教已经成为罗马天主教教会的最高领袖。他被称为‘教宗’或‘父’,并逐渐被视为基督在世上的代理人。因此,在中世纪的大多数时间里,罗马一直是基督教的首府。不过,当各新兴民族国家的君主与主教势力愈来愈强大时,有些人就开始反抗教会的势力。” “你说过教会关闭了雅典的柏拉图学园。那是不是从此以后希腊哲学就统统被遗忘了?” “这倒没有。亚理斯多德与柏拉图的部分著作仍然流传下来,但古罗马帝国却逐渐分裂成三种不同的文化。其中在西欧的是拉丁式的基督文化,以罗马为首都。在东欧则是希腊式的基督文化,以君士坦丁堡为首都。君士坦丁堡后来又改为希腊名‘拜占庭’。因此我们现在一般都将欧洲的中世纪文化分成‘拜占庭的中世纪’与‘罗天主教的中世纪’。除此之外,北非与中东地区过去也曾是罗马帝国的一部分。这个地区在中世纪期间发展成为讲阿拉伯语的伊斯兰教文化。公元六三二年穆罕默德去世后,中东与北非成了伊斯兰教地区。不久后,西班牙也成为伊斯兰教世界的一部分。伊斯兰教将麦加、麦地那、耶路撒冷与巴格达视为‘圣城’。从文化史的观点来看,还有一件值得注意的事:当时阿拉伯人也占据了古代希罗马地区的城市亚力山卓。因此,古希腊科学文明有一大部分为阿拉伯人所继承。在整个中世纪期间,阿拉伯人在数学、化学、天文学与医学等方面都居于领先的地位。直到今天,我们仍然使用所谓的‘阿拉伯数字’。我们可以说,当时在若干领域中,阿拉伯文化确实是优于基督教文化。” “我想知道后来希腊哲学怎么了。” “你能想象一条大河一下子分成三股支流,过了一段时间后又再度汇集成一条大河吗?” “嗯,可以。” “那么你也应该可以了解希腊罗马文化如何分裂成三种文化,并分别在其中存活。这三种文化分别是:西边的罗马天主教文化、东边的东罗马帝国文化与南边的阿拉伯文化。大致上,我们可以说新柏拉图派哲学在西边承传了下来。柏拉图与亚理斯多德的哲学则分别在东边与南边承传了下来。不过,我们可以说,在这三种文化中,每种成分都各有一些。重要的是,在中世纪末期,这三种文化在意大利北部交会融合。阿拉伯文化的影响力来自于在西班牙的阿拉伯人,希腊文化的影响力来自于希腊和拜占庭帝国。这时,‘文艺复兴时期’(古代文化的‘再生’)就逐渐开始了。从某个角度来看,古代文化在中世纪期间可说并未消亡。” “原来如此。” “不过,我们还是不要先谈这个。我们应该先谈学。我不想继续站在讲坛上说话了,我要下来。” 点中世纪哲由于睡得太少,苏菲的眼皮已经渐渐沉重。现在,当她看到这个奇怪的僧侣从圣玛莉教堂的讲坛走下来时,她感觉好像在作梦一般。 艾伯特走向祭坛的栏杆。他先抬起头看着竖着古老的耶稣受难像的祭坛,而后眼光朝下看着苏菲,并慢慢走向她。最后他与她并排坐在木椅上。 苏菲头一遭如此靠近他,感觉很奇特。他的头罩下面是一双深蓝色的眼睛。这双眼睛的主人是一个中年男子,有着黑色的头发,蓄着有点削尖的胡子。 你到底是谁呢?苏菲心想。你为何要把我的生活弄得秩序大乱?“我们将会慢慢彼此了解。”他说,仿佛能够看穿她的心思。 当他们坐在一起时,透过彩色玻璃窗照进教堂的光线变得愈来愈强。艾伯特开始谈论中世纪的哲学:“中世纪的哲学家几乎认定基督教义就是真理。”他一开始时说。 “他们的问题在于:我们是否一定要相信基督教的启示?还是我们可以借助理性来探索基督教的真理?希腊哲学家与圣经的记载有何关系?圣经与理性之间有抵触吗?还是信仰与知识是可以相容的?几乎所有的中世纪哲学都围绕在这些问题上打转。” 苏菲不耐烦地点点头。她在宗教课考试时已经都谈过这些了。 圣奥古斯丁“我们将谈一谈最著名的两大中世纪哲学家如何处理这个问题。我们还是从圣奥古斯丁(St.Augustine)开始好了。他生于公元三五四年,死于四三O年。在他的一生中我们可以看到古代末期到中世纪初期的变迁。圣奥古斯丁出生于北非一个名叫塔加斯特(Tagaste)的小镇。十六岁时,他前往迦太基求学。稍后,他转往罗马与米兰,最后在迦太基西边几英里一个名叫西波(Hippo)的小镇度过他的余年。不过,他并非一生都是基督徒。他是在仔细研究各种不同的宗教与哲学后才决定信教。” “你可以举一些例子吗?” “有一段时间他信奉摩尼教。那是古代末期很典型的一个教派一半是宗教,一半是哲学。他们宣称宇宙由善与恶、光与暗、精神与物质等二元的事物所组成。人类可运用精神来超脱于物质世界之上,并借此为灵魂的救赎做好准备。不过,这种将善与恶一分为二的理论并不能使年轻的圣奥古斯丁完全信服。他全心思考着我们所谓的‘恶的问题’,也就是恶从何而来的问题。有一段时间他受到斯多葛派哲学的影响。斯多葛派认为,善与恶之间并没有明显的分界。然而,大致上奥古斯丁还是比较倾向于古代末期的另一派重要哲学,就是新柏拉图派的哲学。他在其间发现了神圣的大自然整体存在的概念。” “所以他成了一位信奉新柏拉图派哲学的主教?” “是的,可以这么说。他成为基督徒在先,不过他的基督教理念大部分是受到柏拉图派哲学观的影响。因此,苏菲,你必须了解,并非一进入基督教的中世纪,人们就与希腊哲学完全脱离了关系。希腊哲学有一大部分被像圣奥古斯丁这样的教会领袖带到这个新时代。” “你的意思是说圣奥古斯丁一半是基督徒,一半是新柏拉图派的哲学家吗?” “他认为他自己是百分之百的基督徒,因为他并不以为基督教的教义与柏拉图的哲学之间有所矛盾。对他而言,柏拉图哲学与天主教教义的相似之处是很明显的,以至于他认为柏拉图一定知道旧约的故事。这点当然很不可能。我们不妨说是圣奥古斯丁将柏拉图加以‘基督教化’的。” “这么说,他开始信仰基督教以后,并没有把哲学完全抛到脑后是吗?” “是的,但他指出,在宗教问题上理性能做的事有限。基督教是一个神圣的奥秘,我们只能透过信仰来领会。如果我们相信基督,则上帝将会‘照亮’我们的灵魂,使我们能够对上帝有一种神奇的体悟。圣奥古斯丁内心深处一直觉得哲学能做的有限。他的灵魂一直无法获得平静,直到他决定成为基督徒为止。他写道:‘我们的心无法平静,直到在你(天主)中安息。”’“我不太明白柏拉图的哲学怎能与基督教并存,”苏菲有点意见,“那关于永恒的理型又怎么办呢?” “圣奥古斯丁当然认为上帝自虚空中创造了世界,这是圣经中的说法。希腊人则比较相信世界是一向都存在的。不过,圣奥古斯丁相信,在上帝创造世界之前,那些‘理型’乃是存在于神的心中。 因此他把柏拉图所说的理型放在上帝的心中,借此保存了柏拉图有关永恒理型的看法。” “他很聪明。” “这显示圣奥古斯丁与其他许多教会领袖是如何努力将希腊与犹太思想融合在一起。就某一方面来说,他们是同时属于两种文化的。在有关恶的问题上,圣奥古斯丁也比较倾向新柏拉图派哲学韵看法。他和普罗汀一样相信邪恶是由于‘上帝不在’的结果。邪恶本身并不存在。因为实际上,上帝创造的事物只有好的,没有坏韵。圣奥古斯丁认为,邪恶是来自于人类的不服从。或者,用他的话来说:‘善的意念是上帝的事功,恶的意念是远离上帝的事功。,” “他也相信人有一个神圣的灵魂吗?” “可以说是,也可以说不是。圣奥古斯丁主张上帝与世界之间有一道不可跨越的距离。在这方面他坚决支持圣经的说法,反对普罗汀所说‘万物皆为上帝的一部分’的主张。不过他仍然强调人是有灵性的生物。他认为人有一具由物质造成的躯体,这个躯体属于何为虫蛾铁锈所腐’的物质世界,但同时人也有灵魂,可以认识上帝。” “我们死了以后,灵魂会怎样呢?” “根据圣奥古斯丁的说法,自从亚当、夏娃被逐出伊甸园后,全人类都迷失了,不过上帝仍然决定要让某些人免于毁灭。” “如果是这样,他大可以拯救所有的人呀!” 。“就这点来说,圣奥古斯丁否认人有权批评上帝,他引述保罗所写的《罗马书》中的一段句子:‘你这个人哪,你是谁?竟敢向神强嘴呢?受造之物岂能对造他的神说:你为什么这样造我呢?窑匠难道没有权柄,从一团泥里拿一块做成贵重的器皿,又拿一块做成卑贱的器皿吗?’” “这么说上帝是高高坐在天堂里,把人类当成玩具,一旦他不满意一件造物,就把它丢掉。” “圣奥古斯丁的观点是:没有人值得上帝的救赎。然而上帝到底还是决定拯救某些人,使他们免下地狱。因此,对他而言,谁会获救,谁会受罚,并不是秘密。这都是事先注定的。我们完全任凭他处置。” “这样说来,从某个方面来看,他又回归到古老的迷信去了。” “也许吧。不过圣奥古斯丁并不认为人类应该放弃对自己生命的责任。他教导众人要有自己就是少数选民之一的自觉。他并不否认人有自由意志,只不过上帝已经‘预见’我们将如何生活。” “这不是很不公平吗?”苏菲问。“苏格拉底说我们都有同样的机会,因为我们都有同样的知识。但圣奥古斯丁却把人分成两种,一种会得救,一种会受罚。” “在这方面你说对了。一般认为,圣奥古斯丁的神学脱离了雅典的人本主义。但是,将人类分成两种人的并非圣奥古斯丁。他只是解释圣经中有关救赎与惩罚的教义罢了。他在《上帝之城》(TheCity ofGod)这本著作中就这点做了说明。” “书里说些什么?” “‘上帝之城’或‘天国’这个名称来自圣经和耶稣的教诲。圣奥古斯丁相信,一部人类史就是‘天国’与‘世俗之国’之间奋战的历史。这两‘国’并非以政治区分,它们互相争夺对个人的控制权。 ‘天国’或多或少存在于教会中,而‘世俗之国’则存在于各个国家,例如当时已渐趋没落的罗马帝国中,这个观念在中世纪期间变得更加清晰,因为当时教会与各国不断互争主控权。当时有一个说法是:‘除在教会之外,别无救赎。’圣奥古斯丁所说的‘上帝之城’后来成为教会的同义字。一直要到第十六世纪的宗教改革运动,才有人敢驳斥‘人们只能经由教会得救’的观念。” “的确是应该抗议了。” “除此之外,圣奥古斯丁也是我们迄今所谈到的第一个将历史纳入哲学理论的哲学家。他所说的善恶之争并无新意,新鲜的是他说这场战争一直在历史上演出。在这方面,圣奥古斯丁的理念并没有太多柏拉图的影子。事实上,对圣奥古斯丁影响较大的是旧约中的线性历史观,也就是‘上帝要借历史来实现天国理想’的说法。圣奥古斯丁认为,为了使人类获得启蒙,也为了摧毁邪恶,历史是有必要存在的。或者,就像圣奥古斯丁所说的;‘神以其先知先觉导引人类的历史,从亚当一直到世界末日。历史就像一个人从童年逐渐成长、衰老的故事。”’苏菲看了看手表。 “已经八点了。”她说。“我很快就得走了。” “在此之前,我还要和你谈谈中世纪另外一个大哲学家。我们到外面去坐好吗?” 艾伯特站起身来,双掌合十,然后便大步沿着侧廊走出去,看来仿佛正在祈祷,或正深思某个关于性灵的真理。苏菲别无选择,只好跟随着他。 教堂外的地上仍然笼罩着一层薄薄的雾气。旭日早已东升,但仍躲在云层中。教堂所在的地区属于旧市区的边缘。 艾伯特在教堂外的一张长椅上坐下来。苏菲心想,如果有人打这儿经过,看见他们,不知道会怎么想呢。早上八点就坐在长椅上已经够奇怪了,再加上身边还有一个中世纪的僧侣,那更是怪上加怪了。 “已经八点了。”艾伯特开始说。“从圣奥古斯丁的时代到现在已经过了四百年了。现在,学校开始成立了。从现在起到十点钟为止,道院所办的学校将会垄断所有教育工作。在十点和十一点之间,第—所。由教堂创办的学校将会成立。到正午时,最早的几所大学将会出现,几座宏伟的歌德式大教堂也将在此时建成。这座圣玛莉教堂也是在十三世纪(或称‘高歌德时期’)兴建的。这个镇没钱盖大一点的教堂。” “他们也不需要太大的教堂啊!”苏菲插嘴。“我讨厌空空荡荡的教堂。” “可是兴建大教堂并不只是为了供一大群人做礼拜,另外也是为了彰显上帝的荣耀。大教堂本身就是一种宗教庆典。话说回来,这段时期内发生了一件事,对像我们这样的哲学家别具意义。” 艾伯特继续说:“在这个时期,西班牙的阿拉伯人所带来的影响开始显现。整个中世纪期间,阿拉伯人维系了亚理斯多德的传统。后来,从十二世纪末起,阿拉伯学者陆续在各王公贵族的邀请之下抵达意大利北部。许多亚理斯多德的著作因此传扬开来,并且被人从希腊文与阿拉伯文译成拉丁文。此举使得人们对于自然科学重新燃起兴趣,并为基督教教义与希腊哲学的关系注入了新生命。在科学方面,亚理斯多德的理论此时显然又再度受到重视,但是,在哲学方面,人们何时应该听从亚理斯多德的话,何时又应该谨守圣经的教诲呢?你明白问题所在吗?” 圣多玛斯苏菲点点头。艾伯特继续说:“这段时期最伟大、最重要的哲学家是圣多玛斯(ThomasAquinas)。他生于一二二五到一二七四年间,家住罗马与那不勒斯之间一个名叫阿奎诺(Aquino)的小镇,后来他在巴黎大学教书。我称他为哲学家,但事实上他也是一位神学家。当时,哲学与神学并没有明显的区分。简而言之,我们可以说圣多玛斯将亚理斯多德加以‘基督教化’,就像中世纪初期的圣奥古斯丁将柏拉图‘基督教化’一样。” “把活在基督降生前好几百年的哲学家加以基督教化。这不是很奇怪吗?” “你可以这么说。不过,所谓‘基督教化’的意思只是把这两位希腊大哲学家的观念,用一种不至于对基督教教义造成威胁的方式加以诠释。圣多玛斯就是那些试图使亚里斯多德的哲学与基督教教义相容共存的人之一。我们可以说他把信仰与知识巧妙的融合在一起。他采取的方式是进入亚里斯多德的哲学世界,并以他的话来诠释圣经。”.“对不起,我昨晚几乎都没睡,因此恐怕你得讲清楚一些。” “圣多玛斯认为,哲学、理性这两者和基督教的启示与信仰之间并不一定有冲突。基督教的教义和哲学的道理,其实往往是相通的。所以我们透过理性推断的真理时常和圣经上所说的真理相同。” “怎么会呢?难道我们可以透过理性得知上帝在六天内创造了世界,或耶稣是上帝之子吗?”.“不,这些所谓的‘信仰的事实’只能透过信仰与基督的启示得知。但圣多玛斯认为世间有若干‘自然的神学真理’。所谓‘自然的神学真理’指的是一些既可以透过基督教的信仰,也可以透过我们与生俱来的理性得知的真理,例如‘上帝确实存在’这个真理。圣多玛斯指出,我们可以透过两条途径接近上帝。一条是经由信仰和基督的启示,一条是经由理性和感官。其中,透过信仰和启示这条是比较确实可靠的,因为我们如果光依靠理性的话,会很容易迷失方向。不过他的重点还是在于像亚里斯多德这样的哲学理论和基督教的教义之间并不一定有冲突。” “这么说我们可以在亚里斯多德的话和圣经这两者当中做一个选择啰?” “不,绝不是这样。亚里斯多德的学说只对了一部分,因为他不曾受到基督的启示。可是对了一半并不等于错。举个例子,如果我说雅典位于欧洲,这句话并没有错,但也不算准确。如果一本书只告诉你雅典是欧洲的一个城市,那么你最好查一下地理书。书上会告诉你雅典是欧洲东南部小国希腊的首都。运气好的话,它还会告诉你有关高城的一些事情,还有苏格拉底、柏拉图和亚里斯多德等人的事迹。” “可是那最初有关雅典的资料是正确的。” “没错。圣多玛斯想要证明世间只有一个真理,而亚里斯多德所说的真理并未与基督教教义冲突。他指出,我们可以透过理性的思考与感官的证据推知一部分的真理,例如亚里斯多德对植物与动物王国的叙述。但另外一部分真理则是由上帝透过圣经对我们加以启示。这两方面的真理在一些重要的点上是互相重叠的。事实上,在许多问题上,圣经和理性所告诉我们的事情是一样的。” “譬如说上帝确实存在之类的?” “一点没错。亚里斯多德的哲学也认定上帝(或‘目的因’)是造成各种自然现象的力量。但是他对上帝并没有进一步的描述,因此,圣多玛斯认为在这方面我们只能仰赖圣经和耶稣的教诲。” “上帝真的确实存在吗?” “这当然是一个很值得讨论的问题。但即使在今天,大多数人仍然认为人无法凭理性证明上帝并不存在。圣多玛斯则更进一步指出,他可以用亚里斯多德的哲学来证明天主确实存在。” “不坏嘛!” “他认为,我们用理性可以体认到我们周遭的事物必然有个‘目的因’。这是因为上帝既透过圣经,也透过理性向人类显现,所以世上既有‘信仰神学’也有‘自然神学’。在道德方面也是如此,圣经教导我们上帝希望人类如何生活,但上帝同时也赋予我们良心,使我们自然而然会分辨是非善恶。因此,我们要过道德的生活,也有两条路可走。即使我们从来没有在圣经上读过‘己所欲者施于人’的道理,我们也知道伤害人是不对的,在这方面,比较可靠的道路仍然是遵守圣经中的十诫。” “我懂了。”苏菲说。“这有点像是我们无论看到闪电或听到雷声,都可以知道有雷雨来临一样。” “对,就是这样。即使我们瞎了,也可以听到雷声,即使我们聋了,也可看见闪电。当然如果我们能同时看到、听到是最好的。可是我们所听到和看到的事物两者之间并不抵触。相反的,这两种印象具有彼此增强的作用。” “我明白了。” “我可以再举一个例子。如果你读一本小说,例如史坦贝克(JohnSteinbeck)的《人鼠之间》.....” “我真的读过啦。” “你难道不觉得你可以透过这本书了解作者的一些背景吗?” “我知道这本书一定是有人写的。” “你就只知道这点吗?” “你好像很关心弱者。” “当你读这本史坦贝克的‘创作’时,应该可以约略了解史坦贝克这个人的性情。可是你无法从书中获取任何有关作者的个人资料。例如,你读了《人鼠之间》这本书后,可以知道作者在写这本书时年纪多大、住在哪里或有多少个孩子吗?” “当然不能。” “但是你可以在一本史坦贝克的传记里得知这些资料。唯有透过传记(或自传)你才能够更加了解史坦贝克这个人。” “没错。” “这多少就像是上帝的‘创作’与圣经的关系一样。我们只要在大自然中走动便可以体认到世间确实有上帝存在。我们很容易可以看出他喜欢花儿与动物,否则他不会创造它们。但有关上帝的资料,我们只能透过圣经得知。你可以说圣经就是天主的‘自传’。” “你还真会举例子。” “嗯……” 这是第一次艾伯特坐在那儿想事情,没有回答苏菲的话。 “这些事情和席德有关吗?”苏菲忍不住问。 “我们不知道世上是否有‘席德’这个人。” “可是我们知道有人到处留下与她有关的证据,像明信片、丝巾、绿皮夹、袜子什么的。” 艾伯特点点头。“而且到底要留下多少线索似乎是由席德的父亲来决定的。”他说。“到目前为止,我们只知道有一个人寄给我们很多张明信片。我希望他也能够在信上写一些关于他自己的事。不过这点我们待会儿还会谈到。” “已经十点四十五分了。我等不及谈完中世纪就得回家了。” “我只想再谈一下圣多玛斯如何在各个不与基督教神学抵触的领域内采纳亚里斯多德的哲学。这些领域包括他的逻辑学、知识理论与自然哲学。举个例子,你是否还记得亚里斯多德如何描述从植物到动物到人类的生命层级?” 苏菲点点头。 “亚里斯多德认为,这个生命的层级显示上帝乃是最高的存在。这个理论并不难与基督教的神学取得共识。圣多玛斯认为,万物的存在分成若干渐进的层次。最低的是植物,其次是动物,再其次是人类,再其次是天使,最上面则是上帝。人像动物一样有身体和感官,但也有理性可以思考。天使既没有身体也没有感官,因此他们具有自发的、直接的智慧。他们不需要像人类一样的‘思索’,也不需要靠推理来获致结论。他们不需要像我们一样逐步学习,就可以拥有人类所有的智慧。而且由于没有身体的缘故,他们也不会死亡。他们虽然无法像上帝一样永远存在(因为他们也是天主的造物),但由于他们没有一个终有一天必须离开的身躯,因此他们也永远不会死亡。” “这倒挺不错的。” “高居天使之上的是掌管世间万物的天主,他可以看见、知道每一件事物。” “所以他现在也可以看见我们哼?” “是的,也许是这样的,但不是‘现在’。上帝的时间和人类的时间不同;我们的‘现在’不一定是天主的‘现在’,人间的几个星期并不等于天上的几个星期。” “真恐怖!”苏菲用手掩住嘴巴。艾伯特俯视着她。她说:“我昨天接到席德的父亲寄来的一张明信片,上面也说什么‘对苏菲来说是一两星期的时间,对我们而言不见得这么长。’这几乎和你说的上帝一样。” 苏菲看到艾伯特在棕色头罩下面的脸闪过一抹不悦的神色。 “他真应该觉得惭愧尸苏菲并不完全了解艾伯特的意思。他继续说:“令人遗憾的是,圣多玛斯也采取了亚里斯多德对于女人的观点。你可能还记得亚里斯多德认为女人是一个不完整的男人。他并认为小孩子只继承父亲的特征,因为妇女是被动的、只能接受的,而男人则是积极的、具有创造力的。圣多玛斯认为这些观点与圣经的话语一致。例如,圣经上就告诉我们女人是由亚当的肋骨所造的。” “胡说八道!” “事实上,人类是一直到一八二七年才发现哺乳类有卵子,因此难怪人们会认为男人是生殖过程中创造生命、赋予生命的力量。 不过,圣多玛斯认为,女人只有在身体的构造上比不上男人,但在灵魂上则与男人相当。此外,在天堂里,两性是完全平等的,因为在那里所有身体上的性别差异都不存在了。” “这点并不让人觉得好过多少。中世纪难道没有女哲学家吗?” “中世纪的教会大部分是男人的天下,不过这并不表示当时没有女思想家。其中一位名叫席德佳(HildegardofBingen)…” 苏菲睁大了眼睛:“她和席德有什么关系吗?” “怎么会问这种问题呢?席德佳是一O九八到一一七九年间一位住在莱茵河谷的修女。她虽然是个女人,却身兼传教士、作家、医生、植物学家与博物学者等几种头衔。通常中世纪的妇女要比男人更实际,甚至可能更有科学头脑,在这方面席德佳也许是一个象征。” “我问她到底和席德有没有关系?” “古代的基督徒和犹太人相信上帝不只是个男人而已。他也有女性化——或所谓‘母性’——的一面。他们认为女人也是依照上帝的形象创造的。在希腊文中,上帝女性化的那一面被称为‘苏菲亚’(Sophia)。‘苏菲亚’或‘苏菲’(Sophie)就是智慧的意思。” 苏菲无奈的摇摇头。为什么以前没有人告诉她这件事呢?她又为什么从来没问过呢?艾伯特继续说:“在中世纪期间,上帝的母性对于犹太人和希腊正教的教会而言别具意义,但在西方她则被人们所遗忘。所幸后来席德佳出现了。她宣称她在幻象中看到了苏菲亚,穿着一袭缀满华贵珠宝的金色袍子……” 苏菲从椅子上站了起来。苏菲亚在梦境中向席德佳显灵…“也许我也会向席德现身。” 她再度坐了下来。艾伯特第三次把手放在苏菲的肩膀上。 “这事我们必须好好谈一谈,不过现在已经快十一点钟,你得回家了。我们很快就要讲到一个新的纪元。下一次要讲文艺复兴时,我会通知你来。汉密士会到花园去接你。” 说完了,这位奇怪的僧侣就站了起来,开始向教堂走去。苏菲留在原地,想着有关“席德佳和苏菲亚、席德和苏菲”的事。突然间她跳了起来,追赶穿着僧侣服的艾伯特,在他身后喊道:“中世纪是不是也有一位艾伯特?” 他稍稍减缓了速度,偏了偏头说道:“圣多玛斯有一位著名的哲学老师,名叫大艾勃特(A1berttheGreat)……” 说完了,他便颔了颔首,跨进圣玛莉教堂的门,消失无踪了。 苏菲对他的回答并不满意。她也紧跟着回到教堂内,然而现在里面却空无一人。难道他钻进地板去了吗?她正要离开教堂时,看见一幅圣母像。她走近画像,仔细审视。 突然间她发现圣母的一只眼睛下面有一小滴水。那是眼泪吗?苏菲冲出教堂,跑回乔安家。 The Renaissance O divine lineage in mortal guise It was just twelve when Sophie reached Joanna's front gate, out of breath with running. Joanna was standing in the front yard outside her family's yellow house. "You've been gone for five hours!" Joanna said sharply. Sophie shook her head. "No, I've been gone for more than a thousand years." "Where on earth have you been? You're crazy. Your mom called half an hour ago." "What did you tell her?" "I said you were at the drugstore. She said would you call her when you got back. But you should have seen my mom and dad when they came in with hot chocolate and rolls at ten this morning ... and your bed was empty." "What did you say to them?" "It was really embarrassing. I told them you went home because we got mad at each other." "So we'd better hurry up and be friends again. And we have to make sure your parents don't talk to my mom for a few days. Do you think we can do that?" Joanna shrugged. Just then her father came around the corner with a wheelbarrow. He had a pair of coveralls on and was busy clearing up last year's leaves and twigs. "Aha--so you're friends again, I see. Well, there's not so much as a single leaf left on the basement steps now." "Fine," said Sophie. "So perhaps we can have our hot chocolate there instead of in bed." Joanna's dad gave a forced laugh, but Joanna gasped. Verbal exchanges had always been more robust in Sophie's family than at the more well-to-do home of Mr. Ingebrigtsen, the financial adviser, and his wife. "I'm sorry, Joanna, but I felt I ought to take part in this cover-up operation as well." "Are you going to tell me about it?" "Sure, if you walk home with me. Because it's not for the ears of financial advisers or overgrown Barbie dolls." "That's a rotten thing to say! I suppose you think a rocky marriage that drives one of the partners away to sea is better?" "Probably not. But I hardly slept last night. And another thing, I've begun to wonder whether Hilde can see everything we do." They began to walk toward Clover Close. "You mean she might have second sight?" "Maybe. Maybe not." Joanna was clearly not enthusiastic about all this secrecy. "But that doesn't explain why her father sent a lot of crazy postcards to an empty cabin in the woods." "I admit that is a weak spot." "Do you want to tell me where you have been?" So she did. Sophie told her everything, about the mysterious philosophy course as well. She made Joanna swear to keep everything secret. They walked for a long time without speaking. As they approached Clover Close, Joanna said, "I don't like it." She stopped at Sophie's gate and turned to go home again. "Nobody asked you to like it. But philosophy is not a harmless party game. It's about who we are and where we come from. Do you think we learn enough about that at school?" "Nobody can answer questions like that anyway." "Yes, but we don't even learn to ask them!" Lunch was on the table when Sophie walked into the kitchen. Nothing was said about her not having called from Joanna's. After lunch Sophie announced that she was going to take a nap. She admitted she had hardly slept at Joanna's house, which was not at all unusual at a sleepover. Before getting into bed she stood in front of the big brass mirror which now hung on her wall. At first she only saw her own white and exhausted face. But then-- behind her own face, the faintest suggestion of another face seemed to appear. Sophie took one or two deep breaths. It was no good starting to imagine things. She studied the sharp contours of her own pale face framed by that impossible hair which defied any style but nature's own. But beyond that face was the apparition of another girl. Suddenly the other girl began to wink frantically with both eyes, as if to signal that she was really in there on the other side. The apparition lasted only a few seconds. Then she was gone. Sophie sat down on the edge of the bed. She had absolutely no doubt that it was Hilde she had seen in the mirror. She had caught a glimpse of her picture on a school I.D. in the major's cabin. It must have been the same girl she had seen in the mirror. Wasn't it odd, how she always experienced mysterious things like this when she was dead tired. It meant that afterward she always had to ask herself whether it really had happened. Sophie laid her clothes on the chair and crawled into bed. She fell asleep at once and had a strangely vivid dream. She dreamed she was standing in a large garden that sloped down to a red boathouse. On the dock behind it sat a young fair-haired girl gazing out over the water. Sophie walked down and sat beside her. But the girl seemed not to notice her. Sophie introduced herself. "I'm Sophie," she said. But the other girl could apparently neither see nor hear her. Suddenly Sophie heard a voice calling, "Hilde!" At once the girl jumped up from where she was sitting and ran as fast as she could up to the house. She couldn't have been deaf or blind after all. A middle-aged man came striding from the house toward her. He was wearing a khaki uniform and a blue beret. The girl threw her arms around his neck and he swung her around a few times. Sophie noticed a little gold crucifix on a chain lying on the dock where the girl had been sitting. She picked it up and held it in her hand. Then she woke up. Sophie looked at the clock. She had been asleep for two hours. She sat up in bed, thinking about the strange dream. It was so real that she felt as if she had actually lived the experience. She was equally sure that the house and the dock really existed somewhere. Surely it resembled the picture she had seen hanging in the major's cabin? Anyway, there was no doubt at all that the girl in her dream was Hilde Moller Knag and that the man was her father, home from Lebanon. In her dream he had looked a lot like Alberto Knox ... As Sophie stood up and began to tidy her bed, she found a gold crucifix on a chain under her pillow. On the back of the crucifix there were three letters engraved: HMK. This was not the first time Sophie had dreamed she found a treasure. But this was definitely the first time she had brought it back from the dream. "Damn!" she said aloud. She was so mad that she opened the closet door and hurled the delicate crucifix up onto the top shelf with the silk scarf, the white stocking, and the postcards from Lebanon. The next morning Sophie woke up to a big breakfast of hot rolls, orange juice, eggs, and vegetable salad. It was not often that her mother was up before Sophie on a Sunday morning. When she was, she liked to fix a solid meal for Sophie. While they were eating, Mom said, "There's a strange dog in the garden. It's been sniffing round the old hedge all morning. I can't imagine what it's doing here, can you?" "Yes!" Sophie burst out, and at once regretted it. "Has it been here before?" Sophie had already left the table and gone into the living room to look out of the window facing the large garden. It was just as she thought. Hermes was lying in front of the secret entrance to her den. What should she say? She had no time to think of anything before her mother came and stood beside her. "Did you say it had been here before?" she asked. "I expect it buried a bone there and now it's come to fetch its treasure. Dogs have memories too ..." "Maybe you're right, Sophie. You're the animal psychologist in the family." Sophie thought feverishly. "I'll take it home," she said. "You know where it lives, then?" Sophie shrugged her shoulders. "It's probably got an address on its collar." A couple of minutes later Sophie was on her way down the garden. When Hermes caught sight of her he came lolloping toward her, wagging his tail and jumping up to her. "Good boy, Hermes!" said Sophie. She knew her mother was watching from the window. She prayed he would not go through the hedge. But the dog dashed toward the gravel path in front of the house, streaked across the front yard, and jumped up to the gate. When they had shut the gate behind them, Hermes continued to run a few yards in front of Sophie. It was a long way. Sophie and Hermes were not the only ones out for a Sunday walk. Whole families were setting off for the day. Sophie felt a pang of envy. From time to time Hermes would run off and sniff at another dog or at something interesting by a garden hedge, but as soon as Sophie called "Here, boy!" he would come back to her at once. They crossed an old pasture, a large playing field, and a playground, and emerged into an area with more traffic. They continued toward the town center along a broad street with cobbled stones and streetcars. Hermes led the way across the town square and up Church Street. They came out into the Old Town, with its massive staid town houses from the turn of the century. It was almost half past one. Now they were on the other side of town. Sophie had not been there very often. Once when she was little, she remembered, she had been taken to visit an old aunt in one of these streets. Eventually they reached a little square between several old houses. It was called New Square, although it all looked very old. But then the whole town was old; it had been founded way back in the Middle Ages. Hermes walked toward No. 14, where he stood still and waited for Sophie to open the door. Her heart began to beat faster. Inside the front door there were a number of green mailboxes attached to a panel. Sophie noticed a postcard hanging from one of the mailboxes in the top row. It had a stamped message from the mailman across it to the effect that the addressee was unknown. The addressee was Hilde Moller Knag, 14 New Square. It was postmarked June 15. That was not for two weeks, but the mailman had obviously not noticed that. Sophie took the card down and read it: Dear Hilde, Now Sophie is coming to the philosopher's house. She will soon be fifteen, but you were fifteen yesterday. Or is it today, Hilde? If it is today, it must be late, then. But our watches do not always agree. One generation ages while another generation is brought forth. In the meantime history takes its course. Have you ever thought that the history of Europe is like a human life? Antiquity is like the childhood of Europe. Then come the interminable Middle Ages--Europe's schoolday. But at last comes the Renaissance; the long school-day is over. Europe comes of age in a burst of exuberance and a thirst for life. We could say that the Renaissance is Europe's fifteenth birthday! It is mid-June, my child, and it is wonderful to be alive! P.S. Sorry to hear you lost your gold crucifix. You must learn to take better care of your things. Love, Dad--who is just around the corner. Hermes was already on his way up the stairs. Sophie took the postcard with her and followed. She had to run to keep up with him; he was wagging his tail delightedly. They passed the second, third, and fourth stories. From then on there was only an attic staircase. Were they going up to the roof? Hermes clambered on up the stairs and stopped outside a narrow door, which he scratched at with his paw. Sophie heard footsteps approaching from inside. The door opened, and there stood Alberto Knox. He had changed his clothes and was now wearing another costume. It consisted of white hose, red knee-breeches, and a yellow jacket with padded shoulders. He reminded Sophie of a joker in a deck of cards. If she was not much mistaken, this was a typical Renaissance costume. "What a clown!" Sophie exclaimed, giving him a little push so that she could go inside the apartment. Once again she had taken out her fear and shyness on the unfortunate philosophy teacher. Sophie's thoughts were in a turmoil because of the postcard she had found down in the hallway. "Be calm, my child," said Alberto, closing the door behind her. "And here's the mail," she said, handing him the postcard as if she held him responsible for it. Alberto read it and shook his head. "He gets more and more audacious. I wouldn't be surprised if he isn't using us as a kind of birthday diversion for his daughter." With that he tore the postcard into small pieces and threw them into the wastepaper basket. "It said that Hilde has lost her crucifix," said Sophie. "So I read." "And I found it, the same one, under my pillow at home. Can you understand how it got there?" Alberto looked gravely into her eyes. "It may seem alluring. But it's just a cheap trick that costs him no effort whatsoever. Let us rather concentrate on the big white rabbit that is pulled out of the universe's top hat." They went into the living room. It was one of the most extraordinary rooms Sophie had ever seen. Alberto lived in a spacious attic apartment with sloping walls. A sharp light directly from the sky flooded the room from a skylight set into one of the walls. There was also another window facing the town. Through this window Sophie could look over all the roofs in the Old Town. But what amazed Sophie most was all the stuff the room was filled with--furniture and objects from various historical periods. There was a sofa from the thirties, an old desk from the beginning of the century, and a chair that had to be hundreds of years old. But it wasn't just the furniture. Old objects, either useful or decorative, were jumbled together on shelves and cupboards. There were old clocks and vases, mortars and retorts, knives and dolls, quill pens and bookends, octants and sextants, compasses and barometers. One entire wall was covered with books, but not the sort of books found in most bookstores. The book collection itself was a cross section of the production of many hundreds of years. On the other walls hung drawings and paintings, some from recent decades, but most of them also very old. There were a lot of old charts and maps on the walls too, and as far as Norway was concerned, they were not very accurate. Sophie stood for several minutes without speaking and took everything in. "What a lot of old junk you've collected," she said. "Now then! Just think of how many centuries of history I have preserved in this room. I wouldn't exactly call it junk." "Do you manage an antique shop or something?" Alberto looked almost pained. "We can't all let ourselves be washed away by the tide of history, Sophie. Some of us must tarry in order to gather up what has been left along the river banks." "What an odd thing to say." "Yes, but none the less true, child. We do not live in our own time alone; we carry our history within us. Don't forget that everything you see in this room was once brand new. That old sixteenth-century wooden doll might have been made for a five-year-old girl's birthday. By her old grandfather, maybe... then she became a teenager, then an adult, and then she married. Maybe she had a daughter of her own and gave the doll to her. She grew old, and one day she died. Although she had lived for a very long time, one day she was dead and gone. And she will never return. Actually she was only here for a short visit. But her doll--well, there it is on the shelf." "Everything sounds so sad and solemn when you talk like that." "Life is both sad and solemn. We are let into a wonderful world, we meet one another here, greet each other--and wander together for a brief moment. Then we lose each other and disappear as suddenly and unreasonably as we arrived." "May I ask you something?" "We're not playing hide-and-seek any more." "Why did you move into the major's cabin?" "So that we would not be so far from each other, when we were only talking by letter. I knew the old cabin would be empty." "So you just moved in?" "That's right. I moved in." "Then maybe you can also explain how Hilde's father knew you were there." "If I am right, he knows practically everything." "But I still can't understand at all how you get a mailman to deliver mail in the middle of the woods!" Alberto smiled archly. "Even things like that are a pure bagatelle for Hilde's father. Cheap hocus-pocus, simple sleight of hand. We are living under what is possibly the world's closest surveillance." Sophie could feel herself getting angry. "If I ever meet him, I'll scratch his eyes out!" Alberto walked over and sat down on the sofa. Sophie followed and sank into a deep armchair. "Only philosophy can bring us closer to Hilde's father," Alberto said at last. "Today I shall tell you about the Renaissance." "Shoot." "Not very long after St. Thomas Aquinas, cracks began to appear in the unifying culture of Christianity. Philosophy and science broke away more and more from the theology of the Church, thus enabling religious life to attain a freer relationship to reasoning. More people now emphasized that we cannot reach God through rationalism because God is in all ways unknowable. The important thing for a man was not to understand the divine mystery but to submit to God's will. "As religion and science could now relate more freely to each other, the way was open both to new scientific methods and a new religious fervor. Thus the basis was created for two powerful upheavals in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, namely, the Renaissance and the Reformation." "Can we take them one at a time?" "By the Renaissance we mean the rich cultural development that began in the late fourteenth century. It started in Northern Italy and spread rapidly northward during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries." "Didn't you tell me that the word 'renaissance' meant rebirth?" "I did indeed, and that which was to be reborn was the art and culture of antiquity. We also speak of Renaissance humanism, since now, after the long Dark Ages in which every aspect of life was seen through divine light, everything once again revolved around man. 'Go to the source' was the motto, and that meant the humanism of antiquity first and foremost. "It almost became a popular pastime to dig up ancient sculptures and scrolls, just as it became fashionable to learn Greek. The study of Greek humanism also had a pedagogical aim. Reading humanistic subjects provided a 'classical education' and developed what may be called human qualities. 'Horses are born,' it was said, 'but human beings are not born--they are formed.' " "Do we have to be educated to be human beings?" "Yes, that was the thought. But before we take a closer look at the ideas of Renaissance humanism, we must say a little about the political and cultural background of the Renaissance." Alberto rose from the sofa and began to wander about the room. After a while he paused and pointed to an antique instrument on one of the shelves. "What is that?" he asked. "It looks like an old compass." "Quite right." He then pointed to an ancient firearm hanging on the wall above the sofa. "And that?" "An old-fashioned rifle." "Exactly--and this?" Alberto pulled a large book off one of the bookshelves. "It's an old book." "To be absolutely precise, it is an incunabulum." "An incunabulum?" "Actually, it means 'cradle.' The word is used about books printed in the cradle days of printing. That is, before 1500." "Is it really that old?" "That old, yes. And these three discoveries--the compass, firearms, and the printing press--were essential preconditions for this new period we call the Renaissance." "You'll have to explain that a bit more clearly." "The compass made it easier to navigate. In other words, it was the basis for the great voyages of discovery. So were firearms in a way. The new weapons gave the Europeans military superiority over American and Asiatic cultures, although firearms were also an important factor in Europe. Printing played an important part in spreading the Renaissance humanists' new ideas. And the art of printing was, not least, one of the factors that forced the Church to relinquish its former position as sole disseminator of knowledge. New inventions and instruments began to follow thick and fast. One important instrument, for example, was the telescope, which resulted in a completely new basis for astronomy." "And finally came rockets and space probes." "Now you're going too fast. But you could say that a process started in the Renaissance finally brought people to the moon. Or for that matter to Hiroshima and Chernobyl. However, it all began with changes on the cultural and economic front. An important condition was the transition from a subsistence economy to a monetary economy. Toward the end of the Middle Ages, cities had developed, with effective trades and a lively commerce of new goods, a monetary economy and banking. A middle class arose which developed a certain freedom with regard to the basic conditions of life. Necessities became something that could be bought for money. This state of affairs rewarded people's diligence, imagination, and ingenuity. New demands were made on the individual." "It's a bit like the way Greek cities developed two thousand years earlier." "Not altogether untrue. I told you how Greek philosophy broke away from the mythological world picture that was linked to peasant culture. In the same way, the Renaissance middle class began to break away from the feudal lords and the power of the church. As this was happening, Greek culture was being rediscovered through a closer contact with the Arabs in Spain and the Byzantine culture in the east." "The three diverging streams from antiquity joined into one great river." "You are an attentive pupil. That gives you some background on the Renaissance. I shall now tell you about the new ideas." "Okay, but I'll have to go home and eat." Alberto sat down on the sofa again. He looked at Sophie. "Above all else, the Renaissance resulted in a new view of mankind. The humanism of the Renaissance brought a new belief in man and his worth, in striking contrast to the biased medieval emphasis on the sinful nature of man. Man was now considered infinitely great and valuable. One of the central figures of the Renaissance was Marsilio Ficino, who exclaimed: 'Know thyself, O divine lineage in mortal guise!' Another central figure, Pica della Mirandola, wrote the Oration on the Dignity of Man, something that would have been unthinkable in the Middle Ages. "Throughout the whole medieval period, the point of departure had always been God. The humanists of the Renaissance took as their point of departure man himself." "But so did the Greek philosophers." "That is precisely why we speak of a 'rebirth' of antiquity's humanism. But Renaissance humanism was to an even greater extent characterized by individualism. We are not only human beings, we are unique individuals. This idea could then lead to an almost unrestrained worship of genius. The ideal became what we call the Renaissance man, a man of universal genius embracing all aspects of life, art, and science. The new view of man also manifested itself in an interest in the human anatomy. As in ancient times, people once again began to dissect the dead to discover how the body was constructed. It was imperative both for medical science and for art. Once again it became usual for works of art to depict the nude. High time, after a thousand years of prudery. Man was bold enough to be himself again. There was no longer anything to be ashamed of." "It sounds intoxicating," said Sophie, leaning her arms on the little table that stood between her and the philosopher. "Undeniably. The new view of mankind led to a whole new outlook. Man did not exist purely for God's sake. Man could therefore delight in life here and now. And with this new freedom to develop, the possibilities were limitless. The aim was now to exceed all boundaries. This was also a new idea, seen from the Greek humanistic point of view; the humanists of antiquity had emphasized the importance of tranquility, moderation, and restraint." "And the Renaissance humanists lost their restraint?" "They were certainly not especially moderate. They behaved as if the whole world had been reawakened. They became intensely conscious of their epoch, which is what led them to introduce the term 'Middle Ages' to cover the centuries between antiquity and their own time. There was an unrivaled development in all spheres of life. Art and architecture, literature, music, philosophy, and science flourished as never before. I will mention one concrete example. We have spoken of Ancient Rome, which gloried in titles such as the 'city of cities' and the 'hub of the universe.' During the Middle Ages the city declined, and by 1417 the old metropolis had only 17,000 inhabitants." "Not much more than Lillesand, where Hilde lives." "The Renaissance humanists saw it as their cultural duty to restore Rome: first and foremost, to begin the construction of the great St. Peter's Church over the grave of Peter the Apostle. And St. Peter's Church can boast neither of moderation nor restraint. Many great artists of the Renaissance took part in this building project, the greatest in the world. It began in 1506 and lasted for a hundred and twenty years, and it took another fifty before the huge St. Peter's Square was completed." "It must be a gigantic church!" "It is over 200 meters long and 130 meters high, and it covers an area of more than 16,000 square meters. But enough about the boldness of Renaissance man. It was also significant that the Renaissance brought with it a new view of nature. The fact that man felt at home in the world and did not consider life solely as a preparation for the hereafter, created a whole new approach to the physical world. Nature was now regarded as a positive thing. Many held the view that God was also present in his creation. If he is indeed infinite, he must be present in everything. This idea is called pantheism. The medieval philosophers had insisted that there is an insurmountable barrier between God and the Creation. It could now be said that nature is divine--and even that it is 'God's blossoming.' Ideas of this kind were not always looked kindly on by the church. The fate of Gior-dano Bruno was a dramatic example of this. Not only did he claim that God was present in nature, he also believed that the universe was infinite in scope. He was punished very severely for his ideas." "How?" "He was burned at the stake in Rome's Flower Market in the year 1600." "How horrible ... and stupid. And you call that humanism?" "No, not at all. Bruno was the humanist, not his executioners. During the Renaissance, what we call anti-humanism flourished as well. By this I mean the authoritarian power of State and Church. During the Renaissance there was a tremendous thirst for trying witches, burning heretics, magic and superstition, bloody religious wars--and not least, the brutal conquest of America. But humanism has always had a shadow side. No epoch is either purely good or purely evil. Good and evil are twin threads that run through the history of mankind. And often they intertwine. This is not least true of our next key phrase, a new scientific method, another Renaissance innovation which I will tell you about." "Was that when they built the first factories?" "No, not yet. But a precondition for all the technical development that took place after the Renaissance was the new scientific method. By that I mean the completely new approach to what science was. The technical fruits of this method only became apparent later on." "What was this new method?" "Mainly it was a process of investigating nature with our own senses. Since the fourteenth century there had been an increasing number of thinkers who warned against blind faith in old authority, be it religious doctrine or the natural philosophy of Aristotle. There were also warnings against the belief that problems can be solved purely by thinking. An exaggerated belief in the importance of reason had been valid all through the Middle Ages. Now it was said that every investigation of natural phenomena must be based on observation, experience, and experiment. We call this the empirical method." "Which means?" "It only means that one bases one's knowledge of things on one's own experience--and not on dusty parchments or figments of the imagination. Empirical science was known in antiquity, but systematic experiments were something quite new." "I guess they didn't have any of the technical apparatus we have today." "Of course they had neither calculators nor electronic scales. But they had mathematics and they had scales. And it was now above all imperative to express scientific observations in precise mathematical terms. 'Measure what can be measured, and make measurable what can-not be measured,' said the Italian Galileo Galilei, who was one of the most important scientists of the seventeenth century. He also said that the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics." "And all these experiments and measurements made new inventions possible." "The first phase was a new scientific method. This made the technical revolution itself possible, and the technical breakthrough opened the way for every invention since. You could say that man had begun to break away from his natural condition. Nature was no longer something man was simply a part of. 'Knowledge is power,' said the English philosopher Francis Bacon, thereby underlining the practical value of knowledge-- and this was indeed new. Man was seriously starting to intervene in nature and beginning to control it." "But not only in a good way?" "No, this is what I was referring to before when I spoke of the good and the evil threads that are constantly intertwined in everything we do. The technical revolution that began in the Renaissance led to the spinning jenny and to unemployment, to medicines and new diseases, to the improved efficiency of agriculture and the impoverishment of the environment, to practical appliances such as the washing machine and the refrigerator and pollution and industrial waste. The serious threat to the environment we are facing today has made many people see the technical revolution itself as a perilous maladjustment to natural conditions. It has been pointed out that we have started something we can no longer control. More optimistic spirits think we are still living in the cradle of technology, and that although the scientific age has certainly had its teething troubles, we will gradually learn to control nature without at the same time threatening its very existence and thus our own." "Which do you think?" "I think perhaps there may be some truth in both views. In some areas we must stop interfering with nature, but in others we can succeed. One thing is certain: There is no way back to the Middle Ages. Ever since the Renaissance, mankind has been more than just part of creation. Man has begun to intervene in nature and form it after his own image. In truth, 'what a piece of work is man!' " "We have already been to the moon. What medieval person would have believed such a thing possible?" "No, that's for sure. Which brings us to the new world view. All through the Middle Ages people had stood beneath the sky and gazed up at the sun, the moon, the stars, and the planets. But nobody had doubted that the earth was the center of the universe. No observations had sown any doubt that the earth remained still while the 'heavenly bodies' traveled in their orbits around it. We call this the geocentric world picture, or in other words, the belief that everything revolves around the earth. The Christian belief that God ruled from on high, up above all the heavenly bodies, also contributed to maintaining this world picture." "I wish it were that simple!" "But in 1543 a little book was published entitled On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres. It was written by the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, who died on the day the book was published. Copernicus claimed that it was not the sun that moved round the earth, it was vice versa. He thought this was completely possible from the observations of the heavenly bodies that existed. The reason people had always believed that the sun went round the earth was that the earth turns on its own axis, he said. He pointed out that all observations of heavenly bodies were far easier to understand if one assumed that both the earth and the other planets circle around the sun. We call this the heliocentric world picture, which means that everything centers around the sun." "And that world picture was the right one?" "Not entirely. His main point--that the earth moves round the sun--is of course correct. But he claimed that the sun was the center of the universe. Today we know that the sun is only one of an infinite number of stars, and that all the stars around us make up only one of many billions of galaxies. Copernicus also believed that the earth and the other planets moved in circular orbits around the sun." "Don't they?" "No. He had nothing on which to base his belief in the circular orbits other than the ancient idea that heavenly bodies were round and moved in circles simply because they were 'heavenly.' Since the time of Plato the sphere and the circle had been considered the most per-fect geometrical figures. But in the early 1600s, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler presented the results of comprehensive observations which showed that the planets move in elliptical--or oval--orbits with the sun at one focus. He also pointed out that the speed of a planet is greatest when it is closest to the sun, and that the farther a planet's orbit is from the sun the slower it moves. Not until Kepler's time was it actually stated that the earth was a planet just like other planets. Kepler also emphasized that the same physical laws apply everywhere throughout the universe." "How could he know that?" "Because he had investigated the movements of the planets with his own senses instead of blindly trusting ancient superstitions. Galileo Galilei, who was roughly contemporary with Kepler, also used a telescope to observe the heavenly bodies. He studied the moon's craters and said that the moon had mountains and valleys similar to those on earth. Moreover, he discovered that the planet Jupiter had four moons. So the earth was not alone in having a moon. But the greatest significance of Galileo was that he first formulated the so-called Law of Inertia." "And that is?" "Galileo formulated it thus: A body remains in the state which it is in, at rest or in motion, as long as no external force compels it to change its state." "If you say so." "But this was a significant observation. Since antiquity, one of the central arguments against the earth moving round its own axis was that the earth would then move so quickly that a stone hurled straight into the air would fall yards away from the spot it was hurled from." "So why doesn't it?" "If you're sitting in a train and you drop an apple, it doesn't fall backward because the train is moving. It falls straight down. That is because of the law of inertia. The apple retains exactly the same speed it had before you dropped it." "I think I understand." "Now in Galileo's time there were no trains. But if you roll a ball along the ground--and suddenly let go..." "... it goes on rolling ..." "... because it retains its speed after you let go." "But it will stop eventually, if the room is long enough." "That's because other forces slow it down. First, the floor, especially if it is a rough wooden floor. Then the force of gravity will sooner or later bring it to a halt. But wait, I'll show you something." Alberto Knox got up and went over to the old desk. He took something out of one of the drawers. When he returned to his place he put it on the coffee table. It was just a wooden board, a few millimeters thick at one end and thin at the other. Beside the board, which almost covered the whole table, he laid a green marble. "This is called an inclined plane," he said. "What do you think will happen if I let go the marble up here, where the plane is thickest?" Sophie sighed resignedly. "I bet you ten crowns it rolls down onto the table and ends on the floor." "Let's see." Alberto let go of the marble and it behaved exactly as Sophie had said. It rolled onto the table, over the tabletop, hit the floor with a little thud and finally bumped into the wall. "Impressive," said Sophie. "Yes, wasn't it! This was the kind of experiment Galileo did, you see." "Was he really that stupid?" "Patience! He wanted to investigate things with all his senses, so we have only just begun. Tell me first why the marble rolled down the inclined plane." "It began to roll because it was heavy." "All right. And what is weight actually, child?" "That's a silly question." "It's not a silly question if you can't answer it. Why did the marble roll onto the floor?" "Because of gravity." "Exactly--or gravitation, as we also say. Weight has something to do with gravity. That was the force that set the marble in motion." Alberto had already picked the marble up from the floor. He stood bowed over the inclined plane with the marble again. "Now I shall try to roll the marble across the plane," he said. "Watch carefully how it moves." Sophie watched as the marble gradually curved away and was drawn down the incline. "What happened?" asked Alberto. "It rolled sloping because the board is sloping." "Now I'm going to brush the marble with ink ... then perhaps we can study exactly what you mean by sloping." He dug out an ink brush and painted the whole marble black. Then he rolled it again. Now Sophie could see exactly where on the plane the marble had rolled because it had left a black line on the board. "How would you describe the marble's path?" "It's curved ... it looks like part of a circle." "Precisely." Alberto looked up at her and raised his eyebrows. "However, it is not quite a circle. This figure is called a parabola." "That's fine with me." "Ah, but why did the marble travel in precisely that way?" Sophie thought deeply. Then she said, "Because the board was sloping, the marble was drawn toward the floor by the force of gravity."-"Yes, yes! This is nothing less than a sensation! Here I go, dragging a girl who's not yet fifteen up to my attic, and she realizes exactly the same thing Galileo did after one single experiment!" He clapped his hands. For a moment Sophie was afraid he had gone mad. He continued: "You saw what happened when two forces worked simultaneously on the same object. Galileo discovered that the same thing applied, for instance, to a cannonball. It is propelled into the air, it continues its path over the earth, but will eventually be drawn toward the earth. So it will have described a trajectory corresponding to the marble's path across the inclined plane. And this was actually a new discovery at the time of Galileo. Aristotle thought that a projectile hurled obliquely into the air would first describe a gentle curve and then fall vertically to the earth. This was not so, but nobody could know Aristotle was wrong before it had been demonstrated." "Does all this really matter?" "Does it matter? You bet it matters! This has cosmic significance, my child. Of all the scientific discoveries in the history of mankind, this is positively the most important." "I'm sure you are going to tell me why." "Then along came the English physicist Isaac Newton, who lived from 1642 to 1727. He was the one who provided the final description of the solar system and the planetary orbits. Not only could he describe how the planets moved round the sun, he could also explain why they did so. He was able to do so partly by referring to what we call Galileo's dynamics." "Are the planets marbles on an inclined plane then?" "Something like that, yes. But wait a bit, Sophie." "Do I have a choice?" "Kepler had already pointed out that there had to be a force that caused the heavenly bodies to attract each other. There had to be, for example, a solar force which held the planets fast in their orbits. Such a force would moreover explain why the planets moved more slowly in their orbit the further away from the sun they traveled. Kepler also believed that the ebb and flow of the tides-- the rise and fall in sea level--must be the result of a lunar force." "And that's true." "Yes, it's true. But it was a theory Galileo rejected. He mocked Kepler, who he said had given his approval to the idea that the moon rules the water. That was because Galileo rejected the idea that the forces of gravitation could work over great distances, and also between the heavenly bodies." "He was wrong there." "Yes. On that particular point he was wrong. And that was funny, really, because he was very preoccupied with the earth's gravity and falling bodies. He had even indicated how increased force can control the movement of a body." "But you were talking about Newton." "Yes, along came Newton. He formulated what we call the Law of Universal Gravitation. This law states that every object attracts every other object with a force that increases in proportion to the size of the objects and decreases in proportion to the distance between the objects." "I think I understand. For example, there is greater attraction between two elephants than there is between two mice. And there is greater attraction between two elephants in the same zoo than there is between an Indian elephant in India and an African elephant in Africa." "Then you have understood it. And now comes the central point. Newton proved that this attraction--or gravitation--is universal, which means it is operative everywhere, also in space between heavenly bodies. He is said to have gotten this idea while he was sitting under an apple tree. When he saw an apple fall from the tree he had to ask himself if the moon was drawn to earth with the same force, and if this was the reason why the moon continued to orbit the earth to all eternity." "Smart. But not so smart really." "Why not, Sophie?" "Well, if the moon was drawn to the earth with the same force that causes the apple to fall, one day the moon would come crashing to earth instead of going round and round it for ever." "Which brings us to Newton's law on planetary orbits. In the case of how the earth attracts the moon, you are fifty percent right but fifty percent wrong. Why doesn't the moon fall to earth? Because it really is true that the earth's gravitational force attracting the moon is tremendous. Just think of the force required to lift sea level a meter or two at high tide." "I don't think I understand." "Remember Galileo's inclined plane. What happened when I rolled the marble across it?" "Are there two different forces working on the moon?" "Exactly. Once upon a time when the solar system began, the moon was hurled outward--outward from the earth, that is--with tremendous force. This force will remain in effect forever because it moves in a vacuum without resistance..." "But it is also attracted to the earth because of earth's gravitational force, isn't it?" "Exactly. Both forces are constant, and both work simultaneously. Therefore the moon will continue to orbit the earth." "Is it really as simple as that?" "As simple as that, and this very same simplicity was Newton's whole point. He demonstrated that a few natural laws apply to the whole universe. In calculating the planetary orbits he had merely applied two natural laws which Galileo had already proposed. One was the law of inertia, which Newton expressed thus: 'A body remains in its state of rest or rectilinear motion until it is compelled to change that state by a force impressed on it.' The other law had been demonstrated by Galileo on an inclined plane: When two forces work on a body simultaneously, the body will move on an elliptical path." "And that's how Newton could explain why all the planets go round the sun." "Yes. All the planets travel in elliptical orbits round the sun as the result of two unequal movements: first, the rectilinear movement they had when the solar system was formed, and second, the movement toward the sun due to gravitation." "Very clever." "Very. Newton demonstrated that the same laws of moving bodies apply everywhere in the entire universe. He thus did away with the medieval belief that there is one set of laws for heaven and another here on earth. The heliocentric world view had found its final confirmation and its final explanation." Alberto got up and put the inclined plane away again. He picked up the marble and placed it on the table between them. Sophie thought it was amazing how much they had gotten out of a bit of slanting wood and a marble. As she looked at the green marble, which was still smudged with ink, she couldn't help thinking of the earth's globe. She said, "And people just had to accept that they were living on a random planet somewhere in space?" "Yes--the new world view was in many ways a great burden. The situation was comparable to what happened later on when Darwin proved that mankind had developed from animals. In both cases mankind lost some of its special status in creation. And in both cases the Church put up a massive resistance." "I can well understand that. Because where was God in all this new stuff? It was simpler when the earth was the center and God and the planets were upstairs." "But that was not the greatest challenge. When Newton had proved that the same natural laws applied everywhere in the universe, one might think that he thereby undermined people's faith in God's omnipotence. But Newton's own faith was never shaken. He regarded the natural laws as proof of the existence of the great and almighty God. It's possible that man's picture of himself fared worse." "How do you mean?" "Since the Renaissance, people have had to get used to living their life on a random planet in the vast galaxy. I am not sure we have wholly accepted it even now. But there were those even in the Renaissance who said that every single one of us now had a more central position than before." "I don't quite understand." "Formerly, the earth was the center of the world. But since astronomers now said that there was no absolute center to the universe, it came to be thought that there were just as many centers as there were people. Each person could be the center of a universe." "Ah, I think I see." "The Renaissance resulted in a new religiosity. As philosophy and science gradually broke away from theology, a new Christian piety developed. Then the Renaissance arrived with its new view of man. This had its effect on religious life. The individual's personal relationship to God was now more important than his relationship to the church as an organization." "Like saying one's prayers at night, for instance?" "Yes, that too. In the medieval Catholic Church, the church's liturgy in Latin and the church's ritual prayers had been the backbone of the religious service. Only priests and monks read the Bible because it only existed in Latin. But during the Renaissance, the Bible was translated from Hebrew and Greek into national languages. It was central to what we call the Reformation." "Martin Luther..." "Yes, Martin Luther was important, but he was not the only reformer. There were also ecclesiastical reformers who chose to remain within the Roman Catholic church. One of them was Erasmus of Rotterdam." "Luther broke with the Catholic Church because he wouldn't buy indulgences, didn't he?" "Yes, that was one of the reasons. But there was a more important reason. According to Luther, people did not need the intercession of the church or its priests in order to receive God's forgiveness. Neither was God's forgiveness dependent on the buying of 'indulgences' from the church. Trading in these so-called letters of indulgence was forbidden by the Catholic Church from the middle of the sixteenth century." "God was probably glad of that." "In general, Luther distanced himself from many of the religious customs and dogmas that had become rooted in ecclesiastical history during the Middle Ages. He wanted to return to early Christianity as it was in the New Testament. The Scripture alone,' he said. With this slogan Luther wished to return to the 'source' of Christianity, just as the Renaissance humanists had wanted to turn to the ancient sources of art and culture. Luther translated the Bible into German, thereby founding the German written language. He believed every man should be able to read the Bible and thus in a sense become his own priest." "His own priest? Wasn't that taking it a bit far?" "What he meant was that priests had no preferential position in relation to God. The Lutheran congregations employed priests for practical reasons, such as conducting services and attending to the daily clerical tasks, but Luther did not believe that anyone received God's for-giveness and redemption from sin through church rituals. Man received 'free' redemption through faith alone, he said. This was a belief he arrived at by reading the Bible." "So Luther was also a typical Renaissance man?" "Yes and no. A characteristic Renaissance feature was his emphasis on the individual and the individual's personal relationship to God. So he taught himself Greek at the age of thirty-five and began the laborious job of translating the Bible from the ancient Greek version into German. Allowing the language of the people to take precedence over Latin was also a characteristic Renaissance feature. But Luther was not a humanist like Ficino or Leonardo da Vinci. He was also opposed by humanists such as Erasmus of Rotterdam because they thought his view of man was far too negative; Luther had proclaimed that mankind was totally depraved after the Fall from Grace. Only through the grace of God could mankind be 'justified,' he believed. For the wages of sin is death." "That sounds very gloomy." Alberto Knox rose. He picked up the little green and black marble and put it in his top pocket. "It's after four!" Sophie exclaimed in horror. "And the next great epoch in the history of mankind is the Baroque. But we shall have to keep that for another day, my dear Hilde." "What did you say?" Sophie shot up from the chair she had been sitting in. "You called me Hilde!" "That was a serious slip of the tongue." "But a slip of the tongue is never wholly accidental." "You may be right. You'll notice that Hilde's father has begun to put words in our mouths. I think he is exploiting the fact that we are getting weary and are not defending ourselves very well." "You said once that you are not Hilde's father. Is that really true?" Alberto nodded. "But am I Hilde?" "I'm tired now, Sophie. You have to understand that. We have been sitting here for over two hours, and I have been doing most of the talking. Don't you have to go home to eat?" Sophie felt almost as if he was trying to throw her out. As she went into the little hall, she thought intensely about why he had made that slip. Alberto came out after her. Hermes was lying asleep under a small row of pegs on which hung several strange-looking garments that could have been theatrical costumes. Alberto nodded toward the dog and said, "He will come and fetch you." "Thank you for my lesson," said Sophie. She gave Alberto an impulsive hug. "You're the best and kindest philosophy teacher I've ever had," she said. With that she opened the door to the staircase. As the door closed, Alberto said, "It won't be long before we meet again, Hilde." Sophie was left with those words. Another slip of the tongue, the villain! Sophie had a strong desire to turn around and hammer on the door but something held her back. On reaching the street she remembered that she had no money on her. She would have to walk all the long way home. How annoying! Her mother would be both angry and worried if she didn't get back by six, that was for sure. She had not gone more than a few yards when she suddenly noticed a coin on the sidewalk. It was ten crowns, exactly the price of a bus ticket. Sophie found her way to the bus stop and waited for a bus to the Main Square. From there she could take a bus on the same ticket and ride almost to her door. Not until she was standing at the Main Square waiting for the second bus did she begin to wonder why she had been lucky enough to find the coin just when she needed it. Could Hilde's father have left it there? He was a master at leaving things in the most convenient places. How could he, if he was in Lebanon? And why had Alberto made that slip? Not once but twice! Sophie shivered. She felt a chill run down her spine. 文艺复兴    ……啊!藏在凡俗身躯里的神明子孙哪…… 苏菲喘吁吁地跑到乔安家的前门时,刚好过了十二点。乔安正站在他们那栋小黄屋前面的院子里。 “你去了快十个小时了!”乔安提高了嗓门。 苏菲摇摇头。 “不,我去了一千多年了。” “你究竟到哪里去了?” “.....” “你疯了吗?你妈妈半小时前打电话来。” “你怎么跟她说?” “我说你到药局去了,她说请你回来时打个电话给她。不过今天早上十点我爸和我妈端着热巧克力和面包进房里来,却发现你的床是空的。你真该看看他们脸上的表情。” “你怎么跟他们说?” “我很尴尬。我告诉他们说我们吵了一架,你就跑回家了。” “这么说,我们最好赶快言归于好,而且这几天内我们不能让你爸妈和我妈说话。你想我们能不能办得到?” 乔安耸耸肩。就在这个时候,乔安的爸爸从角落里走过来,手里推着一辆独轮车。他身穿工人装,正忙着清扫去年掉下来的最后一些落叶和树枝。 “哈,你们和好了,你们看,我把地下室台阶上的落叶扫得干干净净,一片也不剩。” “不错。”苏菲答道:“现在我们是不是可以在这边喝热巧克力了?” 乔安的爸爸勉强笑了一下,乔安则吓了一跳。乔安的爸爸是一位财务顾问,因此乔安的家境比苏菲好,而他们家人彼此之间讲话是不像苏菲家那样直来直往的。 “对不起,乔安,我只是想我该帮你圆谎才对。” “你要不要告诉我发生了什么事?” “当然要啦!如果你陪我回家的话。因为这些事是不能让什么财务顾问呀、超龄的芭比娃娃呀之类的人听的。” “说这种烂话!有的人结了婚,另外一半只好去出海,这种不稳定的婚姻我看也不见得比较好吧!” “也许是吧!不管怎么说,我昨晚几乎都没睡。还有,我开始好奇席德是不是能看到我们所做的每一件事情。” 她们开始朝苜蓿巷走去。 “你的意思是说她也许有第三只眼睛?” “也许是,也许不是。” 很明显的,乔安对这个谜团并不热中。 “不过这并不能解释她爸爸为什么会寄那么多莫名其妙的明信片到树林里一座空着的木屋去呀!” “我承认这一点是不太能说得通。” “你要告诉我你到哪里去了吗?” 于是,苏菲就一五一十地告诉了乔安,连同那神秘哲学课程的事。她要乔安发誓绝对不能把这个秘密告诉别人。 她们继续向前走,有很长一段时间都没有说话。 当他们走到苜蓿巷时,乔安说:“我不怎么喜欢这件事。” 她在苏菲家的门口停下来,转身准备回家。 “没有人要你喜欢。不过哲学不是一个无伤大雅的团体游戏,它跟我们是谁、从何而来这些问题有关。你认为这方面我们在学校学的够多吗?” “可是不管怎样都没有人能回答那些问题呀!” “没错,但甚至没有人告诉我们应该提出这些问题!” 苏菲走进厨房时,午饭已经摆在桌上了。关于她没有从乔安家打电话回家这件事,妈妈也没说什么。 梦境午饭后,苏菲宣布她要上楼睡午觉,她老实跟妈妈说她在乔安家几乎都没睡。不过话说回来,女孩子在一起过夜时,一整个晚上不睡觉也是常有的事。 在上床前,她站在墙上那面大铜镜前看着,起先只看到自己苍白疲倦的脸,但后来,在她的脸后面,似乎隐隐约约有另外一张浮现,苏菲做了一两下深呼吸。她已经开始有幻觉了,这可不大妙。 她仔细审视着自己那张轮廓分明苍白的脸,以及脸四周那一头做不出任何发型的难缠的头发。但在那张脸之外却浮现了另外一个女孩的幽灵。 突然间,那个女孩疯狂地眨着双眼,仿佛是在向苏菲做信号,说她的确在那儿。这个幽灵出现的时间只有几秒钟,然后便消失了。 苏菲坐在床沿。她万分确信镜子里的女孩就是席德。她曾经在少校的小木屋内放着的一份成绩单上看过席德的照片,刚才她在镜子里看到的一定就是她。 为什么她总是在疲倦至极的时候遇见这类令人毛骨悚然的事呢?这不是很奇怪吗?所以,每次事情发生后,她总得问问自己那是否是真的。 苏菲把衣服放在椅子上,便爬上了床。她立刻睡着了,并且作了一个栩栩如生的梦。 她梦见自己站在一座大花园中。园里有一道山坡向下通往一座船库。船库后面的平台上坐着一个年轻的金发女孩,正在眺望着大海。苏菲走下去,坐在她身旁,但那女孩却似乎没有察觉她的到来。苏菲开始自我介绍:“我叫苏菲,”她说。但这个女孩显然既没看到她的人,也没听到她说话。“你显然又聋又瞎。”苏菲说。那女孩还是充耳不闻。突然间苏菲听到一个声音在喊:“席德!”那女孩立刻跳起来,向船库的方向飞奔。看来她既不聋也不瞎。此时一名中年男子从船库大步向她走来。他身穿卡其布制服,头戴蓝扁帽。 女孩展开双臂抱住他的脖子,他则将她抱起,转了几圈。这时,苏菲在女孩原先所坐之处看到一条小小的金色十字架链子。她将它捡起来,拿在手中,然后便醒了。 苏菲看看时钟,她已经睡子两个小时。 她坐起来,想着这个奇怪的梦。梦境里的一切是如此栩栩如生,她觉得自己好像确实到过那里一样,她也很确定那座船库和平台确实存在于某个地方。当然,它们看起来很像是她在少校的小木屋中见过的那幅风景画。无论如何,她梦中的那个女孩无疑必是席德,而那个男人则是她的爸爸,刚从黎巴嫩回来。在梦中,他的样子看起来很像艾伯特。 苏菲起床开始整理床铺时,在枕头下发现一条金色的十字架链子。十字架的背面刻着席德几个字。 这并不是苏菲第一次梦见自己捡到贵重的东西,但毫无疑问这是第一次那样东西从梦里跑了出来。 “去你的!”她大声说。 她生气地打开橱柜的门,把那条精致的十字架链子丢到最上面一格,跟丝巾、白袜子和从黎巴嫩寄来的明信片放在一起。 面授课程第二天早晨,苏菲醒来时,妈妈已经弄好了一顿可口的早餐,有热面包、橘子汁、蛋和蔬菜沙拉。通常星期天早晨妈妈很少比苏菲先起床,而每次她先起床时,总是会弄好一顿丰盛的早餐再叫醒苏菲。 她们吃着早餐时,妈妈说:“花园里有一只很奇怪的狗,整个早上都在老树篱旁边嗅来嗅去。我实在不知道它在那儿干什么,你呢?” “我知道!”苏菲脱口而出,随即又后悔了。 “它以前来过吗?” 这时苏菲已经离开餐桌,走到客厅向着花园的那扇窗户往外看。果然不出她所料。 汉密士正躺在密洞的人口前。 她该怎么跟妈妈说呢?她还来不及想出什么借口时,妈妈已经走过来,站在她身边。 “你刚才说它以前来过这儿?” “我想它大概是以前在那里埋了一根骨头,现在想把它挖出来。你知道,狗也有记性的……” “大概是吧,苏菲。你是我们家的动物心理学家。” 苏菲急切的搜寻着借口。 “我带它回家好了尸她说。 “你知道它住哪里吗?” 苏菲耸耸肩。 “项圈上也许会有地址吧!” 两三分钟后,苏菲已经走到了花园。汉密士一看到她两步跑了过来,摇了摇尾巴,扑向苏菲。 “乖狗狗!” 她知道妈妈正在窗户那边看着他们。她内心暗自祈祷汉密士不要钻进树篱。还好,它只是冲向屋前的石子路,飞快地跑过前院,奔向大门。 大门关上后,汉密士继续在苏菲前面跑了几码。这段路程颇远。由于是星期天的上午,路上有一些人在散步。眼看别人全家一起共度周末,苏菲真是羡慕极了。 一路上,汉密士不时跑去嗅嗅别的狗或别人家花园篱笆旁边的有趣玩意儿。不过只要苏菲一叫,“狗狗,过来尸它就立刻回来。 不一会儿,他们已经走过了一座老旧的牧场、一座大运动场和一个游乐场,进入了人车较多的地区。他们继续沿着一条铺着圆石并有电车往来的大街向市中心走。到了市中心时,汉密士引导苏菲穿越市中心广场,走到教会街上。这里属于旧市区,四周都是十九世纪末、二十世纪初时兴建的平凡单调的大宅子。时间已经将近下午一点半了。 现在他们已经到了市区的另外一边。这里苏菲并不常来。她记得小时候有一次爸妈曾带她到这里的一条街上拜访一位年老的姨妈。 最后他们走到位于几栋旧宅子之间的一座小广场。这座广场虽然看起来非常古老,但却名为“新广场”。不过话说回来,这整座城镇历史已经很悠久了,它兴建的年代可以远溯到中世纪。 汉密士走向第十四号房屋,然后便停下来不动,等着苏菲开门。苏菲心跳开始加快。 进了前门,苏菲看到一块嵌板上钉着几个绿色的信箱,最上面一排有一个信箱口露出—张明信片。上面有邮局所盖的“地址详”的印章。 明信片上的地址写着“新广场十四号,席德收”,日期是六月十五日。事实上还有两个星期才到六月十五日,但邮差显然没有注意到。 苏菲把明信片取下来看: 亲爱的席德: 现在苏菲已经到哲学家的家里来了。她很快就要满十五岁了,但你昨天就满十五了。还是今天呢?如果是今天的话,那么信到的大迟了。不过我们两个的时间并不一定一致。下一代出来后,上一代就老了。历史就这样发展下去。你有没有想过欧洲的历史就像一个人的一生?古代就像欧洲的童年,然后到了漫长的中世纪,这是欧洲的学生时期。最后终于到了文艺复兴时期,此时,漫长的求学时期结束了。欧洲成年了,充满了旺盛的活力以及对生命的渴望。我们可以说文艺复兴时期是欧洲的十五岁生日!现在是六月中旬了,我的孩子,活着的感觉真好,不是吗? P.S:很遗憾你丢了那条金十字架链子。你得学习照管自己的东西才行。爸爸就在你的身旁。 爱你的老爸 汉密士已经开始上楼了。苏菲拿了明信片,跟着它走。她必须跑才能赶上它。它一直快活地摇着尾巴。他们走上了二楼、三楼,到四楼后只有一道通往阁楼的楼梯。难道要上屋顶吗?汉密士沿着楼梯上去,在一扇窄门前停下来,并用爪子抓门。 苏菲听到脚步声从里面走来。门开了,艾伯特站在那儿。他已经换了服装,现在穿着另外一套衣服,包括白长袜、红膝马裤和黄色垫肩的紧身上衣。他使苏菲想起扑克牌里的小丑。如果她没记错的话,这是文艺复兴时期典型的服装。 “你这个小丑!”苏菲喊,轻轻地推了他一把,以便走进屋里。 在恐怖、害羞的情绪交集之下,苏菲又不期然地拿她可怜的哲学老师当靶子。由于刚才在玄关处发现那张明信片,苏菲现在的思绪是一片混乱。 “不要这么容易激动,孩子。”艾伯特说,一面把门关上。 “你看这张明信片!她说,一面把信交给他,好像他应该负责似的。 艾伯特看完信后摇摇头。 “他愈来愈无所忌惮了。说不定他是利用我们做为他女儿的生日娱乐。” 说完后他将明信片撕成碎片,丢进字纸篓中。 “信上说席德丢了她的十字架。”苏菲说。 “我看到了。” “那个十字架被我发现了,就是那一个,放在我家的枕头下面。 你知道它怎么会在那里吗?” 艾伯特严肃地看着她的眼睛,“这件事看起来也许很吸引入,但只是他不费一点力气就能玩的小把戏罢了。我们还是集中精神来看那只被魔术师从宇宙的礼帽中拉出来的大白兔吧!” 他们进入客厅。那是苏菲所见过的最不寻常的房间之一。 这是一间宽敞的阁楼,四边的墙壁略微倾斜。强烈的阳光透过其中一面的窗户泻满了整个房间。另外一扇窗户则开向市区,苏菲可以从这里看到旧市区里所有房子的屋顶。 但是最让苏菲惊讶的还是房间里摆满了各种年代的家具器物。有一张三十年代的沙发,一张二十世纪初期的旧书桌和一把看起来有几百年历史的椅子。除了家具之外,还有各式各样古董,不管是实用的还是装饰的,统统凌乱地放在架子上或柜子里,包括古老的时钟与花瓶、研钵和蒸馏器、刀子和娃娃、羽毛笔和书挡、八分仪和六分仪、罗盘和气压计等。有一整面墙放满了书,而且都不是那些可以在书店里看到的书,出版的年代横跨数百年。另外一面墙则挂满了素描与图画,有些是最近几十年的,但大多数都是非常古老的作品。此外,每面墙上都挂有很多古老的图表与地图。从图上挪威的大小与位置看来,这些地图并不很精确。 有好几分钟的时间,苏菲只是站在那儿,没有说话。她东张西望了一阵子,直到她从各个角度把这个房间看过为止。 “你这里搜集的旧垃圾可真多!” “你又来了。这个房间里保存的是几百年的历史文物。应该不算是垃圾吧?” “你是开古董店的吗?” 艾伯特的表情几乎有点痛苦。 “我们不能让自己被历史的浪潮冲走,总得有人收拾河岸边留下来的东西。” “这话很奇怪。” “是很奇怪,但却一点不假。孩子,我们并不只活在我们所属的时代里,我们身上也扛着历史。不要忘记你在这个房间内看到的每一样东西都曾经是崭新的。那个十六世纪的木娃娃也许是为了某个五岁女孩的生日做的,而制造的人也许就是她年老的祖母……然后小女孩长成了青少年,然后成年了,结婚了,也许也生了一个女儿,后来她把木娃娃传给女儿,自己则渐渐老去,有一天就死了。 虽然她活了很久,但总还是难免一死,从此一去不返。事实上她只是来到人间短暂一游罢了。但是她的娃娃——你看,现在却放在那个架子上。” “经过你这么一说,每一件事情都显得悲伤而严肃。” “生命本来就是悲伤而严肃的。我们来到这个美好的世界里,彼此相逢,彼此问候,并结伴同游一段短暂的时间。然后我们就失去了对方,并且莫名其妙就消失了,就像我们突然莫名其妙的来到世上一般。” “我可以问你一件事吗?” “我们不再玩捉迷藏的游戏了。” “你为什么会搬到少校的小木屋?”;“为了缩短我们之间的距离呀!因为那个时候我们全凭通信联络。我知道那时小木屋刚好是空的。” “所以你就搬进去了!” “没错。” “那或许你也可以告诉我席德的爸爸是如何知道你在那里的。” “如果我说的没错,每一件事情他都知道。” “但我还是不懂你怎么有办法让邮差跑到森林里面去送信!” 艾伯特淘气地笑了一下。 “即使那样的事情,对席德的父亲来说也算不了什么,只不过是个小把戏,妙手一挥就成了。我们现在可能正受到全世界最严密的监视。” 苏菲顿时觉得一股怒气往上升。 “要是让我碰上他,一定把他的眼珠子挖出来。” 艾伯特走到房间的另外一边,坐在沙发上。苏菲跟着他,也坐在一张宽大的扶手椅上。 “只有哲学可以使我们更接近席德的父亲。”他终于说。“今天我要跟你谈文艺复兴时期。” “快说吧!” 文艺复兴 “在圣多玛斯的时代过后不久,原本团结一致的天主教文化开始出现分裂的现象。哲学与科学逐渐脱离教会的神学,使得宗教生活与理性思考之间的关系变得比较自由。当时有愈来愈多人强调人们不能透过理性与天主沟通,因为天主绝对是不可知的。对人来说,最重要的事不是去了解神的奥秘,而是服从神的旨意。” “嗯。” “既然宗教与科学的关系已经变得较为自由,新的科学方法与新的宗教狂热于是逐渐产生。在这种环境下,十五与十六世纪发生了两大变动,就是文艺复兴运动与宗教改革运动。” “我们可不可以一个一个来?” “所谓文艺复兴运动是指十四世纪末期起文化蓬勃发展的现象,最先开始于意大利北部,并在十五与十六世纪期间迅速向北蔓延。” “你不是告诉我‘文艺复兴’这个字是表示‘重生’的意思吗?” “没错。它是指古代艺术与文化的再生。另外我们也说它是‘人道主义的复兴’,因为在漫长的中世纪,生命中的一切都是从神的观点来解释,但到了文艺复兴时期,一切又重新以人为中心。当时的口号是‘回归本源’,所谓本源主要是指古代的人文主义。 “在文艺复兴时期,发掘古代的经卷典籍几乎成为一种大众休闲活动,学习希腊文也变成时髦的玩意。当时的人认为,修习希腊的人文主义有教导与启发的功能,它除了可以使人了解古代的思想文化之外,也可以发展他们所谓的‘人的特质’。他们认为:‘马生下来就是马,但人要做为一个人,还需要靠后天慢慢的培养。’” “我们一定要受教育才可以成为一个人吗?” “是的,当时的人观念确是如此。不过在我们详谈文艺复兴时期的人文理念之前,我们必须大略了解一下文艺复兴时期的政治与文化背景。” 艾伯特从沙发上起身,开始在房间里踱步。过了一会,他停下来,指着架子上放着的一件古代仪器。 “这是什么?”他问。 “看起来像是一个很旧的罗盘。” “没错。” 然后他又指着沙发后面的墙壁上挂着的一件古代火器。 “那又是什么?” “一支老式的步枪。” “没错。这个呢?” 艾伯特从书架上抽出一本大书。 “是一本古书。” “严格地说,这是一本古版书。” “古版书?” “是的,就是公元一五OO年前印制的古书。当时印刷业仍处于襁褓阶段。” “这本书真的有那么古老吗?” “是的。罗盘、火器与印刷术这三大发明,乃是文艺复兴时期所以形成的重要因素。” “请你说详细一些。” “有了罗盘,航海就比较容易了,这为后来一些伟大的探险航程奠定了基础。火器也是一样,这种新式的武器使得欧洲军队的军力要比美洲和亚洲的军队强大。在欧洲内部,是否拥有火器也成为一个国家强大与否的关键因素。印刷术则在散布文艺复兴时期的人本理念方面有很重要的贡献,同时印刷术的发明也使得教会不再是唯一能够散播知识的机构。在这段时期,各项新的发明与仪器接踵而来,速度既快,数量也多。其中很重要的一项就是望远镜的发明,它使得天文学迈人了新的纪元。” “所以现在才会有火箭和太空探险之旅。” “你的速度未免太快了吧。不过文艺复兴时期所发生的一项转变,最后倒是把人类送上了月球,也间接导致广岛事件与切尔诺贝利核电厂爆炸事件。最初只是文化与经济上的一些改变。其中很重要的一个现象是;自给自足式的经济逐渐转型为货币经济体系。 在中世纪末期时,由于贸易制度成功、新商品交易蓬勃,再加上已经建立货币经济与银行体系,于是各城市不断发展,造成了一个新的中产阶级。他们拥有决定自己生活环境的自由,可以用钱买到各种必需晶。在这个时期,只要肯吃苦耐劳、有想像力、脑筋灵活,便可以获得报偿。因此,社会对个人的要求已经改变。” “这和两千年前希腊各城邦发展的情况有些类似。” “你说对了几分。我曾经说过,希腊哲学脱离了属于农民文化的神话世界观。同样的,文艺复兴时期的中产阶级也开始脱离封建贵族与教会的势力。这段期间,欧洲与西班牙的阿拉伯人和东方的拜占庭文化接触日益密切,于是欧洲人又开始注意到希腊文化的存在。” “于是古代的三条支流又汇集成一条大河。” “你很用心。有关文艺复兴时期的背景就讲到这里。现在我们要谈这个时期一些新的理念。” “好,不过我很快得回家吃饭了。” 艾伯特再度坐在沙发上,眼睛看着苏菲。 “文艺复兴运动最重要的影响是改变了大家对人类的看法。文艺复兴时期的人文主义精神使得大家对人本身和人的价值重新产生了信心,这和中世纪时强调人性本恶的观点截然不同。这个时期的哲学家认为人是极其崇高可贵的。其中最主要的人物之一是费其诺(MarsilioFicino)。他告诉人们:“认识自己,呵,你这藏在凡俗身躯内的神明子孙啊!”另外一个主要人物是米兰多拉(PieodellaMirandola),他写了《颂扬人的尊贵》这篇文章,这在中世纪简直是无法想象的。 “在中世纪期间,上帝是一切事物的出发点。文艺复兴时期的人文主义则以人为出发点。” “希腊哲学家也是一样啊!” “这正是为什么我们会说文艺复兴时期是古代人文主义‘重生’的缘故。但文艺复兴时期的人文主义更强调个人主义。当时人的观念是:我们不仅是人,更是独一无二的个体。这种理念导致人们无限崇拜天才。理想中的人是我们所谓的‘文艺复兴人’,就是艺术、科学等十八般武艺样样精通的人。由于对人的观点改变了,于是人们开始对人体的构造产生兴趣。就像在古代一般,人们又开始解剖尸体以了解人体的结构。这对医学和艺术而言都是很有必要的。同时,这个时期也再度出现许多描绘人体的艺术作品。在历经一千年的假道学之后,这也该是时候了。人又有了胆量表现自己,不再以自己为耻。” “太好了。”苏菲说,一边把双臂靠在她和哲学家中间的小茶几上。 “的确如此。这种对人的新观念创造了一个全新的视野。人并不只是为神而存在的,因此人也不妨及时行乐。有了这种新的自由之后,任何事情都是可能的。这个时期人们的目标是要打破所有的藩篱与禁忌。从希腊人文主义的观点来说,这倒是一个新的想法,因为古代的人文主义强调的是宁静、中庸与节制。” “结果文艺复兴时期的人文主义者就变得很放纵了吗?” “他们当然不是很节制的。他们的所作所为就好像整个世界重新复苏了一般。他们强烈地感受到时代的精神,这是为何他们将介于古代与文艺复兴时期之间的几百年称为‘中世纪’的缘故。在文艺复兴时期,各个领域都有无可比拟的进展。无论艺术、建筑、文学、音乐、哲学与科学都以空前的速度蓬勃发展。举一个具体的例子:我们曾经谈到古代的罗马曾有‘城市中的城市’与‘宇宙的中枢’等美称,但在中世纪期间,罗马渐渐衰微,到公元一四一七年时,人口只剩下一万七千人。” “比席德住的黎乐桑市多不了多少嘛。” “文艺复兴时期的人文主义者认为重建罗马是他们的文化责任,而最重要的一项工作就是在圣彼得的坟墓上建一座圣彼得大教堂。这座教堂号称世界第一,极尽富丽与堂皇之能事。许多文艺复兴时期的伟大艺术家都参与了兴建工作。这项工程从一五(•)六年开始,进行了一百二十年之久。后来,又花了五十年的时间兴建宏伟的圣彼得广场。” “这座教堂一定很大尸“它共有两百多米长、一百三十米宽,占地二万六千平方米以上。有关文艺复兴时期人们大胆自信的心理我们就讲到这里了。还有很重要的一点是:文艺复兴运动也使得人们对大自然有了新的看法。这时候的人们比较能够尽情享受生活,不再认为人活着只是为死后的世界做准备,因此他们对物质世界的看法也完全改观了。 在人们眼中,大自然如今有了正面的意义。许多人认为上帝也存在于他所创造的事物中。因为,如果神真的是无穷无限的,他就会存在于万事万物中。这种观念称为泛神论。中世纪的哲学家一直坚持神与他的造物之间有一道不可跨越的距离。文艺复兴时期的人则认为大自然是神圣的,甚至是‘神的花朵’。这类观念有时会遭到教会的反对。布鲁诺(GiordanoBruo)的命运就是一个很极端的例子。他不仅宣称神存在于大自然中,而且相信宇宙是无限大的。结果他受到了非常严厉的惩罚。” “什么惩罚?” “他在一六OO午时被绑在罗马花市的一根柱子上活活烧死。” “真是太烂了……太蠢了。这还叫人文主义吗?” “不,绝不是。布鲁诺是人文主义者,但将他处决的人则不是。 不过在文艺复兴时期,所谓的‘反人文主义’也同样盛行。我所谓的‘反人文主义’指的是各国政府与教会的威权。在文艺复兴时期,审判女巫、烧死异教徒的风气非常盛行。魔法、迷信充斥,而且不时有人发动血腥的宗教战争。美洲也是在这段时期被欧洲人用蛮横的手段征服了。这些都是人文主义阴暗的一面。不过话说回来,没有任何一个时代是完全好或完全坏的。善恶乃是人类历史中不时交织在一起的两股线。在我们下面要讲到的另外一个文艺复兴时期的新产物‘新科学方法’方面也是如此。” “当时的人是否兴建了人类史上最早的一些工厂?” “还没有。不过多亏文艺复兴时期发明的新科学方法,才会有后来那些科技发展。所谓新科学方法是指以崭新的角度来看待科学,这种方法到后来才结出明显的科技果实。” “那是什么样的新方法?” “它最主要的一点是用我们的感官来调查研究大自然,自从十四世纪以来,愈来愈多思想家警告人们不要盲目相信权威,无论是宗教教条或亚理斯多德的自然哲学。但也有人劝告大众不要相信纯粹凭思考就可以解决问题。在整个中世纪期间,人们过度迷信理性思考的重要性。到了文艺复兴时期,则认为研究大自然现象必须以观察、经验与实验为基础。我们称之为‘实证法’。” “意思是?” “就是以亲身经验,而不是以古人的著作或凭空想象之物,来做为知识的基础。古代也有实证科学,但从来不曾以有系统的方式做过实验。” “我猜他们大概没有现代这些仪器设备。” “当然,他们没有计算机或电子尺这类工具,但是他们可以凭借数学计算和普通的尺。对他们而言,最重要的一件事就是把科学观察所得的结果用准确的数学辞汇表达出来。十七世纪的大科学家伽利略(GalileoGalilei)说:‘我们要测量那些可以测量的东西,至于那些无法测量的,也要想办法加以测量。’他并表示:‘大自然这本书是用数学的语言写的。”’“有了这些实验与测量结果之后,就自然会有新发明了。” “新科学方法的出现促成了技术革命,这是第一个阶段。而技术革命又为后来的每一项发明打下了基础。可以说人类这时已经开始脱离自然环境了,人类不再仅仅是大自然的一部分。英国哲学家培根(FrancisBacon)表示:‘知识即力量。’这句话强调了知识的实用价值,在当时也是一个很新的观念。人们开始认真干预大自然并加以控制。” “但这并不一定是好的,不是吗?” “对。我曾经提到过,我们所做的每一件事情都有正反两面的作用。文艺复兴时期展开的技术革命虽然带来了纺织机,但也造成了失业;虽然带来了新的药物,但也带来了新的疾病;虽然提高了农业效率,但也榨取了许多自然资源;虽然带来了洗衣机、电冰箱等实用的器具,但也导致了污染与工业废弃物处理的问题。今天我们面临严重的环境污染问题已经使得许多人认为,技术革命乃是人类尝试调整自然环境的一种危险做法,而且已经失败,有人指出,这场革命最终将会走向失控的局面。比较乐观的人士则认为我们目前仍处于科技的襁褓阶段,同时,尽管在科学发展的过程中不免会有阵痛,但人类终将逐渐学习到如何控制大自然,而不致对环境构成威胁。” “你觉得谁说的比较对?” “我觉得双方的说法或许都有点道理。在某些领域内我们必须停止干预自然,但在其他领域内我们则不妨更进一步。但有一件事情是可以确定的:我们绝不可能再走中世纪的老路。自从文艺复兴时期以来,人类就不再只是创造物的一部分,而开始干预自然,并按照自己的心意来改造大自然。说真的,‘人是多么了不起呀!” “人类已经登陆月球了。在中世纪,谁会相信人能跑到月亮上;去呀!” 新世界观“他们当然无法想象。说到这里,我们要谈谈所谓的‘新世界观’。中世纪的人虽然也会坐在天空下,看着太阳、月亮与星球。但他们从不曾怀疑‘地球是宇宙中心’的说法。他们认为地球是静止不动的,而各个‘天体’则在轨道上环绕着地球运行。这种观念被称为‘以地球为中心的世界观’,也就是‘万物皆以地球为中心’的意思。基督教相信上帝高居各天体之上,主宰宇宙,这也是当时人抱持这种观念的原因之一。” “世界真有这么简单就好了!” “然而,在一五四三年,有一本名叫《天体运行论》(OntheRevolutions OFtheCelestialSpheres)的小书出版了。作者是波兰天文学家哥白尼(NicolausCopernicus)。他在这本书出版当天就去世了。哥白尼在书中宣称,太阳并未绕地球运行,而是地球绕太阳运行。他根据观察各星球的心得,认为这种可能性很高。他说,人们之所以相信太阳绕着地球转,是因为地球绕着自己的轴心转的缘故。他指出,如果我们假设地球和其他星球都绕着太阳转,则我们所看到的天体运转现象将会变得容易理解得多。我们称这种观念为‘以太阳为中心的世界观’,也就是相信万物以太阳为中心的意思。” “这个世界观应该是正确的啰?” “也不全然。哥白尼的主要论点—一地球围绕着太阳转——当然是正确的。不过他宣称太阳是宇宙中心的说法可就错了。我们现在已经知道太阳系只是宇宙中无数个星系之一。宇宙中共有数十亿个银河系,围绕太阳的星系只是其中之一罢了。哥白尼并且相信地球和其他星球都在圆形的轨道上运转。” “难道不是吗?” “不。他之所以相信轨道是圆形的,只是根据‘天体是圆形的,且绕着圈圈转’这个古老的观念。自从柏拉图的时代以来,球体与圆形就被认为是最完美的几何图形。但在十七世纪初期,德国天文学家克卜勒(JohannesKepler)发表了他广泛观察的结果,显示各星球实际上是以太阳为中心,绕着椭圆形的轨道运转。他并且指出,一个星球在轨道上愈接近太阳的地方,运转的速度愈快,离太阳愈远则愈慢。在此之前从来没有人明白提出‘地球只是众多行星之一’的说法。克卜勒同时强调宇宙每个地方都适用同样的物理法则。” “他怎么知道呢?” 伽利略“因为他用自己的感官来观察、研究星球运转的现象,而不盲目地接受古代的迷信。大约与克卜勒同一时代的还有一位意大利科学家伽利略。他也用天文望远镜来观察天体的运转。他在研究月球的表面后,宣称月球像地球一样有高山、有深谷。更重要的是,他发现木星有四个卫星。因此地球并非唯一拥有卫星的星球。然而,伽利略最伟大的成就还是他首度提出所谓的(‘惯性定律’。” “那是什么意思?” “伽利略的说法是:‘如果没有外力强迫一个物体改变它所处的状态,则这个物体将会一直维持它原来静止或移动的状态。” “这谁都知道呀!” “但这个观察很有意义。自从古代以来,反对‘地球绕着自己的轴心转’这个说法的人士所持的主要理由之一就是:地球果真绕着自己的轴心转的话,则它的速度会很快,以至于当你垂直丢一块石头到空中时,它会掉落在好几码之外。” “那这种现象为什么不会发生呢?” “如果你坐在火车里,把一个苹果丢在地上。苹果并不会因为火车正在移动而向后掉落,而是垂直落地。这是由于(‘惯性定律’作用所致。苹果维持在你将它丢下以前同样的速度。” “我懂了。” “伽利略的时代并没有火车。不过如果一个人一直向前运球一旦突然放手后……” “……球会一直滚动……” “……因为在你放手后球仍然维持原来的速度“不过它最后还是会停下来,如果房间够大的话。” “那是因为有其他外力迫使它停下来。第一种力来自于地板,尤其是那种粗糙不平的木头地板。然后则是重力。在重力的作用下,球迟早会停下来,不过,请等一下,我先让你看一样东西。” 艾伯特站起身来,走到那张古老的书桌前。他从抽屉里拿出一样东西,走回原来的地方,并把那样东西放在茶几上。那是一块木头板子,一端有三、四公分厚,另一端则极薄,整张板子几乎就把茶几占满了。艾伯特在板子旁放了一个绿色的弹珠。 “这叫做斜面,”他说。“如果我在比较厚的这一端把弹珠放掉,你想会发生什么事?” 苏菲无可奈何地叹了口气。 “我跟你赌十块钱,它会一直滚到茶几上,最后掉在地板上。” “我们试试看。”.艾伯特放掉弹珠。它果真像所说的那样滚到茶几上,然后啪一声掉在地板上,最后碰到了通往走廊的门槛。 “真了不起呀!”苏菲说。 “可不是嘛]这就是伽利略所做的实验。” “他真的有那么笨吗?” “别急,他是想透过各种感官来观察事物的原理。我们现在只不过刚开始而已。请你先告诉我弹珠为何会沿着斜面滚下去?” “因为它有重量。” “好,那么请你告诉我重量是什么。” “这个问题问得太逊了。” “如果你不能回答,它就不算逊。到底弹珠为什么会滚落到地板上?” “因为重力的缘故。” “答对了,你也可以说是地心引力。重量与重力有关,而重力就是使得弹珠移动的那个力量。” 此时艾伯特已经把弹珠从地板上捡起来了。他再度俯身站在那块斜面上方,手里仍拿着弹珠。 “现在我要试着让弹珠滚过斜面。”他说。“你注意看它怎样移动。” 他把腰弯得更低,瞄准目标,试着让弹珠滚过斜面。苏菲看到弹珠逐渐沿着坡面斜斜的滚了下来。 “发生了什么事?”艾伯特问。 “它斜斜地滚,因为板子有坡度。” “现在我要在弹珠上涂墨汁……然后我们就可以看看到底你所谓的‘斜斜地滚’是什么意思。” 他找出一只墨水刷,把整个弹珠涂黑,然后再度使它滚动。这次苏菲很明显看到弹珠在斜面上滚动的路径,因为它滚过之处留下了一条黑线。 “现在你可不可以描述一下弹珠移动的路线?” “是弧形的……看起来好像是一个圆圈的一部分。” “一点也没错。” 艾伯特抬头看着苏菲,眉毛抬得高高的。 “不过那并不完全是圆形。这种图案叫做抛物线。” “哦?” “嗯。可是弹珠为什么会这样滚动呢?” 苏菲用心地想了一下,然后说;“因为板于有坡度,所以弹珠被重力拉往地板的方向。” “对了!这岂不是太让人兴奋了吗?我随便拉了一个小女孩到我的阁楼来,做一个实验,她就可以领悟到伽利略所发现的原理!” 他拍拍手。有一阵子,苏菲很担心他已经疯了。他继续说:“你刚才看到的是两种力量同时作用在一个物体上时所产生的效果。伽利略发现这个原理同样也适用在炮弹等的物体上。炮弹被推入空中后在一段时间内会继续飞行,但迟早会被牵引到地面上,所以它会形成像弹珠滚过斜面一样的轨线,这是伽利略那个时代的新发现。亚理斯多德认为一个斜斜向空中抛出的抛射体会先呈微微的弧形,然后垂直地向地面降落。但实际情况并非如此。 不过没有人知道亚理斯多德的错误,除非用实验来证明。” “这个定律有什么重要性吗?” “当然!孩子,这件事意义非凡,而且肯定是人类史上最重要的一项科学发现。” “为什么呢?” 牛顿“后来,在一六四二到一七二七年间,有一个名叫牛顿(IsaacNewton)的英国物理学家,他是将太阳系与星球轨道描述得最完整的一个科学家。他不但能说出各星球如何绕太阳运转,而且可以解释它们为何会如此运转。其中一部分原因就是因为他参考了我们所称的‘伽利略动力学’。” “那些星球是不是就像滚过斜面的弹珠一样?” “是的,有点像。不过不要急,苏菲。” “急也没有用,是不是?” “克卜勒曾经指出,各星球之间一定有某种力量使它们相互吸引。举例来说,太阳一定有某种力量使得太阳系内的各星球都固定在轨道上绕着它运转,这也是为何那些星球在离太阳愈远的地方移动得愈慢的缘故。克卜勒并且相信潮汐的涨落一定是受到月亮引力的影响。” “的确是这样,不是吗?” “没错,是这样。不过伽利略反对这种说法。他嘲笑克卜勒,说他居然赞同‘月亮掌管海洋河流’的说法。这是因为伽利略不相信别重力能够在很远的距离外或各星球之间发挥作用。” “这回他可错了。” “嗯。在这一点上他是错了。这事说来也满奇怪的,因为伽利略一直专心研究地球引力与落体的原理。他甚至发现在引力增强时物体的移动会如何受到影响。” “你刚才不是已经开始谈到牛顿了吗?” “是的。然后牛顿出现了。他提出我们所谓的‘万有引力定律’,就是说宇宙间两个物体相互吸引的力量随物体的大小而递I增,并随两物体之间的距离而递减。” “我懂了。例如,两只大象之间的引力要比两只老鼠之间的引;力要大。而同样一座动物园内的两只大象之间的引力,又比在印度的一只印度象与在非洲的一只非洲象两者之间的引力要大。” “没错,你的确懂了。现在我们要谈到最重要的一点。牛顿证明这种引力是存在于宇宙各处的。也就是说,它在宇宙每个地方都发生作用,包括太空中的各个星球之间。据说他是坐在一棵苹果树下悟出这个道理的。当时他看到一个苹果从树上掉下来,他便问自己:月球是否同样也受到地球力量的牵引,才会恒久绕着地球旋转?” “聪明。不过也不算真的很聪明。” “为什么呢?” “这个嘛……如果月球是受到促使苹果落地的同样一种引力的影响,那么总有一天月球会撞到地球,而不会一直绕着地球转了。” “这个我们就要谈到牛顿的行星轨道定律了。在这个问题上,你只对了一半。月球为什么不会撞到地球呢?因为地球的重力的确以强大的力量牵引着月球。你想想看涨潮的情景,要将海平面提高一两公尺需要多大的力量呀尸“这个我不太懂。” “你还记得伽利略的斜面吗?当我让弹珠滚过斜面时会有什么现象?” “是不是同时有两种力量在影响月球?” “一点没错。很久以前,当太阳系形成时,月球被一股很大的力量抛离地球。由于它在真空中移动,没有阻力,因此这股力量会永远不停地产生作用……” “但它同时也受到地球引力的影响,被拉向地球,对吗?” “对。这两股力量都是持续不停的,而且同时发生作用,所以月球才会一直绕着地球旋转。” “它的原理真的就这么简单吗?” “就是这么简单。而这种‘简单性’正是牛顿学说的重点。他说明少数几种自然法则可以适用于整个宇宙。在计算行星轨道时,他只应用了伽利略所提出的两个自然法则。一个是惯性定律。牛顿说明所谓惯性定律就是‘一个物体除非受到外力的作用使它改变状态,否则它会一直处在静止或呈直线进行的状态’。另外一项定律是伽利略利用斜面证明的定律,就是:当两股力量同时作用于一个物体上时,这个物体会循椭圆形的路径移动。” “而牛顿就以此来解释为何所有行星都围绕太阳旋转?” “没错。由于受到两种强弱不同的力量的影响,所有的行星都在椭圆形的轨道上绕太阳旋转。其中一种是在太阳系形成时,他们呈直线进行的力量,另外一种则是他们受到太阳重力牵引的力量。” “聪明。” “很聪明。牛顿证明了若干关于物体移动的定律可以适用于宇宙每一个地方,他因此推翻了中世纪人们认为天上与人间分别适用两套不同法则的看法。这时候,以太阳为宇宙中心的世界观终于得到了彻底的证实以及完整的解释。” 艾伯特站起身来,把斜面放回原来的抽屉里。然后他弯腰从地上捡起那颗弹珠,把它放在他和苏菲间的茶几上。 苏菲心想,这一切居然都是科学家们从一小块斜面的木板和一个弹珠推论出来的,这是多么神奇呀!当她看着那颗仍然沾有墨水的绿色弹珠时,不禁想起地球来。她说:“于是当时的人们就不得不接受人类其实是生活在太空中某处一个偶然形成的星球上啰?” “是的。这个新的世界观在许多方面都对人造成了很大的冲击,这个情况和后来达尔文证明人类是从禽兽进化而来时所造成的影响相当。这两个新发现都使人类失去他们在造物中的一部分特殊地位,于是也都遭遇到教会的强大阻力。” “这是可以理解的。因为,在这些新观念中,上帝被放在哪里呢?从前人相信地球是宇宙中心,而上帝与各星球就在地球之上的想法倒是比较单纯些。” “但这还不是当时人面临的最大挑战。当牛顿证明宇宙各处适用同样的法则时,有人可能会认为他破坏了人们心目中的上帝无所不能的形象,但是牛顿本人的信仰却从未动摇。他认为自然法则的存在正足以证明宇宙间确有一位伟大、万能的上帝。事实上,受到更大冲击的乃是人对自我的观念。” “怎么说呢?” “自从文艺复兴时期以来,人们就不得不逐渐接受他们所居住的地球乃是浩瀚银河中一个偶然形成的星球的说法。即使到现在,我看还是不见得大家都能够完全接受这种想法。不过,即使在文艺复兴时期,也有一些人认为,随着新世界观的产生,我们每一个人所处的地位也变得比以前更加重要。” “我还是不太明白。” “在此之前,世界的中心是地球。但天文学家却告诉人们,宇宙根本没有绝对的中心,因此,每一个人都是中心。” “喔,是这个意思!”.“文艺复兴运动造成了新的宗教情感(狂热)。随着哲学与科学逐渐脱离神学的范畴,基督徒变得更加虔诚。到了文艺复兴时期,由于人类对自己有了新的看法,使得宗教生活也受到了影响。个人与上帝之间的关系变得比个人与教会组织之间的关系更加重要。” “比如说在晚上自行祷告之类的吗?” 宗教的改革“这也包括在内。在中世纪的天主教教会中,以拉丁文念的祈祷文和教会例行祷告一直是宗教仪式的骨干。只有教士和僧侣能看得懂圣经,因为当时的圣经都是拉丁文写的。但是到了文艺复兴时期,圣经被人从希伯来文与希腊文翻译成各国语言。这是导致所谓‘宗教革命’的主要因素。” “马丁路德……” “是的,马丁路德是一个很重要的人物,但他并不是当时唯一的宗教改革家。另有一些改革人士选择留在罗马天主教会中。其中之一是荷兰的伊拉斯莫斯(ErasmusofRotterdam)。” “马丁路德之所以和天主教会决裂是因为他不肯购买赎罪券,是吗?” “是的,但这只是其中原因之一。另外还有一个更重要的原因是:马丁路德认为人们并不需要教会或教士居中代祷才能获得上帝的赦免。同时,要取得上帝的赦免也不是靠购买教会所售的‘赎罪券’。从十六世纪中期起,天主教教会就禁止买这些所谓的‘赎罪券’。” “天主应该很乐于见到这个情况。” “总而言之,马丁路德摒斥了教会中许多从中世纪起就形成的宗教习惯与教条。他希望回到新约中所描述的早期基督教的面貌。 他说:‘我们只信靠经文。’他希望以这个口号将基督教带回它的‘源头’,就像文艺复兴时期的人文主义者希望回到艺术与文化的古老源头一般。马丁路德将圣经译成德文,因此创造了德文的文字。他认为应该让每一个人都读得懂圣经,并从某一个意义上来说,成为自己的教士。” “自己的教士?这不是有点太过分了吗?” “他的意思是:教士与上帝的关系并不比一般人亲近。路德派教会之所以雇用教士,乃是因为他们需要有人做一些实际的工作,如主持礼拜或料理日常事务等。但马丁路德并不相信任何人能够透过教会举行的仪式,获得上帝的赦免与宽宥。他说,人只能透过信仰得救,这是‘无法用金钱交换的’。这些都是他在研读圣经以后的心得。” “这么说马丁路德也是典型的文艺复兴人士啰?” “也不尽然。马丁路德重视个人,强调个人与上帝之间的关系。 在这一点上他算是典型的文艺复兴人士。也因此他从三十五岁开始自修希腊文,并进行将圣经翻译成德文的繁重工作。他使得一般大众使用的语言取代了拉丁文的地位,这也是他与典型文艺复兴人士相像的另外一个特征。然而,马丁路德并不像费其诺或达文西一样是人文主义者。同时,他也受到伊拉斯莫斯等人文主义者的批评,因为他们认为他对人的观点太过消极了。马丁路德曾经宣称,自从亚当与夏娃被逐出伊甸园后,人类就彻底腐化了,他相信唯有透过上帝的恩典,人类才能免于罪孽。因为罪恶的代价就是死亡。” “听起来满灰暗的。” 艾伯特起身,捡起绿黑相间的小弹珠,放在上衣的口袋内。 “天哪!已经过四点了!”苏菲惊叫。 “下一个人类史上的伟大时期叫做巴洛克时期。不过,我们只好等到下一次再谈了,亲爱的席德。” “你说什么?”苏菲从椅子上跳了起来。“你叫我席德!” “是我一时不小心,喊错了。” “可是,无心之言或多或少都是有原因的。” “也许你说得对。你可以注意到席德的父亲已经开始透过我们的嘴巴讲话了,我想他是故意趁我们渐渐疲倦,不太能为自己辩护的时候才这样做。” “你曾经说过你不是席德的爸爸。你可以保证这是真话吗?” 艾伯特点点头。 “但我是席德吗?” “我累了,苏菲,请你谅解。我们坐在一起已经两个多小时了,大部分的时间都是我在说话。你不是要回家吃饭吗?” 苏菲觉得艾伯特几乎像是要赶她走似的。当她走进小小的走廊时,心里一直想着他为何会喊错她的名字。艾伯特也跟着她走出来。 汉密士正躺在壁上一排衣钩的下面睡觉。衣钩上挂着几件很像是戏服的怪异服装。艾伯特朝汉密士的方向点点头说:“下次它还是会去接你。” “谢谢你为我上课。”苏菲说。 她突然冲动地拥抱了艾伯特一下。“你是我所见过的最好、最亲切的哲学老师。”她说。 然后她把通往楼梯的门打开。在关门之际,艾伯特说:“我们不久就会再见面的,席德!” 之后门就关上了。 又喊错名字了,这个坏蛋!苏菲有一股强烈的冲动想要跑回去敲门,不过她还是没有这样做。 走到街上时,她突然想起自己身上没钱,必须一路走回家。真气人!如果她在六点前还没回到家,妈妈一定会又生气又着急的。 苏菲走了几码路后,突然看到人行道上有一枚十元的钱币,正好可以买一张公车票。 苏菲找到了公车站,等候开往大广场的公;车。从大广场那儿,她可以换车,一路坐回家门口,不必再买票。 一直到她站在大广场等候下一辆公车时,她才开始纳闷自己为何如此幸运,刚好捡到一个十块钱的铜板。 难道是席德的爸爸放在那儿的吗?他真是个高手,每次都把东西放得恰到好处。 但是这怎么可能呢?他不是还在黎巴嫩吗?艾伯特又为什么老是喊错她的名字呢?不只一次哦!苏菲打了个冷战。她觉得有一股寒气沿着她的脊梁骨一路窜下来。 The Baroque such stuff as dreams are made on Sophie heard nothing more from Alberto for several days, but she glanced frequently into the garden hoping to catch sight of Hermes. She told her mother that the dog had found its own way home and that she had been invited in by its owner, a former physics teacher. He had told Sophie about the solar system and the new science that developed in the sixteenth century. She told Joanna more. She told her all about her visit to Alberto, the postcard in the mailbox, and the ten-crown piece she had found on the way home. She kept the dream about Hilde and the gold crucifix to herself. On Tuesday, May 29, Sophie was standing in the kitchen doing the dishes. Her mother had gone into the living room to watch the TV news. When the opening theme faded out she heard from the kitchen that a major in the Norwegian UN Battalion had been killed by a shell. Sophie threw the dish towel on the table and rushed into the living room. She was just in time to catch a glimpse of the UN officer's face for a few seconds before they switched to the next item. "Oh no!" she cried. Her mother turned to her. "Yes, war is a terrible thing!" Sophie burst into tears. "But Sophie, it's not that bad!" "Did they say his name?" "Yes, but I don't remember it. He was from Grimstad, I think." "Isn't that the same as Lillesand?" "No, you're being silly." "But if you come from Grimstad, you might go to school in Lillesand." She had stopped crying, but now it was her mother's turn to react. She got out of her chair and switched off the TV. "What's going on, Sophie?" "Nothing." "Yes, there is. You have a boyfriend, and I'm beginning to think he's much older than you. Answer me now: Do you know a man in Lebanon?" "No, not exactly..." "Have you met the son of someone in Lebanon?" "No, I haven't. I haven't even met his daughter." "Whose daughter?" "It's none of your business." "I think it is." "Maybe I should start asking some questions instead. Why is Dad never home? Is it because you haven't got the guts to get a divorce? Maybe you've got a boyfriend you don't want Dad and me to know about and so on and so on. I've got plenty of questions of my own." "I think we need to talk." "That may be. But right now I'm so worn out I'm going to bed. And I'm getting my period." Sophie ran up to her room; she felt like crying. As soon as she was through in the bathroom and had curled up under the covers, her mother came into the bedroom. Sophie pretended to be asleep even though she knew her mother wouldn't believe it. She knew her mother knew that Sophie knew her mother wouldn't believe it either. Nevertheless her mother pretended to believe that Sophie was asleep. She sat on the edge of Sophie's bed and stroked her hair. Sophie was thinking how complicated it was to live two lives at the same time. She began to look forward to the end of the philosophy course. Maybe it would be over by her birthday--or at least by Midsummer Eve, when Hilde's father would be home from Lebanon ... "I want to have a birthday party," she said suddenly. "That sounds great. Who will you invite?" "Lots of people ... Can I?" "Of course. We have a big garden. Hopefully the good weather will continue." "Most of all I'd like to have it on Midsummer Eve." "All right, that's what we'll do." "It's a very important day," Sophie said, thinking not only of her birthday. "It is, indeed." "I feel I've grown up a lot lately." "That's good, isn't it?" "I don't know." Sophie had been talking with her head almost buried in her pillow. Now her mother said, "Sophie--you must tell me why you seem so out of balance at the moment." "Weren't you like this when you were fifteen?" "Probably. But you know what I am talking about." Sophie suddenly turned to face her mother. "The dog's name is Hermes," she said. "It is?" "It belongs to a man called Alberto." "I see." "He lives down in the Old Town." "You went all that way with the dog?" "There's nothing dangerous about that." "You said that the dog had often been here." "Did I say that?" She had to think now. She wanted to tell as much as possible, but she couldn't tell everything. "You're hardly ever at home," she ventured. "No, I'm much too busy." "Alberto and Hermes have been here lots of times." "What for? Were they in the house as well?" "Can't you at least ask one question at a time? They haven't been in the house. But they often go for walks in the woods. Is that so mysterious?" "No, not in the least." "They walk past our gate like everyone else when they go for a walk. One day when I got home from school I talked to the dog. That's how I got to know Alberto." "What about the white rabbit and all that stuff?" "That was something Alberto said. He is a real philosopher, you see. He has told me about all the philosophers." "Just like that, over the hedge?" "He has also written letters to me, lots of times, actually. Sometimes he has sent them by mail and other times he has just dropped them in the mailbox on his way out for a walk." "So that was the 'love letter' we talked about." "Except that it wasn't a love letter." "And he only wrote about philosophy?" "Yes, can you imagine! And I've learned more from him than I have learned in eight years of school. For instance, have you ever heard of Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake in 1600? Or of Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation?" "No, there's a lot I don't know." "I bet you don't even know why the earth orbits the sun--and it's your own planet!" "About how old is this man?" "I have no idea--about fifty, probably." "But what is his connection with Lebanon?" This was a tough one. Sophie thought hard. She chose the most likely story. "Alberto has a brother who's a major in the UN Battalion. And he's from Lillesand. Maybe he's the major who once lived in the major's cabin." "Alberto's a funny kind of name, isn't it?" "Perhaps." "It sounds Italian." "Well, nearly everything that's important comes either from Greece or from Italy." "But he speaks Norwegian?" "Oh yes, fluently." "You know what, Sophie--I think you should inviteAlberto home one day. I have never met a real philosopher." "We'll see." "Maybe we could invite him to your birthday party? It could be such fun to mix the generations. Then maybe I could come too. At least, I could help with the serving. Wouldn't that be a good idea?" "If he will. At any rate, he's more interesting to talk to than the boys in my class. It's just that..." "What?" "They'd probably flip and think Alberto was my new boyfriend." "Then you just tell them he isn't." "Well, we'll have to see." "Yes, we shall. And Sophie--it is true that things haven't always been easy between Dad and me. But there was never anyone else ..." "I have to sleep now. I've got such awful cramps." "Do you want an aspirin?" /'Yes, please." When her mother returned with the pill and a glass of water Sophie had fallen asleep. May 31 was a Thursday. Sophie agonized through the afternoon classes at school. She was doing better in some subjects since she started on the philosophy course. Usually her grades were good in most subjects, but lately they were even better, except in math. In the last class they got an essay handed back. Sophie had written on "Man and Technology." She had written reams on the Renaissance and the scientific breakthrough, the new view of nature and Francis Bacon, who had said that knowledge was power. She had been very careful to point out that the empirical method came before the technological discoveries. Then she had written about some of the things she could think of about technology that were not so good for society. She ended with a paragraph on the fact that everything people do can be used for good or evil. Good and evil are like a white and a black thread that make up a single strand. Sometimes they are so closely intertwined that it is impossible to untangle them. As the teacher gave out the exercise books he looked down at Sophie and winked. She got an A and the comment: "Where do you get all this from?" As he stood there, she took out a pen and wrote with block letters in the margin of her exercise book: I'M STUDYING PHILOSOPHY. As she was closing the exercise book again, something fell out of it. It was a postcard from Lebanon: Dear Hilde, When you read this we shall already have spoken together by phone about the tragic death down here. Sometimes I ask myself if war could have been avoided if people had been a bit better at thinking. Perhaps the best remedy against violence would be a short course in philosophy. What about "the UN's little philosophy book"-- which all new citizens of the world could be given a copy of in their own language. I'll propose the idea to the UN General Secretary. You said on the phone that you were getting better at looking after your things. I'm glad, because you're the untidiest creature I've ever met. Then you said the only thing you'd lost since we last spoke was ten crowns. I'll do what I can to help you find it. Although I am far away, I have a helping hand back home. (If I find the money I'll put it in with your birthday present.) Love, Dad, who feels as if he's already started the long trip home. Sophie had just managed to finish reading the card when the last bell rang. Once again her thoughts were in turmoil. Joanna was waiting in the playground. On the way home Sophie opened her schoolbag and showed Joanna the latest card. "When is it postmarked?" asked Joanna. "Probably June 15 ..." "No, look ... 5/30/90, it says." "That was yesterday ... the day after the death of the major in Lebanon." "I doubt if a postcard from Lebanon can get to Norway in one day," said Joanna. "Especially not considering the rather unusual address: Hilde Moller Knag, c/o Sophie Amundsen, Fu-rulia Junior High School..." "Do you think it could have come by mail? And the teacher just popped it in your exercise book?" "No idea. I don't know whether I dare ask either." No more was said about the postcard. "I'm going to have a garden party on Midsummer Eve," said Sophie. "With boys?" Sophie shrugged her shoulders. "We don't have to invite the worst idiots." "But you are going to invite Jeremy?" "If you want. By the way, I might invite Alberto Knox." "You must be crazy!" "I know." That was as far as the conversation got before their ways parted at the supermarket. The first thing Sophie did when she got home was to see if Hermes was in the garden. Sure enough, there he was, sniffing around the apple trees. "Hermes!" The dog stood motionless for a second. Sophie knew exactly what was going on in that second: the dog heard her call, recognized her voice, and decided to see if she was there. Then, discovering her, he began to run toward her. Finally all four legs came pattering like drumsticks. That was actually quite a lot in the space of one second. He dashed up to her, wagged his tail wildly, and jumped up to lick her face. "Hermes, clever boy! Down, down. No, stop slobbering all over me. Heel, boy! That's it!" Sophie let herself into the house. Sherekan came jumping out from the bushes. He was rather wary of the stranger. Sophie put his cat food out, poured birdseed in the budgerigars' cup, got out a salad leaf for the tortoise, and wrote a note to her mother. She wrote that she was going to take Hermes home and would be back by seven. They set off through the town. Sophie had remembered to take some money with her this time. She wondered whether she ought to take the bus with Hermes, but decided she had better wait and ask Alberto about it. While she walked on and on behind Hermes she thought about what an animal really is. What was the difference between a dog and a person? She recalled Aristotle's words. He said that people and animals are both natural living creatures with a lot of characteristics in common. But there was one distinct difference between people and animals, and that was hu-man reasoning. How could he have been so sure? Democritus, on the other hand, thought people and animals were really rather alike because both were made up of atoms. And he didn't think that either people or animals had immortal souls. According to him, souls were built up of atoms that are spread to the winds when people die. He was the one who thought a person's soul was inseparably bound to the brain. But how could the soul be made of atoms? The soul wasn't anything you could touch like the rest of the body. It was something "spiritual." They were already beyond Main Square and were approaching the Old Town. When they got to the sidewalk where Sophie had found the ten crowns, she looked automatically down at the asphalt. And there, on exactly the same spot where she had bent down and picked up the money, lay a postcard with the picture side up. The picture showed a garden with palms and orange trees. Sophie bent down and picked up the card. Hermes started growling as if he didn't like Sophie touching it. The card read: Dear Hilde, Life consists of a long chain of coincidences. It is not altogether unlikely that the ten crowns you lost turned up right here. Maybe it was found on the square in Lillesand by an old lady who was waiting for the bus to Kristiansand. From Kris-tiansand she took the train to visit her grandchildren, and many, many hours later she lost the coin here on New Square. It is then perfectly possible that the very same coin was picked up later on that day by a girl who really needed it to get home by bus. You never can tell, Hilde, but if it is truly so, then one must certainly ask whether or not God's providence is behind everything. Love, Dad, who in spirit is sitting on the dock at home in Lillesand. P.S. I said I would help you find the ten crowns. On the address side it said: "Hilde Moller Knag, c/o a casual passer-by..." The postmark was stamped 6/15/90. Sophie ran up the stairs after Hermes. As soon as Alberto opened the door, she said: "Out of my way. Here comes the mailman." She felt she had every reason to be annoyed. Alberto stood aside as she barged in. Hermes laid himself down under the coat pegs as before. "Has the major presented another visiting card, my child?" Sophie looked up at him and discovered that he was wearing a different costume. He had put on a long curled wig and a wide, baggy suit with a mass of lace. He wore a loud silk scarf at his throat, and on top of the suit he had thrown a red cape. He also wore white stockings and thin patent leather shoes with bows. The whole costume reminded Sophie of pictures she had seen of the court of Louis XIV. "You clown!" she said and handed him the card. "Hm ... and you really found ten crowns on the same spot where he planted the card?" "Exactly." "He gets ruder all the time. But maybe it's just as well." "Why?" "It'll make it easier to unmask him. But this trick was both pompous and tasteless. It almost stinks of cheap perfume." "Perfume?" "It tries to be elegant but is really a sham. Can't you see how he has the effrontery to compare his own shabby surveillance of us with God's providence?" He held up the card. Then he tore it to pieces. So as not to make his mood worse she refrained from mentioning the card that fell out of her exercise book at school. "Let's go in and sit down. What time is it?" "Four o'clock." "And today we are going to talk about the seventeenth century." They went into the living room with the sloping walls and the skylight. Sophie noticed that Alberto had put different objects out in place of some of those she had seen last time. On the coffee table was a small antique casket containing an assorted collection of lenses for eyeglasses. Beside it lay an open book. It looked really old. "What is that?" Sophie asked. "It is a first edition of the book of Descartes's philosophical essays published in 1637 in which his famous Discourse on Method originally appeared, and one of my most treasured possessions." "And the casket?" "It holds an exclusive collection of lenses--or optical glass. They were polished by the Dutch philosopher Spinoza sometime during the mid-1600s. They were extremely costly and are also among my most valued treasures." "I would probably understand better how valuable these things are if I knew who Spinoza and Descartes were." "Of course. But first let us try to familiarize ourselves with the period they lived in. Have a seat." They sat in the same places as before, Sophie in the big armchair and Alberto Knox on the sofa. Between them was the coffee table with the book and the casket. Alberto removed his wig and laid it on the writing desk. "We are going to talk about the seventeenth century--or what we generally refer to as the Baroque period." "The Baroque period? What a strange name." "The word 'baroque' comes from a word that was first used to describe a pearl of irregular shape. Irregularity was typical of Baroque art, which was much richer in highly contrastive forms than the plainer and more harmonious Renaissance art. The seventeenth century was on the whole characterized by tensions between irreconcilable contrasts. On the one hand there was the Renaissance's unremitting optimism--and on the other hand there were the many who sought the opposite extreme in a life of religious seclusion and self-denial. Both in art and in real life, we meet pompous and flamboyant forms of self-expression, while at the same time there arose a monastic movement, turning away from the world." "Both proud palaces and remote monasteries, in other words." "Yes, you could certainly say that. One of the Baroque period's favorite sayings was the Latin expression 'carpe diem'--'seize the day.' Another Latin expression that was widely quoted was 'memento mori,' which means 'Remember that you must die.' In art, a painting could depict an extremely luxurious lifestyle, with a little skull painted in one corner. "In many senses, the Baroque period was characterized by vanity or affectation. But at the same time a lot of people were concerned with the other side of the coin; they were concerned with the ephemeral nature of things. That is, the fact that all the beauty that surrounds us must one day perish." "It's true. It is sad to realize that nothing lasts." "You think exactly as many people did in the seventeenth century. The Baroque period was also an age of conflict in a political sense. Europe was ravaged by wars. The worst was the Thirty Years' War which raged over most of the continent from 1618 to 1648. In reality it was a series of wars which took a particular toll on Germany. Not least as a result of the Thirty Years' War,France gradually became the dominant power in Europe." "What were the wars about?" "To a great extent they were wars between Protestants and Catholics. But they were also about political power." "More or less like in Lebanon." "Apart from wars, the seventeenth century was a time of great class differences. I'm sure you have heard of the French aristocracy and the Court of Versailles. I don't know whether you have heard much about the poverty of the French people. But any display of magnificence presupposes a display of power. It has often been said that the political situation in the Baroque period was not unlike its art and architecture. Baroque buildings were typified by a lot of ornate nooks and crannies. In a somewhat similar fashion the political situation was typified by intrigue, plotting, and assassinations." "Wasn't a Swedish king shot in a theater?" "You're thinking of Gustav III, a good example of the sort of thing I mean. The assassination of Gustav III wasn't until 1792, but the circumstances were quite baroque. He was murdered while attending a huge masked ball." "I thought he was at the theater." "The great masked ball was held at the Opera. We could say that the Baroque period in Sweden came to an end with the murder of Gustav III. During his time there had been a rule of 'enlightened despotism,' similar to that in the reign of Louis XIV almost a hundred years earlier. Gustav III was also an extremely vain person who adored all French ceremony and courtesies. He also loved the theater..." "... and that was the death of him." "Yes, but the theater of the Baroque period was more than an art form. It was the most commonly employed symbol of the time." "A symbol of what?" "Of life, Sophie. I don't know how many times during the seventeenth century it was said that 'Life is a theater.' It was very often, anyway. The Baroque period gave birth to modern theater--with all its forms of scenery and theatrical machinery. In the theater one built up an illusion on stage--to expose ultimately that the stage play was just an illusion. The theater thus became a reflection of human life in general. The theater could show that 'pride comes before a fall,' and present a merciless portrait of human frailty." "Did Shakespeare live in the Baroque period?" "He wrote his greatest plays around the year 1600, so he stands with one foot in the Renaissance and the other in the Baroque. Shakespeare's work is full of passages about life as a theater. Would you like to hear some of them?" "Yes." "In As You Like It, he says: All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts. "And in Macbeth, he says: Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing." "How very pessimistic." "He was preoccupied with the brevity of life. You must have heard Shakespeare's most famous line?" "To be or not to be--that is the question." "Yes, spoken by Hamlet. One day we are walking around on the earth--and the next day we are dead and gone." "Thanks, I got the message." "When they were not comparing life to a stage, the Baroque poets were comparing life to a dream. Shakespeare says, for example: We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep..." "That was very poetic." "The Spanish dramatist Calderon de la Barca, who was bom in the year 1600, wrote a play called Life Is a Dream, in which he says: 'What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story, and the greatest good is little enough, for all life is a dream ...' " "He may be right. We read a play at school. It was called Jeppe on the Mount." "By Ludvig Holberg, yes. He was a gigantic figure here in Scandinavia, marking the transition from the Baroque period to the Age of Enlightenment." "Jeppe falls asleep in a ditch ... and wakes up in the Baron's bed. So he thinks he only dreamed that he was a poor farmhand. Then when he falls asleep again they carry him back to the ditch, and he wakes up again. This time he thinks he only dreamed he was lying in the Baron's bed." "Holberg borrowed this theme from Calderon, and Calderon had borrowed it from the old Arabian tales, A Thousand and One Nights. Comparing life to a dream, though, is a theme we find even farther back in history, not least in India and China. The old Chinese sage Chuang-tzu, for example, said: Once I dreamed I was a butterfly, and now I no longer know whether I am Chuang-tzu, who dreamed I was a butterfly, or whether I am a butterfly dreaming that I am Chuang-tzu." "Well, it was impossible to prove either way." "We had in Norway a genuine Baroque poet called Fetter Dass, who lived from 1647 to 1707. On the one hand he was concerned with describing life as it is here and now, and on the other hand he emphasized that only God is eternal and constant." "God is God if every land was waste, God is God if every man were dead." "But in the same hymn he writes about rural life in Northern Norway--and about lumpfish, cod, and coal-fish. This is a typical Baroque feature, describing in the same text the earthly and the here and now--and the celestial and the hereafter. It is all very reminiscent of Plato's distinction between the concrete world of the senses and the immutable world of ideas." "What about their philosophy?" "That too was characterized by powerful struggles between diametrically opposed modes of thought. As I have already mentioned, some philosophers believed that what exists is at bottom spiritual in nature. This standpoint is called idealism. The opposite viewpoint is called materialism. By this is meant a philosophy which holds that all real things derive from concrete material substances. Materialism also had many advocates in the seventeenth century. Perhaps the most influential was the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes. He believed that all phenomena, including man and animals, consist exclusively of particles of matter. Even human consciousness--or the soul--derives from the movement of tiny particles in the brain." "So he agreed with what Democritus said two thousand years before?" "Both idealism and materialism are themes you will find all through the history of philosophy. But seldom have both views been so clearly present at the same time as in the Baroque. Materialism was constantly nourished by the new sciences. Newton showed that the same laws of motion applied to the whole universe, and that all changes in the natural world--both on earth and in space--were explained by the principles of universal gravitation and the motion of bodies. "Everything was thus governed by the same unbreakable laws--or by the same mechanisms. It is therefore possible in principle to calculate every natural change with mathematical precision. And thus Newton completed what we call the mechanistic world view." "Did he imagine the world as one big machine?" "He did indeed. The word 'mechanic' comes from the Greek word 'mechane,' which means machine. It is remarkable that neither Hobbes nor Newton saw any contradiction between the mechanistic world picture and belief in God. But this was not the case for all eighteenth- and nineteenth-century materialists. The French physician and philosopher La Mettrie wrote a book in the eighteenth century called L 'homme machine, which means 'Man--the machine.' Just as the leg has muscles to walk with, so has the brain 'muscles' to think with. Later on, the French mathematician Laplace expressed an extreme mechanistic view with this idea: If an intelligence at a given time had known the position of all particles of matter, 'nothing would be unknown, and both future and past would lie open before their eyes.' The idea here was that everything that happens is predetermined. 'It's written in the stars' that something will happen. This view is called determinism." "So there was no such thing as free will." "No, everything was a product of mechanical processes--also our thoughts and dreams. German materialists in the nineteenth century claimed that the relationship of thought to the brain was like the relationship of urine to the kidneys and gall to the liver." "But urine and gall are material. Thoughts aren't." "You've got hold of something central there. I can tell you a story about the same thing. A Russian astronaut and a Russian brain surgeon were once discussing religion. The brain surgeon was a Christian but the astronaut was not. The astronaut said, 'I've been out in space many times but I've never seen God or angels.' And the brain surgeon said, 'And I've operated on many clever brains but I've never seen a single thought.' " "But that doesn't prove that thoughts don't exist." "No, but it does underline the fact that thoughts are not things that can be operated on or broken down into ever smaller parts. It is not easy, for example, to surgically remove a delusion. It grows too deep, as it were, for surgery. An important seventeenth-century philosopher named Leibniz pointed out that the difference between the material and the spiritual is precisely that the material can be broken up into smaller and smaller bits, but the soul cannot even be divided into two." "No, what kind of scalpel would you use for that?" Alberto simply shook his head. After a while he pointed down at the table between them and said: "The two greatest philosophers in the seventeenth century were Descartes and Spinoza. They too struggled with questions like the relationship between 'soul' and 'body,' and we are now going to study them more closely." "Go ahead. But I'm supposed to be home by seven." 巴洛克时期    ……宛如梦中的事物…… 苏菲已经有好几天没有接到艾伯特的消息了。她不时留意花园里的动静,希望能看到汉密士的影踪。她告诉妈妈那只狗已经自己找到路回家了,后来它的主人——一个退休的哲学老师一一请她进屋里去坐。他告诉苏菲有关太阳系的构造和十六世纪发展出来的新科学。 她对乔安说得更多。她告诉她上次去找艾伯特的情形、信箱里的明信片以及她在回家途中捡到十块钱的事。但她没有告诉乔安她梦见席德,并发现那条金十字架链子。 失控五月二十九日星期二那天,苏菲正在厨房里洗碗。妈妈已经到客厅里去看电视新闻了。当新闻节目的片头音乐渐弱后,她从厨房里听到主播报道挪威联合国部队的某个少校被炮弹击中毙命的消息。 苏菲把擦碗布扔在桌上,冲进客厅,刚好在荧屏上看到那名丧生少校的脸。两三秒钟后主播就开始播报其他新闻了。 “天哪!”她叫了出来。 妈妈转过身来看着她。 “是啊,战争真是一件很可怕的事!” 苏菲开始哭泣。 “可是,苏菲,事情并没有那么糟呀!” “他们有没有报出他的名字?” “有,不过我不记得了。只知道他好像是葛林史达那里的人。” “那不是和黎乐桑一样吗?” “怎么会呢?傻孩子。” “可是如果你住在葛林史达,你不是也可能到黎乐桑来上学吗?” 苏菲已经停止哭泣,但现在轮到妈妈有反应了。她从椅子上站起来,关掉电视,问道:“苏菲,这到底是怎么回事?” “没什么。” “我看一定有事。你有一个男朋友对不对?我猜他的年纪比你大很多。我要你现在就回答我:你认识一个在黎巴嫩的男人吗?” “不,不完全是……” “你是不是认识某个在黎巴嫩的男人的儿子?” “我没有。我甚至连他的女儿都没见过。” “谁的女儿?” “这件事跟你没有关系。” “我看大有关系。” “我看问问题的人应该是我。为什么爸爸老是不在家?是不是因为你们没有胆量离婚?也许你交了男朋友,不希望让爸爸和我知道……还有很多很多。要问就大家一起来问嘛!” “我想我们需要好好谈一谈。” “也许吧!不过我已经累了,我要睡觉了;我的月经来了。” 苏菲几乎是一边饮泣一边上楼。 她上完厕所,钻进被窝后,妈妈就进房里来了。 苏菲假装睡着了,虽然她知道妈妈不会相信的。她也知道妈妈知道。尽管如此,妈妈还是假装相信她已经睡着了。她坐在苏菲的床边,抚摸着她的头发。 苏菲心想一个人同时过两种生活是多么复杂呀!她开始期待哲学课程早点结束。也许在她生日时就可以上完吧。至少在仲夏节席德的父亲从黎巴嫩回来时……“我想开一个生日宴会。”她突然说。 “好啊!你想请谁呢?” “很多人……可以吗?” “当然可以。我们的花园很大……希望现在的好天气会一直持续下去。” “最重要的是我希望能在仲夏节那天举行。” “好,就这么办。” “这是很重要的日子。”苏菲说,心里想的不只是她的生日而已。 “确实是。” “我觉得我最近好像长大了不少。” “很好呀!不是吗?” “我也不知道。” 到目前为止,苏菲一直把头半蒙在枕头里讲话。现在妈妈说话了:“苏菲,你一定要告诉我你刚才为什么……为什么好像……失去控制的样子?” “你十五岁的时候不是有时也会这样吗?” “也许吧。可是你知道我在说什么。” 苏菲突然翻身面对着妈妈。“那只狗的名字叫汉密士。”她说。 “是吗?” “它的主人是一个名叫艾伯特的男人。” “原来如此。” “他住在旧城区。” “你那天一直跟着那只狗走到那儿去?” “那里并不危险。” “你说过那只狗常常到这儿来。” “我说过吗?” 她现在得好好想一想了。她想尽可能把一切事情都告诉妈妈,但又不能全部吐露。 “你总是不在家。”她试探着。 “没错,我太忙了。” “艾伯特和汉密士曾经到过这儿来很多次。” “来干什么呢?他们曾经进屋子里来吗?” “你就不能一次问一个问题吗?他们从来没有进屋里来,不过他们经常到林子里散步。这有什么神秘吗?” “不,一点也不神秘。” “他们散步时,就像其他人一样,会经过我们的门口。有一天我放学回家后跟那只狗说了几句话,就这样认识了艾伯特。” “那有关白兔子和你说的那些话又是怎么回事呢?” “那是艾伯特告诉我的。他是一个真正的哲学家,他告诉我所有哲学家的事。” “你们只是站在树篱旁边谈吗?” “他也写信给我。事实上,他写了很多封。有时寄来,有时他会在散步途中把信放在我们家的信箱里。” “那就是我们说的‘情书’啰?” “嗯,只不过那不是真正的情书。” “他在信上只谈哲学吗?” “是的。你能想象吗?我从他那儿学到的比我这八年来在学校里学的更多,比方说,你听说过布鲁诺吗?他在一六OO年被烧死在火刑柱上。或者,你有没有听说过牛顿的万有引力定律呢?” “没有。有很多东西是我不知道的。” “我敢说你一定不知道地球为什么绕着太阳转,对不对?——你看,你还住在地球上呢!” “这个男人年纪多大?” “不知道——大概有五十岁吧!” “他跟黎巴嫩有什么关系呢?” 这可不容易回答。苏菲很快想了一下,决定选择一个听起来最可信的说法。 “艾伯特有一个弟弟是驻黎巴嫩联合国部队的少校,他住在黎乐桑。也许他就是从前住在小木屋里的那个少校吧。” “艾伯特这个名字有点奇怪,是不是?” “大概吧!” “听起来像是意大利名字。” “这个嘛……几乎所有重要的东西好像都来自希腊或意大利。” “可是他会说挪威话吧?” “当然,说得才流利呢!” “你知道吗?苏菲,我想你应该找一天请这个艾伯特到我们家来。我从来没有遇见过真正的哲学家。” “再说吧。” “我们请他参加你的生日宴会,你看怎样?请各种不同年纪的人来会很好玩的。说不定我也可以参加呀!至少,我可以帮你招待客人。你说这样好不好?” “如果他肯来的话,跟他说话比跟我们班上那些男生讲话要有意思多了。只不过……” “怎样?” “他们搞不好会起哄,说艾伯特是我新交的男朋友。” “那你就告诉他们他不是呀!” “嗯,再说吧!” “好吧。还有,苏菲,我和你爸爸有时确实不是处得很好,但我们之间从来没有第三者……” “我想睡了。我经痛得很厉害。” “你要不要吃一片阿斯匹灵?” “好。” 当妈妈拿着药片和水回到房里时,苏菲已经睡着了。 神秘的书信 五月三十一日是星期四。整个下午苏菲在学校上课时都觉得时间很难挨。自从开始上哲学课后,她在某些科目上的成绩进步了。通常她大多数科目的成绩不是A就是B,但上个月她在公民课与作文课上都拿A。不过她的数学成绩则远远落后。 最后一堂课时,老师发回上次写的一篇作文。苏菲选的题目是《人与科技》。她长篇大论地谈到文艺复兴时期的种种和当时在科技方面的突破、对大自然的新观念,以及培根所说的“知识就是力量”。她特别指出是因为有了实证法才有种种科技的发明,然后她谈了一些她认为对社会未必有利的科技发明。在最后一段,她写道:人们做的每一件事都有利有弊。善恶好坏就像一股黑线与一股白线相互交织,有时甚至紧密得无法分开。 当老师把作业本发回时,他从讲台上看着苏菲,戏谑似地向她点点头。 苏菲得了一个A。老师的评语是:“你从哪里学到这些的?” 她拿出一枝笔,在作业本旁边的空白处写:因为我正在研究哲学。 当她把作业本合上时,有一个东西从里面掉了出来。那是一张从黎巴嫩寄来的明信片。 苏菲俯身在课桌前看着信中的内容: 亲爱的席德: 当你看到这封信时,我们大概已经在电话中谈过这里发生的死亡悲剧。有时候我会问自己:如果人类的思想比较清楚的话,是否就能够避免战争与暴力?也许消除战争与暴力最好的方法,就是为人们上一门简单的哲学课程。也许我们应该出版一本《联合国哲学小册》,译咸各国语言,分发给未来每一位世界公民。我将向联合国主席提出这个建议。 你在电话上说你愈来愈会收拾照管自己的东西了。我很高兴,因为你是我所见过最会丢三落四的人。然后你又说自从我们上次通话后你只掉过一个十块钱的铜板,我会尽量帮你找回来。虽然我还在千里之外,可是我在家乡有一个帮手(如果我找到那十块钱,我会把它跟你的生日礼物放在一起)。我感觉自己好像已经开始走上漫长的归乡路了。 爱你的老爸苏菲刚看完明信片,最后一堂课的下课铃就响了。她的思绪再度陷入一团混乱。 乔安像往常一样在游乐场等她。在回家的路上,苏菲打开书包,拿明信片给乔安看。 “邮戳上的日期是几月几号?” “大概是六月十五日吧……” “不,你看……上面写的是5/30/90。” “那是昨天呀……就是黎巴嫩那位少校死掉的第二天。” “我怀疑从黎巴嫩寄来的明信片能够在一天之内寄到挪威。” 乔安继续说。 “再加上地址又很特别:请富理亚初中的苏菲代转席德…” “你认为它会是寄来的吗?然后老师把它夹在你的作业本里?” “我不知道。我也不知道自己敢不敢跑去问老师。” 然后,他们换了一个话题。 “仲夏节那天,我要在我家花园里举行一个宴会。”苏菲说。 “你会请男生来吗?” 苏菲耸耸肩。 “我们不一定要请那些笨蛋来。” “可是你会请杰瑞米吧?” “如果你想的话。还有,我可能会请艾伯特来。” “你疯子!” “我知道。” 谈到这里,他们已经走到超市,只好分道扬镳了。 苏菲回家后的第一件事就是看看汉密士是否在花园里。果然没错,它就站在那里,在苹果树旁边嗅来嗅去。 “汉密士]” 有一秒钟的时间,汉密士并没有动。苏菲知道为什么:它听到她的叫声、认出她的声音,决定看看她是否在声音传来的地方。然后,它看到了她,便开始向她跑来。它愈跑愈快,最后四只脚像鼓锤般地疾疾点地。 在这一秒钟的时间里,发生的事情还真不少。 汉密士冲向苏菲,忙不迭地摇着尾巴,然后跳起来舔她的脸。 “汉密士,你真聪明。下去……下去……不要,不要把口水弄得我满脸……好了,好了!够了!” 苏菲走进屋里。雪儿又从树丛里跳了出来。它对汉密士这位陌生访客相当提防。苏菲拿出猫食,在鹦哥的杯子里倒一些饲料,拿一片生菜叶子给乌龟吃,然后便留一张纸条给妈妈。 她说她要带汉密士回家。如果到七点她还没回来的话,她会打电话。 然后他们便开始穿越市区。这次苏菲特别在身上带了点钱。她本来考虑带汉密士一起坐公车,但后来决定还是问过艾伯特的意思再说。 当她跟着汉密士走的时候,脑海里一直想着动物到底是什么。 狗和猫有什么不同呢?她记得亚理斯多德说:人与动物都是自然的生物,有许多相同的特征。但是人与动物之间却有一个明显不同的地方,那就是:人会思考。 他凭什么如此确定呢?相反的,德谟克里特斯则认为人与动物事实上很相似,因为两者都由原子组成。他并不认为人或动物拥有不朽的灵魂。他的说法是:人的灵魂是由原子组成的,人一死,这些原子也就随风四散。 他认为人的灵魂与他的脑子是紧紧相连,密不可分的。 不过,灵魂怎么可能是原子做的呢?灵魂不像身体其他部位一样是可以碰触到的。它是“精神性”的东西。 他们已经走过大广场,接近旧城区了。当他们走到苏菲那天捡到十块钱的人行道上时,她自然而然的看着脚下的柏油路面。就在她那天弯腰捡钱的同一个地方,她看到了一张明信片,有风景的那面朝上。照片里是一个种有棕榈树与橘子树的花园。 苏菲弯腰捡起明信片。汉密士开始低声怒吼,仿佛不愿意苏菲碰那张明信片一般。 明信片的内容如下: 亲爱的席德; 生命是由一长串的巧合组成的。你所遗失的十块钱并非没有可能在这里出现。也许它是在黎乐桑的广场上被一位预备前往基督山的老太太捡到,她从基督山搭乘火车去探视她的孙儿。很久以后也许她在新广场这里又把那枚铜板给丢了。因此那枚铜板非常可能在当天被一名急需要钱坐公车回家的女孩捡到了。这很难说,席德,但如果真是这样,我们就必须问一问是否每一件事都是天意。现在,就精神上而言,我已经坐在咱家旁边的船坞上了。 P.S:我说过我会帮你找回那十块钱的。 爱你的爸爸地址栏上写着:“请过路人代转席德”。邮戳的日期是六月十五日。 苏菲跟在汉密士的身后跳上台阶。艾伯特一打开门,她便说:“闪开,老爹,邮差来了。” 她觉得自己现在有十足的理由生气。 苏菲进门时,艾伯特便让到旁边。汉密士像从前那样躺在衣帽钩架下面。 “少校是不是又给你一张明信片了,孩子?” 苏菲抬眼看着他,发现他今天又穿了另外一套衣服。她最先注意到的是他戴了一顶长长鬈鬈的假发,穿了一套宽松、镶有许多花边的衣服,脖子上围了一条颜色异常鲜艳的丝巾。在衣服之上还披了一件红色的披肩。另外他还穿着白色的长袜和显然是皮制的薄薄的鞋子,鞋面上还有蝴蝶结。这一整套服装使苏菲想起她在电影上看到的路易十四的宫廷。 “你这个呆子!”她说,一边把明信片递给他。 “嗯……你真的在他放这张明信片的地方捡到了十块钱吗?” “没错。” “他愈来愈没礼貌了。不过这样也好。” “为什么?” “这使我们比较容易拆穿他的面具。不过他这个把戏既夸张又不高明,几乎像是廉价香水一样。” “香水?” “因为他努力要显得很高雅,但实际上却虚有其表。你难道看不出来他居然厚脸皮的把他监视我们的卑鄙行为比做天意吗?” 他指着那张明信片,然后就像以前那样把它撕成碎片。为了不让他更生气,苏菲就没有再提在学校时从她作业本里掉出来的那张明信片。 “我们进房里坐吧。现在几点了?” “四点。” “今天我们要谈十七世纪。” 他们走进那间四面斜墙、开有天窗的客厅。苏菲发现这次房里的摆设和上次不同。 茶几上有一个小小的古董珠宝箱,里面放着各式各样的镜片。 珠宝箱旁边摆着一本摊开来的书,样子看来颇为古老。 “那是什么?”苏菲问。 “那是笛卡尔著名的《方法论》,是第—一版,印制于公元一六三七年,是我最宝贝的收藏之一。” “那个箱子呢……?” “……是我独家收藏的镜片,也叫做光学玻璃。它们是在十七世纪中由荷兰哲学家史宾诺莎(Spinoza)所打磨的。这些镜片价格都非常昂贵,也是我最珍贵的收藏之一。” “如果我知道史宾诺莎和笛卡尔是谁的话,也许比较能了解这些东西到底有多珍贵。” “当然。不过还是先让我们熟悉一下他们的时代背景好了。我们坐下来吧!” 理想与唯物主义他们坐在跟上次一样的地方。苏菲坐在大扶手椅里,艾伯特则坐在沙发上。那张放着书和珠宝箱的茶几就在他们两人中间。当他们坐下来时,艾伯特拿下他的假发。放在书桌上。 “我们今天要谈的是十七世纪,也就是我们一般所说的‘巴洛克时期(BaroquePeriod)’。” “巴洛克时期?好奇怪的名字。” “‘巴洛克’这个名词原来的意思是‘形状不规则的珍珠’。这是巴洛克艺术的典型特征。它比文艺复兴时期的艺术要更充满了对照鲜明的形式,相形之下,后者则显得较为平实而和谐。整体来说,十七世纪的主要特色就是在各种相互矛盾的对比中呈现的张力。 当时有许多人抱持文艺复兴时期持续不坠的乐观精神,另一方面又有许多人过着退隐山林、禁欲苦修的宗教生活。无论在艺术还是现实生活上,我们都可以看到夸张华丽的自我表达形式,但另外一方面也有一股退隐避世的潮流逐渐兴起。” “你是说,当时既有宏伟华丽的宫廷,也有僻静的修道院?” “是的。一点没错。巴洛克时期的口头禅之一是拉丁谚语carpediem,也就是‘把握今天’的意思。另外一句也很流行的拉丁谚语则是mementomori,就是‘不要忘记你将会死亡’。 “在艺术方面,当时的绘画可能一方面描绘极其繁华奢靡的生活,但在角落里却画了一个骷髅头。从很多方面来说,巴洛克时期的特色是浮华而矫饰的。但在同一时期,也有许多人意识到世事无常,明白我们周遭的美好事物终有一天会消殒凋零。” “没错。我想意识到生命无常的确是一件令人伤感的事。” “你的想法就和十七世纪的许多人一样。在政治方面,巴洛克时期也是一个充满冲突的年代。当时的欧洲可说是烽火遍地。其中最惨烈的是从一六一八年打到一六四八年的‘三十年战争’,欧洲大部分地区都卷入其中。事实上,所谓‘三十年战争’指的是一连串战役,而受害最深的是德国。由于这些战争,法国逐渐成为欧洲象强大的国家。” “他们为什么要打仗呢?” “有一大部分是由于基督新教与天主教之间的冲突。但也有一些是为了争夺政权。” “就像黎巴嫩的情况。” “除此之外,十七世纪也是阶级差距很大的时代。你一定听过法国的贵族和凡尔赛宫。但我不知道你对法国人民穷困的生活知道多少。不过财富往往建立于权力之上。人们常说巴洛克时期的政治情势与当时的艺术与建筑有几分相似。巴洛克时期的建筑特色在于屋角与隙缝有许多细部装饰。同样的,当时政治情势的特色就是各种阴谋与暗杀充斥。” “不是有一位瑞典国王在戏院里遇刺吗?” “你说的是古斯塔夫三世(GustavⅢ)。这是一个很好的例子。 古斯塔夫三世遇刺的时间其实是在一七九二年,但当时的情况却与巴洛克时期很像。他是在一场化装舞会中遇害的。” “我还以为他是在戏院里被杀的。” “那场化装舞会是在一座歌剧院举行的。我们可以说瑞典的巴洛克时期随着古斯塔夫三世的遇刺而结束。在古斯塔夫的时代已经开始有所谓的‘开明专制’政治,与近一百年前路易十四统治的时期颇为相似。古斯塔夫三世本身也是一个非常虚荣的人,他崇尚所有的法国仪式与礼节。不过,他也很喜爱戏剧……” “……他就是因此而死的对不对?” “是的,不过巴洛克时期的戏剧不只是一种艺术形式而已,也是当时最常使用的象征。” “什么东西的象征?” “生活的象征。我不知道十七世纪的人究竟说过多少次‘人生如戏’之类的话。总之,很多次就是了。现代戏剧一—包括各种布景与舞台机关——就是在巴洛克时期诞生的。演戏的人在舞台上创造一种假象,最终目的就是要显示舞台上的戏剧不过是一种假象而已。戏剧因此成为整个人生的缩影。它可以告诉人们‘骄者必败’,也可以无情的呈现出人类的软弱。” “莎士比亚是不是巴洛克时期的人?” “他最伟大的几出剧作是在一六OO年写成的。因此可以说,他横跨了文艺复兴时期与巴洛克时期。莎士比亚的剧本中有许多片段讲到人生如戏。你想不想听我念几段?” “当然想。” “在《皆大欢喜》中,他说:世界是一座舞台,所有的男男女女不过是演员:有上场的时候,也有下场的时候;每个人在一生中都扮演着好几种角色。” “在《马克白》中,他说:人生不过是一个行走的影子,一个在舞台上高谈阔步的可怜演员,无声无息地悄然退下;这只是一个傻子说的故事,说得慷慨激昂,却无意义。” “好悲观哪!” “那是因为他时常想到生命的短暂。你一定听过莎士比亚最著名的一句台词吧!” “存在或不存在,这是问题所在。”(Tobeornottobe——thatisthequestion.)“对,是哈姆雷特说的。今天我们还在世上到处行走,明天我们就死了,消失了。” “谢啦j我明白了!” “除了将生命比喻为舞台之外,巴洛克时期的诗人也将生命比喻为梦境。例如,莎士比亚就说:我们的本质原来也和梦一般,短短的一生就在睡梦中度过……” “很有诗意。” “公元一六OO年出生的西班牙剧作家卡德隆(Calder6ndelaBarca)写了一出名为《人生如梦》的戏。其中有一句台词是:‘生命是什么?是疯狂的。生命是什么?是幻象、是影子、是虚构之物。生命中至美至善者亦微不足道,因为生命只是一场梦境……,” “他说的也许没错。我们在学校里也念过一个剧本,名叫《杰普大梦》(JeppeOntheMount)。” “没错,是由侯柏格(LudvigHolberg)写的。他是北欧的大作家,是巴洛克时期过渡到开明时期的一个重要人物。” “杰普在一个壕沟里睡着了……醒来时发现自己躺在男爵的床上。因此他以为他梦见自己是一个贫穷的农场工人。后来当他再度睡着时,他们把他抬回壕沟去,然后他又醒过来了。这次他以为他刚才只是梦见自己躺在男爵的床上罢了。” “侯柏格是从卡德隆那儿借用了这个主题,而卡德隆则是借用古代阿拉伯的民间故事《一千零一夜》中的主题。不过,在此之前,早已有人将生命比喻为梦境,包括印度与中国的作家。比方说,中国古代的智者庄子就曾经说过:‘昔者庄周梦为蝴蝶,栩栩然蝴蝶也……俄然觉,则蘧蘧然周也。不知周之梦为蝴蝶欤,蝴蝶之梦为周欤?”’“这个嘛,我想我们实在不可能证明究竟哪一种情况才是真的。” “挪威有一个巴洛克时期的天才诗人名叫达斯(PetterDass),生于一六四七年到一七O七年间。他一方面着意描写人世间的现实生活,另一方面则强调唯有上帝才是永恒不变的。 “上帝仍为上帝,即便天地尽荒;上帝仍为上帝,纵使人人皆亡。 “但他在同一首赞美诗中也描写挪威北部的乡村生活,描写鲂鱼、鳕鱼和黑鳕鱼等。这是巴洛克时期作品的典型特征,一方面描写今生与现实人间的生活,另一方面也描写天上与来世的情景。这使人想起柏拉图将宇宙分成具体的感官世界与不变的概念世界的理论。” “这些巴洛克时期的人又有什么样的哲学呢?” “他们的哲学特色同样也是两种完全相反的思想模式并存,而且两者之中充满了强烈的冲突。我说过,有许多人认为生命基本上具有一种崇高的特质。我们称之为‘理想主义’。另一种迥然相异的看法则被称为‘唯物主义’,就是指一种相信生命中所有的自然现象都是从肉体感官而来的哲学。十七世纪时也有许多人信奉物质主义。其中影响最大的可能是英国的哲学家霍布士(ThomasHobbes)。他相信自然界所有的现象——包括人与动物——都完全是由物质的分子所组成的。就连人类的意识(也就是灵魂)也是由人脑中微小分子的运动而产生的。” “这么说,他赞同两千年前德谟克里特斯的说法啰?” “在整部哲学史上你都可以看到理想主义与唯物主义的影踪。 不过两者很少像在巴洛克时期这般明显共存。由于受到各种新科学的影响,唯物主义日益盛行。牛顿证明整个宇宙适用同样的运动定律,也证明自然界(包括地理和太空)的所有变化都可以用宇宙重力与物体移动等定律来加以说明。因此,一切事物都受到同样的不变法则或同样的机转所左右。所以在理论上,所有自然界的变化都可以用数学精确地计算。就这样,牛顿成就了我们所谓的‘机械论的世界观’。”.“他是否认为整个世界就是一部很大的机器?” “是的。mechanic(机械论的)这个字是从希腊文mechane而来的,意思就是机器。值得注意的是:无论霍布士或牛顿都不认为机械论的世界观与他们对上帝的信仰有何抵触。但十八、十九世纪的唯物主义者则不然。十八世纪的法国物理学家兼哲学家拉美特利(LaMettrie)写了一本名为《人这部机器》(L’hommemachine)的书,他认为,就像人腿有肌肉可以行走一般,人脑也有‘肌肉’可以用来思考。后来,法国的数学家拉普拉斯(Laplace)也表达了极端机械论的观点。他的想法是:如果某些神祗在某个时刻能知道所有物质分子的位置,则‘没有任何事情是他们所不知道的,同时他们也能够看到所有过去及未来的事情’。他认为所有事情都命中注定。一件事情会不会发生,都是冥冥中早有定数。这个观点被称为决定论’。” “这么说,他们认为世间没有所谓自由意志这回事啰?” “是的。他们认为一切事物都是机械过程的产物,包括我们的思想与梦境在内。十九世纪德国的唯物主义者宣称,思想与脑袋的关系就像尿液与肾脏、胆汁与肝的关系。” “可是尿液和胆汁都是物质,但思想却不是。” “你说到重点了。我可以告诉你一个类似的故事。有一次,一位俄罗斯太空人与一位脑外科医生讨论宗教方面的问题。脑外科医生是个基督徒,那位太空人不是。太空人说:‘我到过太空许多次,但却从来没有见过上帝或天使。’脑外科医生答道:‘我开过很多聪明的脑袋,也没有看过一个思想呀!”’“可是这并不代表思想并不存在。” “没错。它强调了一个事实,那就是:思想并不是可以被开刀或被分解成较小单位的东西。举例来说,如果一个人满脑子幻想,你很难开刀将它去除。我们可以说,它生长的部位太深人了,无法动手术。十七世纪一位重要的哲学家莱布尼兹指出:物质与精神不同的地方在于物质可以不断被分割成更小的单位,但灵魂却连分割成一半也不可能。” “是呀!要用什么样的手术刀才能分割灵魂呢?” 艾伯特只是摇头。过了一会,他向下指着他们两人中间的桌子说:“十七世纪最伟大的两位哲学家笛卡尔和史宾诺莎也曾绞尽脑汁思考灵魂与肉体的关系,我们会更详细地讨论他们的思想。” “好吧,不过如果我们到七点钟还没结束的话,我就得借你的电话用一用。” Descartes ... he wanted to clear all the rubble off the site Alberto stood up, took off the red cloak, and laid it over a chair. Then he settled himself once again in the corner of the sofa. "Rene Descartes was born in 1596 and lived in a number of different European countries at various periods of his life. Even as a young man he had a strong desire to achieve insight into the nature of man and the universe. But after studying philosophy he became increasingly convinced of his own ignorance." "Like Socrates?" "More or less like him, yes. Like Socrates, he was convinced that certain knowledge is only attainable through reason. We can never trust what the old books tell us. We cannot even trust what our senses tell us." "Plato thought that too. He believed that only reason can give us certain knowledge." "Exactly. There is a direct line of descent from Socrates and Plato via St. Augustine to Descartes. They were all typical rationalists, convinced that reason was the only path to knowledge. After comprehensive studies, Descartes came to the conclusion that the body of knowledge handed down from the Middle Ages was not necessarily reliable. You can compare him to Socrates, who did not trust the general views he encountered in the central square of Athens. So what does one do, Sophie? Can you tell me that?" "You begin to work out your own philosophy." "Right! Descartes decided to travel around Europe, the way Socrates spent his life talking to people in Athens. He relates that from then on he meant to confine himself to seeking the wisdom that was to be found, either within himself or in the 'great book of the world.' So he joined the army and went to war, which enabled him to spend periods of time in different parts of Central Europe. Later he lived for some years in Paris, but in 1629 he went to Holland, where he remained for nearly twenty years working on his mathematical and philosophic writings. "In 1649 he was invited to Sweden by Queen Christina. But his sojourn in what he called 'the land of bears, ice, and rocks' brought on an attack of pneumonia and he died in the winter of 1650." "So he was only 54 when he died." "Yes, but he was to have enormous influence on philosophy, even after his death. One can say without exaggeration that Descartes was the father of modern philosophy. Following the heady rediscovery of man and nature in the Renaissance, the need to assemble contemporary thought into one coherent philosophical system again presented itself. The first significant system-builder was Descartes, and he was followed by Spinoza and Leibniz, Locke and Berkeley, Hume and Kant." "What do you mean by a philosophical system?" "I mean a philosophy that is constructed from the ground up and that is concerned with finding explanations for all the central questions of philosophy. Antiquity had its great system-constructors in Plato and Aristotle. The Middle Ages had St. Thomas Aquinas, who tried to build a bridge between Aristotle's philosophy and Christian theology. Then came the Renais-sance, with a welter of old and new beliefs about nature and science, God and man. Not until the seventeenth century did philosophers make any attempt to assemble the new ideas into a clarified philosophical system, and the first to attempt it was Descartes. His work was the forerunner of what was to be philosophy's most important project in the coming generations. His main concern was with what we can know, or in other words, certain knowledge. The other great question that preoccupied him was the relationship between body and mind. Both these questions were the substance of philosophical argument for the next hundred and fifty years." "He must have been ahead of his time." "Ah, but the question belonged to the age. When it came to acquiring certain knowledge, many of his contemporaries voiced a total philosophic skepticism. They thought that man should accept that he knew nothing. But Descartes would not. Had he done so he would not have been a real philosopher. We can again draw a parallel with Socrates, who did not accept the skepticism of the Sophists. And it was in Descartes's lifetime that the new natural sciences were developing a method by which to provide certain and exact descriptions of natural processes. "Descartes was obliged to ask himself if there was a similar certain and exact method of philosophic reflection." "That I can understand." "But that was only part of it. The new physics had also raised the question of the nature of matter, and thus what determines the physical processes of nature. More and more people argued in favor of a mechanistic view of nature. But the more mechanistic the physical world was seen to be, the more pressing became the question of the relationship between body and soul. Until the seventeenth century, the soul had commonly been considered as a sort of 'breath of life' that pervaded all living creatures. The original meaning of the words 'soul' and 'spirit' is, in fact, 'breath' and 'breathing.' This is the case for almost all European languages. To Aristotle, the soul was something that was present everywhere in the organism as its 'life principle'--and therefore could not be conceived as separate from the body. So he was able to speak of a plant soul or an animal soul. Philosophers did not introduce any radical division of soul and body until the seventeenth century. The reason was that the motions of all material objects--including the body, animal or human--were explained as involving mechanical processes. But man's soul could surely not be part of this body machinery, could it? What of the soul, then? An explanation was required not least of how something 'spiritual' could start a mechanical process." "It's a strange thought, actually." "What is?" "I decide to lift my arm--and then, well, the arm lifts itself. Or I decide to run for a bus, and the next second my legs are moving. Or I'm thinking about something sad, and suddenly I'm crying. So there must be some mysterious connection between body and consciousness." "That was exactly the problem that set Descartes's thoughts going. Like Plato, he was convinced that there was a sharp division between 'spirit' and 'matter.' But as to how the mind influences the body--or the soul the body--Plato could not provide an answer." "Neither have I, so I am looking forward to hearing what Descartes's theory was." "Let us follow his own line of reasoning." Albert pointed to the book that lay on the table between them. "In his Discourse on Method, Descartes raises the question of the method the philosopher must use to solve a philosophical problem. Science already had its new method..." "So you said." "Descartes maintains that we cannot accept anything as being true unless we can clearly and distinctly perceive it. To achieve this can require the breaking down of a compound problem into as many single factors as possible. Then we can take our point of departure in the simplest idea of all. You could say that every single thought must be weighed and measured, rather in the way Galileo wanted everything to be measured and everything immeasurable to be made measurable. Descartes believed that philosophy should go from the simple to the complex. Only then would it be possible to construct a new insight. And finally it would be necessary to ensure by constant enumeration and control that nothing was left out. Then, a philosophical conclusion would be within reach." "It sounds almost like a math test." "Yes. Descartes was a mathematician; he is considered the father of analytical geometry, and he made important contributions to the science of algebra. Descartes wanted to use the 'mathematical method' even for philosophizing. He set out to prove philosophical truths in the way one proves a mathematical theorem. In other words, he wanted to use exactly the same instrument that we use when we work with figures, namely, reason, since only reason can give us certainty. It is far from certain that we can rely on our senses. We have already noted Descartes's affinity with Plato, who also observed that mathematics and numerical ratio give us more certainty than the evidence of our senses." "But can one solve philosophical problems that way?" "We had better go back to Descartes's own reasoning. His aim is to reach certainty about the nature of life, and he starts by maintaining that at first one should doubt everything. He didn't want to build on sand, you see." "No, because if the foundations give way, the whole house collapses." "As you so neatly put it, my child. Now, Descartes did not think it reasonable to doubt everything, but he thought it was possible in principle to doubt everything. For one thing, it is by no means certain that we advance our philosophical quest by reading Plato or Aristotle. It may increase our knowledge of history but not of the world. It was important for Descartes to rid himself of all handed down, or received, learning before beginning his own philosophical construction." "He wanted to clear all the rubble off the site before starting to build his new house ..." "Thank you. He wanted to use only fresh new materials in order to be sure that his new thought construction would hold. But Descartes's doubts went even deeper. We cannot even trust what our senses tell us, he said. Maybe they are deceiving us." "How come?" "When we dream, we feel we are experiencing reality. What separates our waking feelings from our dream feelings? " 'When I consider this carefully, I find not a single property which with certainty separates the waking state from the dream,' writes Descartes. And he goes on: 'How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?' " "Jeppe thought he had only been dreaming when he had slept in the Baron's bed." "And when he was lying in the Baron's bed, he thought his life as a poor peasant was only a dream. So in the same way, Descartes ends up doubting absolutely everything. Many philosophers before him had reached the end of the road at that very point." "So they didn't get very far." "But Descartes tried to work forward from this zero point. He doubted everything, and that was the only thing he was certain of. But now something struck him: one thing had to be true, and that was that he doubted. When he doubted, he had to be thinking, and because he was thinking, it had to be certain that he was a thinking being. Or, as he himself expressed it: Cogito, ergo sum." "Which means?" "I think, therefore I am." "I'm not surprised he realized that." "Fair enough. But notice the intuitive certainty with which he suddenly perceives himself as a thinking being. Perhaps you now recall what Plato said, that what we grasp with our reason is more real than what we grasp with our senses. That's the way it was for Descartes. He perceived not only that he was a thinking /, he realized at the same time that this thinking / was more real than the material world which we perceive with our senses. And he went on. He was by no means through with his philosophical quest." "What came next?" "Descartes now asked himself if there was anything more he could perceive with the same intuitive certainty. He came to the conclusion that in his mind he had a clear and distinct idea of a perfect entity. This was an idea he had always had, and it was thus self-evident to Descartes that such an idea could not possibly have come from himself. The idea of a perfect entity cannot have originated from one who was himself imperfect, he claimed. Therefore the idea of a perfect entity must have originated from that perfect entity itself, or in other words, from God. That God exists was therefore just as self-evident for Descartes as that a thinking being must exist." "Now he was jumping to a conclusion. He was more cautious to begin with." "You're right. Many people have called that his weak spot. But you say 'conclusion.' Actually it was not a question of proof. Descartes only meant that we all possess the idea of a perfect entity, and that inherent in that idea is the fact that this perfect entity must exist. Because a perfect entity wouldn't be perfect if it didn't exist. Neither would we possess the idea of a perfect entity if there were no perfect entity. For we are imperfect, so the idea of perfection cannot come from us. According to Descartes, the idea of God is innate, it is stamped on us from birth 'like the artisan's mark stamped on his product.' " "Yes, but just because I possess the idea of a crocophant doesn't mean that the crocophant exists." "Descartes would have said that it is not inherent in the concept of a crocophant that it exists. On the other hand, it is inherent in the concept of a perfect entity that such an entity exists. According to Descartes, this is just as certain as it is inherent in the idea of a circle that all points of the circle are equidistant from the center. You cannot have a circle that does not conform to this law. Nor can you have a perfect entity that lacks its most important property, namely, existence." "That's an odd way of thinking." "It is a decidedly rationalistic way of thinking. Descartes believed like Socrates and Plato that there is a connection between reason and being. The more self-evident a thing is to one's reason, the more certain it is that it exists." "So far he has gotten to the fact that he is a thinking person and that there exists a perfect entity." "Yes, and with this as his point of departure, he proceeds. In the question of all the ideas we have about outer reality--for example, the sun and the moon--there is the possibility that they are fantasies. But outer reality also has certain characteristics that we can perceive with our reason. These are the mathematical properties, or, in other words, the kinds of things that are measurable, such as length, breadth, and depth. Such 'quantitative' properties are just as clear and distinct to my reason as the fact that I am a thinking being. 'Qualitative' properties such as color, smell, and taste, on the other hand, are linked to our sense perception and as such do not describe outer reality." "So nature is not a dream after all." "No, and on that point Descartes once again draws upon our idea of the perfect entity. When our reason recognizes something clearly and distinctly--as is the case for the mathematical properties of outer reality--it must necessarily be so. Because a perfect God would not deceive us. Descartes claims 'God's guarantee' that whatever we perceive with our reason also corresponds to reality." "Okay, so now he's found out he's a thinking being, God exists, and there is an outer reality." "Ah, but the outer reality is essentially different from the reality of thought. Descartes now maintains that there are two different forms of reality--or two 'substances.' One substance is thought, or the 'mind,' the other is extension, or matter. The mind is purely conscious, it takes up no room in space and can therefore not be subdivided into smaller parts. Matter, however, is purely extension, it takes up room in space and can therefore always be subdivided into smaller and smaller parts-- but it has no consciousness. Descartes maintained that both substances originate from God, because only God himself exists independently of anything else. But al-though both thought and extension come from God, the two substances have no contact with each other. Thought is quite independent of matter, and conversely, the material processes are quite independent of thought." "So he divided God's creation into two." "Precisely. We say that Descartes is a dualist, which means that he effects a sharp division between the reality of thought and extended reality. For example, only man has a mind. Animals belong completely to extended reality. Their living and moving are accomplished me-chanically. Descartes considered an animal to be a kind of complicated automaton. As regards extended reality, he takes a thoroughly mechanistic view--exactly like the materialists." "I doubt very much that Hermes is a machine or an automaton. Descartes couldn't have liked animals very much. And what about us? Are we automatons as well?" "We are and we aren't. Descartes came to the conclusion that man is a dual creature that both thinks and takes up room in space. Man has thus both a mind and an extended body. St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas had already said something similar, namely, that man had a body like the animals and a soul like the angels. According to Descartes, the human body is a perfect machine. But man also has a mind which can operate quite independently of the body. The bodily processes do not have the same freedom, they obey their own laws. But what we think with our reason does not happen in the body--it happens in the mind, which is completely independent of extended reality. I should add, by the way, that Descartes did not reject the possibility that animals could think. But if they have that faculty, the same dualism between thought and extension must also apply to them." "We have talked about this before. If I decide to run after a bus, the whole 'automaton' goes into action. And if I don't catch the bus, I start to cry." "Even Descartes could not deny that there is a constant interaction between mind and body. As long as the mind is in the body, he believed, it is linked to the brain through a special brain organ which he called the pineal gland, where a constant interaction takes place between 'spirit' and 'matter.' Therefore the mind can constantly be affected by feelings and passions that are related to bodily needs. But the mind can also detach itself from such 'base' impulses and operate independently of the body. The aim is to get reason to assume command. Because even if I have the worst pain in my stomach, the sum of the angles in a triangle will still be 180 de-grees. Thus humans have the capacity to rise above bodily needs and behave rationally. In this sense the mind is superior to the body. Our legs can age and become weak, the back can become bowed and our teeth can fall out--but two and two will go on being four as long as there is reason left in us. Reason doesn't become bowed and weak. It is the body that ages. For Descartes, the mind is essentially thought. Baser passions and feelings such as desire and hate are more closely linked to our bodily functions--and therefore to extended reality." "I can't get over the fact that Descartes compared the human body to a machine or an automaton." "The comparison was based on the fact that people in his time were deeply fascinated by machines and the workings of clocks, which appeared to have the ability to function of their own accord. The word 'automaton' means precisely that--something that moves of its own accord. It was obviously only an illusion that they moved of their own accord. An astronomical clock, for instance, is both constructed and wound up by human hands. Descartes made a point of the fact that ingenious inventions of that kind were actually assembled very simply from a relatively small number of parts compared with the vast number of bones, muscles, nerves, veins, and arteries that the human and the animal body consists of. Why should God not be able to make an animal or a human body based on mechanical laws?" "Nowadays there is a lot of talk about 'artificial intelligence.' " "Yes, that is the automaton of our time. We have created machines that can sometimes deceive us into believing that they are intelligent. Machines like these would have terrified Descartes out of his wits. He might have begun to doubt whether human reason really was as free and independent as he had supposed. And there are philosophers who believe that man's spiritual life is no more free than the bodily processes. The human soul is naturally infinitely more complex than any data program, but some people think that in principle we are just as unfree as these data programs. But look, Sophie--I'll show you something." Alberto pointed to a large writing table at the other end of the room. On it stood a small computer. He went over to it. Sophie followed him. Alberto switched the computer on and soon the screen showed C: at the top. He wrote "Laila," explaining that this was an advanced conversation program. A text soon appeared at the top of the screen: "Hi, my name is Laila. Are you sitting comfortably?" Sophie entered three letters: "Yes," she wrote although she had not yet sat down. Alberto brought up a chair for her. "What is your name?" appeared on the screen. "Sophie Amundsen," wrote Sophie, and the computer answered: "3 Clover Close. Nice to meet you, Sophie. Are you looking forward to your fifteenth birthday?" Sophie was startled. Alberto laid a hand on her shoulder and said: "I have only given her your name, your address, and your date of birth. It's like when you are going to be introduced to a new friend. It's nice to know a little about them beforehand." "Not bad," wrote Sophie. "Oh dear, I hope you are not feeling bad, Sophie. You must try to talk in whole sentences." "Thank you, I'm perfectly well. Can I ask you something?" "I am glad you are well. Go ahead and ask me something." "How old are you?" Sophie wrote. "I was constructed in Atlanta on August 8, 1988, but I was translated into Norwegian at the Norwegian Polytechnic on March 28, 1990." "Gosh!" "I said you must talk in whole sentences." "I only said gosh!" "I do not understand slang. I have a vocabulary of over 100,000 words, but the nearest I can find to gosh is gospel." "That means the story of Jesus." "Are you a Christian, Sophie?" "I don't know." "As a rule not knowing is a step toward new knowledge." "Socrates would most likely have said the same. Or Descartes, for that matter." "Socrates was a Greek philosopher who lived from 470 to 399 B.C. If you wish to know more, press F7. Descartes was a French philosopher who lived from 1596 to 1650. If you wish to know more, press F7." "Thank you, that will be quite enough. Can I ask you something else?" "I am glad that this was enough. Go ahead and ask!" Alberto laughed quietly. Sophie wrote: "Who is Hilde Moller Knag?" "Hilde Moller Knag lives in Lillesand and is exactly the same age as Sophie Amundsen." "How do you know?" "I don't know how. I found her on the hard disc." Sophie felt a hand on her shoulder. "I have fed the data program with the little information we have about Hilde," said Alberto. "What else do you know about Hilde?" wrote Sophie. "Hilde's father is a UN Observer in Lebanon. He has the rank of major and continually sends postcards to his daughter." "I want you to find him!" "I can't do that. He is not on any of my files and I am not coupled to any other data base." "I said find him!!!!!!!!" "Are you angry, Sophie? So many exclamation marks are a sign of violent feelings." "I want to talk to Hilde's father!" "You have difficulty controlling yourself. If you wish to talk about your childhood, press F9." Alberto laid his hand on Sophie's shoulder again. "She's right. This is not a crystal ball. Laila is only a data program." "Shut up!" wrote Sophie. "As you wish, Sophie. Our acquaintance lasted only 13 minutes and 52 seconds. I shall remember everything we have said. I shall now end the program." The letter C: once again showed up on the screen. "Now we can sit down again," said Alberto. But Sophie had already pressed some other keys. "Knag," she wrote. Immediately the following message appeared on the screen: "Here I am." Now it was Alberto who jumped. "Who are you?" wrote Sophie. "Major Albert Knag at your service. I came straight from Lebanon. What is your command?" "This beats everything!" breathed Alberto. "The rat has sneaked onto the hard disc." He motioned for Sophie to move and sat down in front of the keyboard. "How did you manage to get into my PC?" he wrote. "A mere bagatelle, dear colleague. I am exactly where I choose to be." "You loathsome data virus!" "Now, now! At the moment I am here as a birthday virus. May I send a special greeting?" "No thanks, we've had enough of them." "But I'll be quick: all in your honor, dear Hilde. Once again, a very happy fifteenth birthday. Please excuse the circumstances, but I wanted my birthday greetings to spring up around you everywhere you go. Love from Dad, who is longing to give you a great big hug." Before Alberto could write again, the sign C: had once again appeared on the screen. Alberto wrote "dir knag*.*," which called up the following information on the screen: * * * 22:34 Alberto wrote "erase knag*.*" and switched off the computer. "There--now I have erased him," he said. "But it's impossible to say where he'll turn up next time." He went on sitting there, staring at the screen. Then he added: "The worst of it all was the name. Albert Knag ..." For the first time Sophie was struck by the similarity between the two names. Albert Knag and Alberto Knox. But Alberto was so incensed that she dared not say a word. They went over and sat by the coffee table again. 笛卡尔    ……他希望清除工地上所有的瓦砾…… 艾伯特站起身来,脱下红色披风,搁在椅子上,然后再度坐在沙发的一角。 “笛卡尔诞生于一五九六年,一生中曾住过几个欧洲国家。他在年轻时就已经有强烈的欲望要洞悉人与宇宙的本质。但在研习哲学之后,他逐渐体认到自己的无知。” “就像苏格拉底一样?” “是的,或多或少。他像苏格拉底一样,相信唯有透过理性才能获得确实的知识。他认为我们不能完全相信古籍的记载,也不能完全信任感官的知觉。” “柏拉图也这么想。他相信确实的知识只能经由理性获得。” “没错。苏格拉底、柏拉图、圣奥古斯丁与笛卡尔在这方面可说是一脉相传。他们都是典型的理性主义者,相信理性星通往知识的唯一途径。经过广泛研究后,笛卡尔得到了一个结论:中世纪以来的各哲学并不一定可靠。这和苏格拉底不全然相信他在雅典广场所听到的各家观点一样。在这种情况下该怎么办呢?苏菲,你能告诉我吗?” 那就开始创立自己的哲学呀!现代的哲学之父“对!笛卡尔于是决定到欧洲各地游历,就像当年苏格拉底终其一生都在雅典与人谈话一样。笛卡尔说,今后他将专心致力寻求前所未有的智慧,包括自己内心的智慧与‘世界这本大书’中的智慧。因此他便从军打仗,也因此有机会客居中欧各地。后来,他在巴黎住了几年,并在一六二九年时前往荷兰,在那儿住了将近二十年,撰写哲学书籍。一六四九年时他应克丽思蒂娜皇后的邀请前往瑞典。然而他在这个他所谓的‘熊、冰雪与岩石的土地’上罹患了肺炎,终于在一六五O年的冬天与世长辞。” “这么说他去世时只有五十四岁。” “是的,但他死后对哲学界仍然具有重要的影响力。所以说,称笛卡尔为现代哲学之父是一点也不为过。在文艺复兴时期,人们重新发现了人与大自然的价值。在历经这样一个令人兴奋的年代之后,人们开始觉得有必要将现代的思想整理成一套哲学体系。而第一个创立一套重要的哲学体系的人正是笛卡尔。在他之后,又有史宾诺莎、莱布尼兹、洛克、柏克莱、休姆和康德等人。” “你所谓的哲学体系是什么意思?” “我指的是一套从基础开始创立,企图为所有重要的哲学性问题寻求解释的哲学。古代有柏拉图与亚理斯多德这几位伟大的哲学体系创立者。中世纪则有圣多玛斯努力为亚理斯多德的哲学与基督教的神学搭桥。到了文艺复兴时期,各种有关自然与科学、上帝与人等问题的思潮汹涌起伏,新旧杂陈。一直到十七世纪,哲学家们才开始尝试整理各种新思想,以综合成一个条理分明的哲学体系。第一位做这种尝试的人就是笛卡尔。他的努力成为后世各种重要哲学研究课题的先驱。他最感兴趣的题目,是我们所拥有的确实知识以及肉体与灵魂之间的关系。这两大问题成为后来一百五十年间哲学家争论的主要内容。” “他一定超越了他那个时代。” “嗯,不过这些问题却属于那个时代。在谈到如何获取确实的知识时,当时许多人持一种全然怀疑的论调,认为人应该接受自己一无所知事实。但笛卡尔却不愿如此。他如果接受这个事实,那他就不是一个真正的哲学家了。他的态度就像当年苏格拉底不肯接受诡辩学派的怀疑论调一样。在笛卡尔那个时代,新的自然科学已经开始发展出一种方法,以便精确地描述自然界的现象。同样的,笛卡尔也觉得有必要问自己是否有类似的精确方法可以从事哲学的思考。” “我想我可以理解。” “但这只是一部分而已。当时新兴的物理学也已经提出‘物质的性质为何’以及‘哪些因素影响自然界的物理变化’等问题。人们愈来愈倾向对自然采取机械论的观点。然而,人们愈是用机械论的观点来看物质世界,肉体与灵魂之间有何关系这个问题也就变得愈加重要。在十七世纪以前,人们普遍将灵魂视为某种遍布于所有生物的‘生命原理’。事实上,灵魂(sou1)与精神(spirit)这两个字原来的意思就是‘气息’与‘呼吸’。这在几乎所有的欧洲语言中都一样,亚理斯多德认为灵魂乃是生物体中无所不在的‘生命因素’(lifeprinciple),是不能与肉体分离的。因此,他有时说‘植物的灵魂’,有时也说‘动物的灵魂’。一直到十七世纪,哲学家才开始提出灵魂与肉体有所区分的论调。原因是他们将所有物质做的东西--包括动物与人的身体——视为一种机械过程。但人的灵魂却显然不是这个‘身体机器’的一部分。因此,灵魂又是什么呢?这时就必须对何以某种‘精神性’的事物可以启动一部机器这个问题做一个解释。” “想起来也真是奇怪。” “什么东西很奇怪?” “我决定要举起我的手臂,然后,手臂自己就举起来了。我决定要跑步赶公车,下一秒钟我的两腿就像发条一样跑起来了。有时刻坐在那儿想某件令我伤心的事,突然间我的眼泪就流出来了。因此,肉体与意识之间一定有某种神秘的关联。” “这正是笛卡尔所努力思考的问题。他像柏拉图一样,相信‘精神’与‘物质’有明显的不同。但是究竟身体如何影响灵魂或灵魂如何影响身体,柏拉图还没有找到答案。” 我思故我在“我也没有。因此我很想知道笛卡尔在这方面的理论。” “让我们跟他思想的脉络走。” 艾伯特指着他们两人中间的茶几上所放的那本书,继续说道: “在他的《方法论》中,笛卡尔提出哲学家必须使用特定的方法来解决哲学问题。在这方面科学界已经发展出一套自己的方法来……” “这你已经说过了。” “笛卡尔认为除非我们能够清楚分明地知道某件事情是真实的,否则我们就不能够认为它是真的。为了要做到这点,可能必须将一个复杂的问题尽可能细分为许多不同的因素。然后我们再从其中最简单的概念出发。也就是说每一种思想都必须加以‘斟酌与衡量’,就像伽利略主张每一件事物都必须加以测量,而每一件无法测量的事物都必须设法使它可以测量一样。笛卡尔主张哲学应该从最简单的到最复杂的。唯有如此才可能建立一个新观点。最后,我们还必须时时将各种因素加以列举与控制,以确定没有遗漏任何因素。如此才能获致一个结论。” “听起来几乎像是数学考试一样。” “是的。笛卡尔希望用‘数学方法’来进行哲学性的思考。他用一般人证明数学定理的方式来证明哲学上的真理。换句话说,他希望运用我们在计算数字时所有的同一种工具——理性——来解决哲学问题,因为唯有理性才能使我们得到确实的知识,而感官则并非如此确实可靠。我们曾经提过他与柏拉图相似的地方。柏拉图也说过数学与数字的比例要比感官的体验更加确实可靠。” “可是我们能用这种方式来解决哲学问题吗?” “我们还是回到笛卡尔的思维好了。他的目标是希望能在生命的本质这个问题上获得某种确定的答案。他的第一步是主张在一开始时我们应该对每一件事都加以怀疑,因为他不希望他的思想是建立在一个不确实的基础上。” “嗯,因为如果地基垮了的话,整栋房子也会倒塌。” “说得好。笛卡尔并不认为怀疑一切事物是合理的,但他以为从原则上来说怀疑一切事物是可能的。举个例子,我们在读了柏拉图或亚理斯多德的著作后,并不一定会增强我们研究哲学的欲望。 这些理论固然可能增进我们对历史的认识,但并不一定能够使我们更加了解这个世界。笛卡尔认为,在他开始建构自己的哲学体系之前,必须先挣脱前人理论的影响。” “在兴建一栋属于自己的新房子以前,他想清除房屋地基上的所有旧瓦砾……” “说得好。他希望用全新的材料来建造这栋房屋,以便确定他所建构的新思想体系能够站得住脚。不过,笛卡尔所怀疑的还不止于前人的理论。他甚至认为我们不能信任自己的感官,因为感官可能会误导我们。” “怎么说呢?” “当我们做梦时,我们以为自己置身真实世界中。那么,我们清,醒时的感觉与我们做梦时的感觉之间有何区别呢?笛卡尔写道: ‘当我仔细思索这个问题时,我发现人清醒时的状态与做梦时的状态并不一定有所分别。’他并且说:‘你怎能确定你的生命不是一场梦呢?”’“杰普认为他躺在男爵床上的那段时间只不过是一场梦而已。” “而当他躺在男爵的床上时,他以为自己过去那段务农的贫穷生活只不过是个梦而已。所以,笛卡尔最终怀疑每一件事物。在他之前的许多哲学家走到这里就走不下去了。” “所以他们并没有走多远。” “可是笛卡尔却设法从这个零点开始出发。他怀疑每一件事,而这正是他唯一能够确定的事情。此时他悟出一个道理:有一件事情必定是真实的,那就是他怀疑。当他怀疑时,他必然是在思考,而由于他在思考,那么他必定是个会思考的存在者。用他自己的话来说,就是:Cogito,ergosum。” “什么意思?” “我思故我在。” “我一点都不奇怪他会悟出这点。” “不错。但请你注意他突然间视自己为会思考的存在者的那种直观的确定性。也许你还记得柏拉图说过:我们以理性所领会的知识要比我们以感官所领会的更加真实。对笛卡尔来说正是如此。他不仅察觉到自己是一个会思考的‘我’,也发现这个会思考的‘我’要比我们的感官所观察到的物质世界更加真实。同时,他的哲学探索并未到此为止。他仍旧继续追寻答案。” “我希望你也能继续下去。” “后来,笛卡尔开始问,自己是否能以同样直观的确定性来察知其他事物。他的结论是:在他的心灵中,他很清楚地知道何谓完美的实体,这种概念他一向就有。但是他认为这种概念显然不可能来自他本身,因为对于完美实体的概念不可能来自一个本身并不完美的人,所以它必定来自那个完美实体本身,也就是上帝。因此,对笛卡尔而言,上帝的存在是一件很明显的事实,就像一个会思考的存在者必定存在一样。” “他这个结论下得太早了一些。他一开始时似乎比较谨慎。” “你说得对。许多人认为这是笛卡尔的弱点。不过你刚才说‘结论’,事实上这个问题并不需要证明。笛卡尔的意思只是说我们都是具有对于完美实体的概念,由此可见这个完美实体的本身必定存在。因为一个完美的实体如果不存在,就不算完美了,此外,如果世上没有所谓的完美实体,我们也不会具有完美实体的概念。因为我们本身是不完美的,所以完美的概念不可能来自于我们。笛卡尔认为,上帝这个概念是与生俱来的,乃是我们出生时就烙印在我们身上的,‘就像工匠在他的作品上打上记号一般。”’“没错,可是我有‘鳄象’这个概念并不代表真的有‘鳄象’存在呀!” “笛卡尔会说,‘鳄象’这个概念中并不包含它必然存在的事实。但‘完美实体’这个概念中却包含它必然存在的事实。笛卡尔认为,这就像‘圆’这个概念的要素之一就是,圆上所有的点必须与圆心等长一样。如果不符合这点,圆就不成其为圆。同样的,如果缺少‘存在’这个最重要的特质,一个‘完美的实体’也就不成其为‘完美的实体’了。” “这种想法很奇怪。” “这就是典型的‘理性主义者’的思考模式。笛卡尔和苏格拉底与柏拉图一样,相信理性与存在之间有所关联。依理性看来愈是明显的事情,它的存在也就愈加可以肯定。” “到目前为止,他只讲到人是会思考的动物,以及宇宙间有一个完美的实体这两件事。” “是的。他从这两点出发,继续探讨。在谈到我们对外在现实世界(如太阳和月亮)的概念时,笛卡尔认为,这些概念可能都只是幻象。但是外在现实世界也有若干我们可以用理性察知的特点,这些特点就是它们的数学特质,也就是诸如宽、高等可以测量的特性。这些‘量’方面的特性对于我们的理性来说,就像人会思考这个事实一般显而易见。至于‘质’方面的特性,如颜色、气味和味道等,则与我们的感官经验有关,因此并不足以描述外在的真实世界。” “这么说大自然毕竟不是一场梦。” “没错。在这一点上,笛卡尔再度引用我们对完美实体的概念。 当我们的理智很清楚地认知一件事物(例如外在真实世界的数学特性)时,那么这件事物必定是如同我们所认知的那样。因为一个完美的上帝是不会欺骗我们的。笛卡尔宣称‘上帝可以保证’我们用理智所认知到的一切事物必然会与现实世界相符。” 二元论“那么,他到目前为止已经发现了三件事:一、人是会思考的生物,二、上帝是存在的,三、宇宙有一个外在的真实世界。” “嗯,但基本上这个外在的真实世界还是与我们思想的真实世界不同。笛卡尔宣称宇宙间共有两种不同形式的真实世界(或称‘实体’)。一种实体称为思想或‘灵魂’,另一种则称为‘扩延’(Ex—tension),或称物质。灵魂纯粹是属于意识的,不占空间,因此也不能再分解为更小的单位;而物质则纯粹是扩延,会占空间,因此可以一再被分解为更小的单位,但却没有意识。笛卡尔认为这两种本体都来自上帝,因为唯有上帝本身是独立存在的,不隶属任何事物。不过,‘思想’与‘扩延’虽然都来自上帝,但彼此却没有任何接触。思想不受物质的影响,反之,物质的变化也不受思想的影响。” “这么说他将上帝的造物一分为二。” “确实如此。所以我们说笛卡尔是二元论者,意思就是他将思想的真实世界与扩延的真实世界区分得一清二楚。比方说,他认为只有人才有灵魂,动物则完全属于扩延的真实世界,它们的生命和行为都是机械化的。他将动物当成是一种复杂的机械装置。在谈到扩延的真实世界时,他采取十足的机械论观点,就像是一个唯物论者。” “我不太相信汉密士只是一部机器或一种机械装置。我想笛卡尔一定不是很喜欢动物。那么我们人类又如何呢?我们难道也是一种机械装置吗?” “一部分是,一部分不是。笛卡尔的结论是:人是一种二元的存在物,既会思考,也会占空间。因此人既有灵魂,也有一个扩延的身体。圣奥古斯丁与圣多玛斯也曾经说过类似的话。他们同样认为人有一个像动物一般的身体,也有一个像天使一般的灵魂。在笛卡尔的想法中,人的身体十足是一部机器,但人也有一个灵魂可以独立运作,不受身体的影响。至于人体则没有这种自由,必须遵守一套适用于他们的法则。我们用理智所思考的事物并不发生于身体内,而是发生于灵魂中,因此完全不受扩延的真实世界左右。顺便一提的是,笛卡尔并不否认动物也可能有思想。不过,如果它们有这种能力,那么有关‘思想’与‘扩延’的二分法必定也适用于它们。” “我们曾经谈过这个。如果我决定要追赶一辆公车,那么我的身体这整部‘机械装置’都会开始运转。如果我没赶上,我的眼睛就开始流泪。” “连笛卡尔也不能否认灵魂与身体之间时常相互作用。他相信只要灵魂存在于身体内一天,它就与会透过一个他称为松桌腺的脑部器官与人脑连结。‘灵魂’与‘物质’就在松果腺内时时相互作用。因此,灵魂可能会时常受到与身体需要有关的种种感觉与冲引的影响。不过,灵魂也能够挣脱这种‘原始’冲动的控制,而独立于身体之运作。它的目标是使理性获得掌控权。因为,即使我肚子痛得很厉害,一个三角形内所有内角的总和仍然会是一百八十度。所以思想有能力超脱身体的需求,而做出‘合乎理性’的行为,从这个角度来看,灵魂要比身体高尚。我们的腿可能会衰老无力,我们的背可能变驼,我们的牙齿会掉,但只要我们的理性存在一天,二加二就永远是四。理性不会变驼、变弱。老化的是我们的身体。对笛卡尔而言,理性事实上就是灵魂。诸如欲望、憎恨等原始的冲动与感情与我们的身体功能关系较为密切,所以与扩延的真实世界的关系也较为密切。” “我还是没办法接受笛卡尔将人体比做一部机器或一种机械装置的说法。” “这是因为在他那个时代,人们对于那些似乎能够自行运转的机器及钟表非常着迷。‘机械装置’指的就是一种能够自行运转的东西。不过这显然只是一个幻觉,事实上他们并不是真的能够自行运转。举例来说,一座天文钟不但是由人类制造的,而且必须有人来上发条。笛卡尔强调,这类巧妙的发明事实上是由一些零件以简单的方式组合而成。而组成人类与动物身体的各种骨骼、肌肉、神经、静脉与动脉也可以说是一种零件,只是数量较为庞大而已。上帝为什么不可能依照机械定律来创造动物或人类的身体呢?” “现代有很多人谈到所谓的‘人工智慧’。” “没错。这些都是现代的机械装置。我们已经创造一些有时看起来似乎很有智慧的机器。类似这样的机器将会使笛卡尔吓破胆。 他也许会开始怀疑人类的理性是否真的像他所说的那么独立自主。现代也有一些哲学认为人的精神生活并不比身体各官能要自由。当然人的灵魂确实是比任何数据程式都要复杂得多,但有些人认为基本上我们就像这些数据程式一样是不自由的。现在,苏菲,我要给你看一样东西。” 艾伯特指着位于房间另一头的一张大书桌。上面放着一台小电脑。他走过去,苏菲也跟着他。 会面艾伯特将电脑打开,荧屏的上方很快显示出一个C:符号。他键人“莱拉”这个字,并向苏菲解释这是一个很先进的对话程式。 荧屏上方马上出现一行字: “嗨,我的名字叫莱拉。你现在坐得舒服吗?” 虽然苏菲还没有坐下,但她仍键入: “是的。”这时,艾伯特拿了一张椅子给她。 “你叫什么名字?”荧屏问道。 “苏菲。”苏菲键入这几个字。电脑回答道: “苜蓿巷三号。很高兴见到你,苏菲。你是不是很盼望在十五日那天过生日?” 苏菲吓了一跳。艾伯特将一双手放在她的肩膀上说道: “我只不过是输进你的姓名、地址和出生日期而已。就像你要被介绍给一个新朋友一样,能够事先对对方有点了解总是比较好。” “还好。”苏菲写道。 “喔,苏菲,我希望你没有什么地方不舒服。你必须要写完整的句子才行。” “谢谢你,我很好,我可以问你一件事吗?” “我很高兴你没事。有什么事你就问吧!” “你几岁?”苏菲写道。 “我是一九八八年八月八日在亚特兰大制造的,一九九O年三月二十八日被挪威理工学院译成挪威文。” “天哪(Gosh)!” “我说过你必须输进完整的句子。” “我只说天哪。” “我不懂俚语。我的字库里有十多万字,但我所能找到最接近‘Gosh'的字是Gospel(福音)。” “那是指有关耶稣的故事。” “你是一个基督徒吗?” “我也不知道。” “照道理,承认自己不知道乃是获得新知识的一步。” “苏格拉底很可能也会这样说,笛卡尔也是。” “苏格拉底是希腊哲学家,生于公元前四七O年到公元前三九九年。如果你希望知道得更多,请按F7键。笛卡尔是法国哲学家,生于公元一五九六年到一六五O年间。如果你希望知道得更多,请按F8键。” “谢谢你,这样就够了。我可以问你别的事吗?” “我很高兴这样就够了。请问吧!” 艾伯特悄悄地笑了一下。苏菲写道: “席德是谁?” “席德住在黎乐桑,跟苏菲同年。” “你怎么知道?” “我不知道。我在硬碟上找到她的资料。” 苏菲感觉有一双手放在她的肩膀上。 “我已经把我们所知道的一点关于席德的资料输进这个程式。”艾伯特说。 “关于席德,你还知道些什么?” “席德的父亲是一位联合国驻黎巴嫩的观察员。他的军阶是少校,并且不断寄明信片给他女儿。” “我希望你能找到关于他的资料。” “我不能。他不在我的档案里,而且我也没有和其他的资料库连线。” “我要你找到他!! !!!!” “你生气了吗?苏菲。这么多惊叹号是显示一种强烈感情的符号。” “我要和席德的父亲说话。” “你好像很难控制自己。如果你想谈谈你的童年,请按F9键。” 艾伯特再度把手放在苏菲的肩上。 “电脑说得没错。它不是一个水晶球,莱拉只是一个电脑程式。” “闭嘴!”苏菲写道。 “好吧!苏菲。我们只认识了十三分五十二秒。我会记得我们所说的每一件事情。现在我要结束这个程式了。” 之后,C这个符号再度出现于荧屏。 “现在我们可以再坐下来了。” 但苏菲已经按了其他几个键。 “艾勃特。”她写。 下面几行字立刻出现在荧屏上: “我在这里。” 现在轮到艾伯特吓一跳了。 ”“你是谁?”苏菲写道。 “艾勃特少校向你报到。我直接从黎巴嫩来,请问我的女士有何命令?” “再没有比这个更过分的了!”艾伯特喘气道,“这个鬼鬼祟祟的东西居然偷溜到硬碟里来了!” 他把苏菲推离椅子,并且坐到键盘前。 “你是怎么跑进我的个人电脑里面的?” “小事一桩,我亲爱的同仁。我想在哪里,就在哪里。” “你这个可恶的电脑病毒!” “此时此刻我可是以生日病毒的身分来到这里。我可不可以说一些特别的贺词?” “不,谢了,我们已经看得够多了。” “我只花一点时间:亲爱的席德,这都是因为你的缘故。让我再说一次,祝你十五岁生日快乐。请你原谅我在这种场合出现。不过我只是希望无论你走到哪里,都可以看到我写给你的生日贺词,我很想好好地拥抱你一下。爱你的爸爸。” 在艾伯特还没有来得及键入什么字之前,C这个符号已经再度出现在荧屏上。 艾伯特键人"dir艾勃特,.x”,结果在荧屏上现出了下列资料: 艾勃特1il147,64306/15—9012:47 艾勃特lil326,43916—23—9022:34 艾伯特键人“清除艾勃特x.x”,并关掉电脑。 “现在我可把他给消除了。”他说。“不过很难说他下次会在什么地方出现。” 他仍然坐在那儿,盯着电脑看。然后他说: “最糟糕的部分就是名字。艾勃特……” 苏菲第一次发现艾勃特和艾伯特这两个名字是如此相像。可是看到艾伯特如此生气,她一句话也不敢说。他们一起走到茶几那儿,再度坐下来。 Spinoza God is not a puppeteer They sat silently for a long time. Then Sophie spoke, trying to get Alberto's mind off what had happened. "Descartes must have been an odd kind of person. Did he become famous?" Alberto breathed deeply for a couple of seconds before answering: "He had a great deal of significance. Perhaps most of all for another great philosopher, Ba-ruch Spinoza, who lived from 1632 to 1677." "Are you going to tell me about him?" "That was my intention. And we're not going to be stopped by military provocations." "I'm all ears." "Spinoza belonged to the Jewish community of Amsterdam, but he was excommunicated for heresy. Few philosophers in more recent times have been so blasphemed and so persecuted for their ideas as this man. It happened because he criticized the established religion. He believed that Christianity and Judaism were only kept alive by rigid dogma and outer ritual. He was the first to apply what we call a historico-critical interpretation of the Bible." "Explanation, please." "He denied that the Bible was inspired by God down to the last letter. When we read the Bible, he said, we must continually bear in mind the period it was written in. A 'critical' reading, such as the one he proposed, revealed a number of inconsistencies in the texts. But beneath the surface of the Scriptures in the New Testament is Jesus, who could well be called God's mouthpiece. The teachings of Jesus therefore represented a liberation from the orthodoxy of Judaism. Jesus preached a 'religion of reason' which valued love higher than all else. Spinoza interpreted this as meaning both love of God and love of humanity. Nevertheless, Christianity had also become set in its own rigid dogmas and outer rituals." "I don't suppose these ideas were easy to swallow, either for the church or the synagogue." "When things got really tough, Spinoza was even deserted by his own family. They tried to disinherit him on the grounds of his heresy. Paradoxically enough, few have spoken out more powerfully in the cause of free speech and religious tolerance than Spinoza. The opposition he was met with on all sides led him to pursue a quiet and secluded life devoted entirely to philosophy. He earned a meager living by polishing lenses, some of which have come into my possession." "Very impressive!" "There is almost something symbolic in the fact that he lived by polishing lenses. A philosopher must help people to see life in a new perspective. One of the pillars of Spinoza's philosophy was indeed to see things from the perspective of eternity." "The perspective of eternity?" "Yes, Sophie. Do you think you can imagine your own life in a cosmic context? You'll have to try and imagine yourself and your life here and now ..." "Hm ... that's not so easy." "Remind yourself that you are only living a minuscule part of all nature's life. You are part of an enormous whole." "I think I see what you mean ..." "Can you manage to feel it as well? Can you perceive all of nature at one time--the whole universe, in fact-- at a single glance?" "I doubt it. Maybe I need some lenses." "I don't mean only the infinity of space. I mean the eternity of time as well. Once upon a time, thirty thousand years ago there lived a little boy in the Rhine valley. He was a tiny part of nature, a tiny ripple on an endless sea. You too, Sophie, you too are living a tiny part of nature's life. There is no difference between you and that boy." "Except that I'm alive now." "Yes, but that is precisely what I wanted you to try and imagine. Who will you be in thirty thousand years?" "Was that the heresy?" "Not entirely ... Spinoza didn't only say that everything is nature. He identified nature with God. He said God is all, and all is in God." "So he was a pantheist." "That's true. To Spinoza, God did not create the world in order to stand outside it. No, God is the world. Sometimes Spinoza expresses it differently. He maintains that the world is in God. In this, he is quoting St. Paul's speech to the Athenians on the Areopagos hill: 'In him we live and move and have our being.' But let us pursue Spinoza's own reasoning. His most important book was his Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated." "Ethics--geometrically demonstrated?" "It may sound a bit strange to us. In philosophy, ethics means the study of moral conduct for living a good life. This is also what we mean when we speak of the ethics of Socrates or Aristotle, for example. It is only in our own time that ethics has more or less become reduced to a set of rules for living without treading on other people's toes." "Because thinking of yourself is supposed to be egoism?" "Something like that, yes. When Spinoza uses the word ethics, he means both the art of living and moral conduct." "But even so ... the art of living demonstrated geometrically?" "The geometrical method refers to the terminology he used for his formulations. You may recall how Descartes wished to use mathematical method for philosophical reflection. By this he meant a form of philosophic reflection that was constructed from strictly logical conclusions. Spinoza was part of the same rationalistic tradition. He wanted his ethics to show that human life is subject to the universal laws of nature. We must therefore free ourselves from our feelings and our passions. Only then will we find contentment and be happy, he believed." "Surely we are not ruled exclusively by the laws of nature?" "Well, Spinoza is not an easy philosopher to grasp. Let's take him bit by bit. You remember that Descartes believed that reality consisted of two completely separate substances, namely thought and extension." "How could I have forgotten it?" "The word 'substance' can be interpreted as 'that which something consists of,' or that which something basically is or can be reduced to. Descartes operated then with two of these substances. Everything was either thought or extension. "However, Spinoza rejected this split. He believed that there was only one substance. Everything that exists can be reduced to one single reality which he simply called Substance. At times he calls it God or nature. Thus Spinoza does not have the dualistic view of reality that Descartes had. We say he is a monist. That is, he reduces nature and the condition of all things to one single substance." "They could hardly have disagreed more." "Ah, but the difference between Descartes and Spinoza is not as deep-seated as many have often claimed. Descartes also pointed out that only God exists independently. It's only when Spinoza identifies God with nature--or God and creation--that he distances himself a good way from both Descartes and from the Jewish and Christian doctrines." "So then nature is God, and that's that." "But when Spinoza uses the word 'nature,' he doesn't only mean extended nature. By Substance, God, or nature, he means everything that exists, including all things spiritual." "You mean both thought and extension." "You said it! According to Spinoza, we humans recognize two of God's qualities or manifestations. Spinoza called these qualities God's attributes, and these two attributes are identical with Descartes's 'thought' and 'extension.' God--or nature--manifests itself either as thought or as extension. It may well be that God has infinitely more attributes than 'thought' and 'extension,' but these are the only two that are known to man." "Fair enough, but what a complicated way of saying it." "Yes, one almost needs a hammer and chisel to get through Spinoza's language. The reward is that in the end you dig out a thought as crystal clear as a diamond." "I can hardly wait!" "Everything in nature, then, is either thought or extension. The various phenomena we come across in everyday life, such as a flower or a poem by Wordsworth, are different modes of the attribute of thought or extension. A 'mode' is the particular manner which Substance, God, or nature assumes. A flower is a mode of the attribute of extension, and a poem about the same flower is a mode of the attribute of thought. But both are basically the expression of Substance, God, or nature." "You could have fooled me!" "But it's not as complicated as he makes it sound. Beneath his stringent formulation lies a wonderful realization that is actually so simple that everyday language cannot accommodate it." "I think I prefer everyday language, if it's all the same to you." "Right. Then I'd better begin with you yourself. When you get a pain in your stomach, what is it that has a pain?" "Like you just said. It's me." "Fair enough. And when you later recollect that you once had a pain in your stomach, what is it that thinks?" "That's me, too." "So you are a single person that has a stomachache one minute and is in a thoughtful mood the next. Spinoza maintained that all material things and things that happen around us are an expression of God or nature. So it follows that all thoughts that we think are also God's or nature's thoughts. For everything is One. There is only one God, one nature, or one Substance." "But listen, when I think something, I'm the one who's doing the thinking. When I move, I'm doing the moving. Why do you have to mix God into it?" "I like your involvement. But who are you? You are Sophie Amundsen, but you are also the expression of something infinitely bigger. You can, if you wish, say that you are thinking or that you are moving, but could you not also say that it is nature that is thinking your thoughts, or that it is nature that is moving through you? It's really just a question of which lenses you choose to look through." "Are you saying I cannot decide for myself?" "Yes and no. You may have the right to move your thumb any way you choose. But your thumb can only move according to its nature. It cannot jump off your hand and dance about the room. In the same way you also have your place in the structure of existence, my dear. You are Sophie, but you are also a finger of God's body." "So God decides everything I do?" "Or nature, or the laws of nature. Spinoza believed that God--or the laws of nature--is the inner cause of everything that happens. He is not an outer cause, since God speaks through the laws of nature and only through them." "I'm not sure I can see the difference." "God is not a puppeteer who pulls all the strings, controlling everything that happens. A real puppet master controls the puppets from outside and is therefore the 'outer cause' of the puppet's movements. But that is not the way God controls the world. God controls the world through natural laws. So God--or nature--is the 'inner cause' of everything that happens. This means that everything in the material world happens through necessity. Spinoza had a determinist view of the material, or natural, world." "I think you said something like that before." "You're probably thinking of the Stoics. They also claimed that everything happens out of necessity. That was why it was important to meet every situation with 'stoicism.' Man should not get carried away by his feelings. Briefly, that was also Spinoza's ethics." "I see what you mean, but I still don't like the idea that I don't decide for myself." "Okay, let's go back in time to the Stone Age boy who lived thirty thousand years ago. When he grew up, he cast spears after wild animals, loved a woman who became the mother of his children, and quite certainly worshipped the tribal gods. Do you really think he decided all that for himself?" "I don't know." "Or think of a lion in Africa. Do you think it makes up its mind to be a beast of prey? Is that why it attacks a limping antelope? Could it instead have made up its mind to be a vegetarian?" "No, a lion obeys its nature." "You mean, the laws of nature. So do you, Sophie, because you are also part of nature. You could of course protest, with the support of Descartes, that a lion is an animal and not a free human being with free mental faculties. But think of a newborn baby that screams and yells. If it doesn't get milk it sucks its thumb. Does that baby have a free will?" "I guess not." "When does the child get its free will, then? At the age of two, she runs around and points at everything in sight. At the age of three she nags her mother, and at the age of four she suddenly gets afraid of the dark. Where's the freedom, Sophie?" "I don't know." "When she is fifteen, she sits in front of a mirror experimenting with makeup. Is this the moment when she makes her own personal decisions and does what she likes?" "I see what you're getting at." "She is Sophie Amundsen, certainly. But she also lives according to the laws of nature. The point is that she doesn't realize it because there are so many complex reasons for everything she does." "I don't think I want to hear any more." "But you must just answer a last question. Two equally old trees are growing in a large garden. One of the trees grows in a sunny spot and has plenty of good soil and water. The other tree grows in poor soil in a dark spot. Which of the trees do you think is bigger? And which of them bears more fruit?" "Obviously the tree with the best conditions for growing." "According to Spinoza, this tree is free. It has its full freedom to develop its inherent abilities. But if it is an apple tree it will not have the ability to bear pears or plums. The same applies to us humans. We can be hindered in our development and our personal growth by political conditions, for instance. Outer circumstances can constrain us. Only when we are free to develop our innate abilities can we live as free beings. But we are just as much determined by inner potential and outer opportunities as the Stone Age boy on the Rhine, the lion in Africa, or the apple tree in the garden." "Okay, I give in, almost." "Spinoza emphasizes that there is only one being which is totally and utterly 'its own cause' and can act with complete freedom. Only God or nature is the expression of such a free and 'nonaccidental' process. Man can strive for freedom in order to live without outer con-straint, but he will never achieve 'free will.' We do not control everything that happens in our body--which is a mode of the attribute of extension. Neither do we 'choose' our thinking. Man therefore does not have a 'free soul'; it is more or less imprisoned in a mechanical body." "That is rather hard to understand." "Spinoza said that it was our passions--such as ambition and lust--which prevent us from achieving true happiness and harmony, but that if we recognize that everything happens from necessity, we can achieve an intuitive understanding of nature as a whole. We can come to realize with crystal clarity that everything is related, even that everything is One. The goal is to comprehend everything that exists in an all-embracing perception. Only then will we achieve true happiness and contentment. This was what Spinoza called seeing everything 'sub specie aeternitatis.' " "Which means what?" "To see everything from the perspective of eternity. Wasn't that where we started?" "It'll have to be where we end, too. I must get going." Alberto got up and fetched a large fruit dish from the book shelves. He set it on the coffee table. "Won't you at least have a piece of fruit before you go?" Sophie helped herself to a banana. Alberto took a green apple. She broke off the top of the banana and began to peel it. "There's something written here," she said suddenly. "Where?" "Here--inside the banana peel. It looks as if it was written with an ink brush." Sophie leaned over and showed Alberto the banana. He read aloud: Here I am again, Hilde. I'm everywhere. Happy birthday! "Very funny," said Sophie. "He gets more crafty all the time." "But it's impossible ... isn't it? Do you know if they grow bananas in Lebanon?" Alberto shook his head. "I'm certainly not going to eat that." "Leave it then. Someone who writes birthday greetings to his daughter on the inside of an unpeeled banana must be mentally disturbed. But he must also be quite ingenious." "Yes, both." "So shall we establish here and now that Hilde has an ingenious father? In other words, he's not so stupid." "That's what I've been telling you. And it could just as well be him that made you call me Hilde last time I came here. Maybe he's the one putting all the words in our mouths." "Nothing can be ruled out. But we should doubt everything." "For all we know, our entire life could be a dream." "But let's not jump to conclusions. There could be a simpler explanation." "Well whatever, I have to hurry home. My mom is waiting for me." Alberto saw her to the door. As she left, he said: "We'll meet again, dear Hilde." Then the door closed behind her. 史宾诺莎    ……上帝不是一个傀儡戏师傅…… 他们坐在那儿,许久没有开口。后来苏菲打破沉默,想让艾伯特忘掉刚才的事。 “笛卡尔一定是个怪人。他后来成名了吗?” 艾伯特深呼吸了几秒钟才开口回答: “他对后世的影响非常重大,尤其是对另外一位大哲学家史宾诺莎。他是荷兰人,生于一六三二到一六七七年间。” “你要告诉我有关他的事情吗?” “我正有此意。我们不要被来自军方的挑衅打断。” “你说吧,我正在听。” “史宾诺莎是阿姆斯特丹的犹太人,他因为发表异端邪说而被逐出教会。近代很少有哲学家像他这样因为个人的学说而备受毁谤与迫害,原因在于他批评既有的宗教。他认为基督教与犹太教之所以流传至今完全是透过严格的教条与外在的仪式。他是第一个对圣经进行‘历史性批判’的人。” “请你说得更详细一些。” “他否认整本圣经都是受到上帝启示的结果。他说,当我们阅读圣经时,必须时时记得它所撰写的年代。他建议人们对圣经进行‘批判性’的阅读,如此便会发现经文中有若干矛盾之处。不过他认为新约的经文代表的是耶稣,而耶稣又是上帝的代言人。因此耶稣的教诲代表基督教已脱离正统的犹太教。耶稣宣扬‘理性的宗教’,强调爱甚于一切。史宾诺莎认为这里所指的‘爱’代表上帝的爱与人类的爱。然而遗憾的是,后来基督教本身也沦为一些严格的教条与外在的仪式。” “我想无论基督教或犹太教大概都很难接受他这些观念。” “到事态最严重时,连史宾诺莎自己的家人也与他断绝关系,他们以他散布异端邪说为由,剥夺他的继承权。这点令人备感讽刺,因为很少人像史宾诺莎这样大力鼓吹言论自由与宗教上的宽容精神。由于来自四面八方的反对,史宾诺莎最后决定过清静隐遁的生活,全心研修哲学,并靠为人磨镜片煳口。其中有些镜片后来成为我的收藏晶。” “哇!” “他后来以磨镜片维生这件事可说具有象征性的意义。一个哲学家必须帮助人们用一种新的眼光来看待生命。史宾诺莎的主要哲学理念之一就是要用永恒的观点来看事情。” 水但削观点?” “是的,苏菲。你想你可以用宇宙的观点来看你自己的生命吗?你必须试着想象此时此刻自己在人世间的生活……” “嗯……不太容易。” “提醒自己你只是整个大自然生命中很小的一部分,是整个浩瀚宇宙的一部分。” “我想我了解你的意思……” “你能试着去感觉吗?你能一下子看到整个大自然(应该说整个宇宙)吗?” “我不确定。也许我需要一些镜片。” “我指的不仅是无穷的空间,也包括无限的时间。三万年前在莱茵河谷住着一个小男孩,他曾经是这整个大自然的一小部分,是一个无尽的汪洋中的一个小涟漪。你也是,苏菲。你也是大自然生命中的一小部分。你和那个小男孩并没有差别。” “只不过我现在还活着。” “是的。但这正是我要你试着去想象的。在三万年之后,你会是谁呢?” “你说的异端邪说就是指这个吗?” “并不完全是……史宾诺莎并不只是说万事万物都属于自然,他认为大自然就是上帝。他说上帝不是一切,一切都在上帝之中。” “这么说他是一个泛神论者。” 一元论“没错。对史宾诺莎而言,上帝创造这个世界并不是为了要置身其外。不,上帝就是世界,有时史宾诺莎自己的说法会有些出入。 他主张世界就在上帝之中。这里他乃是引用保罗在雅典小丘上对雅典人说的话:‘我们生活、动作、存留都在乎他。不过我们还是追随史宾诺莎的思想脉络吧。他最重要著作是《几何伦理学》(EthicsGeometricaUyDemonstrated)。” “依几何方式证明的伦理学?” “听起来可能有点奇怪,在哲学上,伦理学研究的是过善良生活所需的道德行为。这也是我们提到苏格拉底或亚理斯多德的‘伦理学’时所指的意思,可是到了现代,伦理学却多多少少沦为教导人们不要冒犯别人的一套生活准则。” “是不是因为时常想到自己便有自我主义之嫌?” “是的,多少有这种意味,史宾诺莎所指的伦理学与现代不太相同,它包括生活的艺术与道德行为。” “可是……怎样用几何方法来展现生活的艺术呢?” “所谓几何方法是指他所有的术语或公式。你可能还记得笛卡尔曾经希望把数学方法用在哲学性思考中,他的意思是用绝对合乎逻辑的推理来进行哲学性的思考。史宾诺莎也禀承这种理性主义的传统。他希望用他的伦理学来显示人类的生命乃是遵守大自然普遍的法则,因此我们必须挣脱自我的感觉与冲动的束缚。他相信唯有如此,我们才能获得满足与快乐。” “我们不只受到自然法则的规范吧?” “你要知道,史宾诺莎不是一位让人很容易了解的哲学家,所以我们得慢慢来,你还记得笛卡尔相信真实世界是由‘思想’与‘外扩’这两种完全不同的实体所组成的吧?” “我怎么可能忘记呢?” “‘实体’这个词可以解释成‘组成某种东西的事物’或‘某种东西的本质或最终的面貌’。笛卡尔认为实体有两种。每一件事物不是‘思想’就是‘扩延’。” “你不需要再说一次。” “不过,史宾诺莎拒绝使用这种二分法。他认为宇宙间只有一种实体。既存的每样事物都可以被分解、简化成一个他称为‘实体’的真实事物。他有时称之为‘上帝’或‘大自然’。因此史宾诺莎并不像笛卡尔那样对真实世界抱持二元的观点。我们称他为‘一元论者’。也就是说,他将大自然与万物的情况简化为一个单一的实体。” “那么他们两人的论点可说是完全相反。” “是的。但笛卡尔与史宾诺莎之间的差异并不像许多人所说的那么大。笛卡尔也指出,唯有上帝是独立存在的。只是,史宾诺莎认为上帝与大自然(或上帝与他的造物)是一体的。只有在这方面他的学说与笛卡尔的论点和犹太、基督两教的教义有很大的差距。” “这么说他认为大自然就是上帝,只此而已。” “可是史宾诺莎所指的‘自然’并不仅指扩延的自然界。他所说的实体,无论是上帝或自然,指的是既存的每一件事物,包括所有精神上的东西。” “你是说同时包括思想与扩延。” “对。根据史宾诺莎的说法,我们人类可以认出上帝的两种特质(或上帝存在的证明)。史宾诺莎称之为上帝的‘属性’。这两种属性与笛卡尔的‘思想’和‘扩延’是一样的。上帝(或‘自然’)以思想或扩延的形式出现。上帝的属性很可能无穷无尽,远不止于此。 但‘思想’与‘扩延’却是人类所仅知的两种。” “不错。但他把它说得好复杂呀!” “是的。我们几乎需要一把锤子和一把凿子才能参透史宾诺莎的证言,不过,这样的努力还是有报偿的。最后你会挖掘出像钻石一般清澄透明的思想。” “我等不及了。” “他认为自然界中的每一件事物不是思想就是扩延。我们在日常生活中看到的每一种现象,例如一朵花或华兹华士的一首诗,都是思想属性或扩延属性的的各种不同模态。所谓‘模态’就是实体、上帝或自然所采取的特殊表现方式。一朵花是扩延属性的一个模态,一首咏叹这朵花的诗则是思想属性的一个模态。但基本上两者都是实体、上帝或自然的表现方式。” “你差一点把我唬住了。” “不过,其中道理并没有像他说的那么复杂。在他严峻的公式之下,其实埋藏着他对生命美妙之处的体悟。这种体悟简单得无法用通俗的语言表达出来。” “我想我还是比较喜欢用通俗的语言。” “没错。那么我还是先用你来打个比方好了。当你肚子痛的时候,这个痛的人是谁?” “就像你说的,是我。” “嗯。当你后来回想到自己曾经肚子痛的时候,那个想的人是谁?” “也是我。” “所以说你这个人这会儿肚子痛,下一会儿则回想你肚子痛的感觉。史宾诺莎认为所有的物质和发生在我们周遭的事物都是上帝或自然的表现方式。如此说来,我们的每一种思绪也都是上帝或自然的的思绪。因为万事万物都是一体的。宇宙间只有一个上帝、一个自然或一个实体。” “可是,当我想到某一件事时,想这件事的人是我;当我移动时,做这个动作的人也是我。这跟上帝有什么关系呢?” “你很有参与感。这样很好。可是你是谁呢?你是苏菲,没错,但你同时也是某种广大无边的存在的表现。你当然可以说思考的人是你,或移动的人是你,但你也可以说是自然在透过你思考或移动。这只是你愿意从哪一种观点来看的问题罢了。” “你是说我无法为自己做决定吗?” “可以说是,也可以说不是。你当然有权决定以任何一种方式移动自己的拇指。但你的拇指只能根据它的本质来移动。它不能跳脱你的手,在房间里跳舞。同样的,你在这个生命的结构中也有一席之地。你是苏菲,但你也是上帝身体上的一根手指头。” “这么说我做的每一件事都是由上帝决定的啦?” “也可以说是由自然或自然的法则决定的。史宾诺莎认为上帝(或自然法则)是每一件事的‘内在因’。他不是一个外在因,因为上帝透过自然法则发言,而且只透过这种方式发言。” “我好像还是不太能够了解其间的差异。” “上帝并不是一个傀儡戏师傅,拉动所有的绳子,操纵一切的事情。一个真正的傀儡戏师傅是从外面来操纵他的木偶,因此他是这些木偶做出各种动作的‘外在因’。但上帝并非以这种方式来主宰世界。上帝是透过自然法则来主宰世界。因此上帝(或自然)是每一件事情的‘内在原因’。这表示物质世界中发生的每一件事情都有其必要性。对于物质(或自然)世界,史宾诺莎所采取的是决定论者的观点。” “你从前好像提过类似的看法。” 自然法则“你说的大概是斯多葛学派,他们确实也认为世间每一件事的发生都有其必要。这是为什么我们遇到各种情况时要坚忍卓绝的缘故。人不应该被感情冲昏了头。简单地说,这也是史宾诺莎的道德观。” “我明白你的意思了。可是我仍然不太能够接受我不能替自己决定任何事情的看法。” “好,那么让我们再来谈三万年前石器时代那个小男孩好了。 。长大后,他开始用矛射杀野兽,然后爱上了一个女人并结婚生子,同时崇奉他们那个部落的神。你真的认为那些事情都是由他自己决定的吗?” “我不知道。” “或者我们也可以想想非洲的一只狮子。你认为是它自己决定要成为一只兽的吗?它是因为这样才攻击一只跛脚的羚羊吗?它可不可能自己决定要吃素?” “不,狮子会依照自己的天性来做。” “所谓天性就是‘自然法则’。你也一样,苏菲,因为你也是自然的一部分。你当然可以拿笛卡尔的学说来反驳我,说狮子是动物,不是一个具有自由心智的自由人。可是请你想一想,一个新生的婴儿会哭会叫,如果没有奶喝,它就会吸自己的手指头。你认为那个婴儿有自由意志吗?” “大概没有吧。” “那么,一个孩子是怎样产生自由意志的呢?两岁时,她跑来跑去,指着四周每一样东西。三岁时她总是缠着妈妈叽哩呱啦说个不停。四岁时,她突然变得怕黑。所谓的自由究竟在哪里?” “我也不知道。” “当她十五岁时,她坐在镜子前面练习化妆。难道这就是她开始为自己做决定并且随心所欲做事的时候吗?” “我开始明白你的意思了。” “当然,她是苏菲,但她同时也依据自然法则而活。问题在于她自己并不了解这点,因为她所做的每一件事背后都有很多复杂的理由。” “好了,你不需要再说了。” “可是最后你必须回答一个问题。在一个大花园中,有两棵年纪一样大的树。其中一棵长在充满阳光、土壤肥沃、水分充足的地方,另外一棵长在土壤贫瘠的黑暗角落。你想哪一棵树会长得比较大?哪一棵树会结比较多的果子?” “当然是那棵拥有最佳生长条件的树。” “史宾诺莎认为,这棵树是自由的,它有充分的自由去发展它先天的能力。但如果它是一棵苹果树,它就不可能有能力长出梨子或李子。同样的道理也适用于我们人类。我们的发展与个人的成长可能会受到政治环境等因素的阻碍,外在的环境可能限制我们,只有在我们能够‘自由’发展本身固有能力时,我们才活得像个自由的人。但无论如何,我们仍然像那个生长在石器时代莱茵河谷的男孩、那只非洲的狮子或花园里那棵苹果树一样受到内在潜能与外在机会的左右。” “好了。我投降了。” “史宾诺莎强调世间只有一种存在是完全自主,且可以充分自由行动的,那就是上帝(或自然)。唯有上帝或自然可以表现这种自由、‘非偶然’的过程。人可以争取自由,以便去除外在的束缚,但他永远不可能获得‘自由意志’。我们不能控制发生在我们体内的每一件事,这是扩延属性的一个模态。我们也不能‘选择’自己的思想。因此,人并没有自由的灵魂,他的灵魂或多或少都被囚禁在一个类似机器的身体内。” “这个理论实在很难了解。” “史宾诺莎指出,使我们无法获得真正的幸福与和谐的是我们内心的各种冲动。例如我们的野心和欲望。但如果我们体认到每一件事的发生都有其必然性,我们就可以凭直觉理解整个大自然。 我们会很清楚地领悟到每一件事都有关联,每一件事情都是一体的。最后的目标是以一种全然接纳的观点来理解世间的事物。只有这样,我们才能获得真正的幸福与满足。这是史宾诺莎所说的subspecieaeternitatis。” “什么意思?” “从永恒的观点来看每一件事情。我们一开始不就是讲这个吗?” “到这里我们也该结束了。我得走了。” 艾伯特站起身来,从书架上拿了一个大水果盘,放在茶几上。 “你走前不吃点水果吗?” 苏菲拿了一根香蕉,艾伯特则拿了一个绿苹果。 她把香蕉的顶端弄破,开始剥皮。 “这里写了几个字。”她突然说。 “哪里?” “这里——香蕉皮里面。好像是用毛笔写的。” 苏菲倾过身子,把香蕉拿给艾伯特看。他把字念出来: “席德,我又来了。孩子,我是无所不在的。生日快乐!” “真滑稽。”苏菲说。 “他愈来愈会变把戏了。” “可是这是不可能的呀……是不是?黎巴嫩也种香蕉吗?” 艾伯特摇摇头。 “这种香蕉我才不要吃呢!” “那就别吃吧。要是谁把送给女儿的生日贺词写在一根没有剥的香蕉里面,那他一定神经不太正常,可是一定也很聪明。” “可不是嘛!” “那我们可不可以从此认定席德有一个很聪明的父亲?换句话说,他并不笨。” “我不是早就告诉过你了吗?上次我来这里时,让你一直叫我席德的人很可能就是他。也许他就是那个透过我们的嘴巴说话的人。” “任何一种情况都有可能,但我们也应该怀疑每一件事情。” “我只知道,我们的生命可能只是一场梦。” “我们还是不要太早下结论。也许有一个比较简单的解释。” “不管怎样,我得赶快回家了。妈妈正在等我呢尸艾伯特送她到门口。她离去时,他说: “亲爱的席德,我们会再见面。” 然后门就关了。 LOCKE  as hare and empty as a blackboard before the teacher arrives Sophie arrived home at eight-thirty. That was one and a half hours after the agreement--which was not really an agreement. She had simply skipped dinner and left a message for her mother that she would be back not later than seven. "This has got to stop, Sophie. I had to call information and ask if they had any record of anyone named Alberto in the Old Town. They laughed at me." "I couldn't get away. I think we're just about to make a breakthrough in a huge mystery." "Nonsense!" "It's true!" "Did you invite him to your party?" "Oh no, I forgot." "Well, now I insist on meeting him. Tomorrow at the latest. It's not natural for a young girl to be meeting an older man like this." "You've got no reason to be scared of Alberto. It may be worse with Hilde's father." "Who's Hilde?" "The daughter of the man in Lebanon. He's really bad. He may be controlling the whole world." "If you don't immediately introduce me to your Alberto, I won't allow you to see him again. I won't feel easy about him until I at least know what he looks like." Sophie had a brilliant idea and dashed up to her room. "What's the matter with you now?" her mother called after her. In a flash Sophie was back again. "In a minute you'll see what he looks like. And then I hope you'll let me be." She waved the video cassette and went over to the VCR. "Did he give you a video?" "From Athens..." Pictures of the Acropolis soon appeared on the screen. Her mother sat dumbfounded as Alberto came forward and began to speak directly to Sophie. Sophie now noticed something she had forgotten about. The Acropolis was crowded with tourists milling about in their respective groups. A small placard was being held up from the middle of one group. On it was written HILDE ... Alberto continued his wandering on the Acropolis. After a while he went down through the entrance and climbed to the Areopagos hill where Paul had addressed the Athenians. Then he went on to talk to Sophie from the square. Her mother sat commenting on the video in short utterances: "Incredible... is that Alberto? He mentioned the rabbit again... But, yes, he's really talking to you, Sophie. I didn't know Paul went to Athens ..." The video was coming to the part where ancient Athens suddenly rises from the ruins. At the last minute Sophie managed to stop the tape. Now that she had shown her mother Alberto, there was no need to introduce her to Plato as well. There was silence in the room. "What do you think of him? He's quite good-looking, isn't he?" teased Sophie. "What a strange man he must be, having himself filmed in Athens just so he could send it to a girl he hardly knows. When was he in Athens?" "I haven't a clue." "But there's something else ..." "What?" "He looks very much like the major who lived in that little hut in the woods." "Well maybe it is him, Mom." "But nobody has seen him for over fifteen years." "He probably moved around a lot... to Athens, maybe." Her mother shook her head. "When I saw him sometime in the seventies, he wasn't a day younger than this Alberto I just saw. He had a foreign-sounding name..." "Knox?" "Could be, Sophie. Could be his name was Knox." "Or was it Knag?" "I can't for the life of me remember ... Which Knox or Knag are you talking about?" "One is Alberto, the other is Hilde's father." "It's all making me dizzy." "Is there any food in the house?" "You can warm up the meatballs." Exactly two weeks went by without Sophie hearing a word from Alberto. She got another birthday card for Hilde, but although the actual day was approaching, she did not receive a single birthday card herself. One afternoon she went to the Old Town and knocked on Alberto's door. He was out, but there was a short note attached to his door. It said: Happy birthday, Hilde! Now the great turning point is at hand. The moment of truth, little one. Every time I think about it, I can't stop laughing. It has naturally something to do with Berkeley, so hold on to your hat. Sophie tore the note off the door and stuffed it into Alberto's mailbox as she went out. Damn! Surely he'd not gone back to Athens? How could he leave her with so many questions unanswered? When she got home from school on June 14, Hermes was romping about in the garden. Sophie ran toward him and he came prancing happily toward her. She put her arms around him as if he were the one who could solve all the riddles. Again she left a note for her mother, but this time she put Alberto's address on it. As they made their way across town Sophie thought about tomorrow. Not about her own birthday so much-- that was not going to be celebrated until Midsummer Eve anyway. But tomorrow was Hilde's birthday too. Sophie was convinced something quite extraordinary would happen. At least there would be an end to all those birthday cards from Lebanon. When they had crossed Main Square and were making for the Old Town, they passed by a park with a playground. Hermes stopped by a bench as if he wanted Sophie to sit down. She did, and while she patted the dog's head she looked into his eyes. Suddenly the dog started to shudder violently. He's going to bark now, thought Sophie. Then his jaws began to vibrate, but Hermes neither growled nor barked. He opened his mouth and said: "Happy birthday, Hilde!" Sophie was speechless. Did the dog just talk to her? Impossible, she must have imagined it because she was thinking of Hilde. But deep down she was nevertheless convinced that Hermes had spoken, and in a deep resonant bass voice. The next second everything was as before. Hermes gave a couple of demonstrative barks--as if to cover up the fact that he had just spoken with a human voice-- and trotted on ahead toward Alberto's place. As they were going inside Sophie looked up at the sky. It had been fine weather all day but now heavy clouds were beginning to gather in the distance. Alberto opened the door and Sophie said at once: "No civilities, please. You are a great idiot, and you know it." "What's the matter now?" "The major taught Hermes to talk!" "Ah, so it has come to that." "Yes, imagine!" "And what did he say?" "I'll give you three guesses." "I imagine he said something along the lines of Happy Birthday!" "Bingo." Alberto let Sophie in. He was dressed in yet another costume. It wasn't all that different from last time, but today there were hardly any braidings, bows, or lace. "But that's not all," Sophie said. "What do you mean?" "Didn't you find the note in the mailbox?" "Oh, that. I threw it away at once." "I don't care if he laughs every time he thinks of Berkeley. But what is so funny about that particular philosopher?" "We'll have to wait and see." "But today is the day you're going to talk about him, isn't it?" "Yes, today is the day." Alberto made himself comfortable on the sofa. Then he said: "Last time we sat here I told you about Descartes and Spinoza. We agreed that they had one important thing in common, namely, that they were both rationalists." "And a rationalist is someone who believes strongly in the importance of reason." "That's right, a rationalist believes in reason as the primary source of knowledge, and he may also believe that man has certain innate ideas that exist in the mind prior to all experience. And the clearer such ideas may be, the more certain it is that they correspond to reality. You recall how Descartes had a clear and distinct idea of a 'perfect entity,' on the basis of which he concluded that God exists." "I am not especially forgetful." "Rationalist thinking of this kind was typical for philosophy of the seventeenth century. It was also firmly rooted in the Middle Ages, and we remember it from Plato and Socrates too. But in the eighteenth century it was the object of an ever increasing in-depth criticism. A number of philosophers held that we have absolutely nothing in the mind that we have not experienced through the senses. A view such as this is called empiricism." "And you are going to talk about them today, these empiricists?" "I'm going to attempt to, yes. The most important empiricists--or philosophers of experience--were Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, and all three were British. The leading rationalists in the seventeenth century were Descartes, who was French; Spinoza, who was Dutch; and Leibniz, who was German. So we usually make a distinction between British empiricism and Continental rationalism." "What a lot of difficult words! Could you repeat the meaning of empiricism?" "An empiricist will derive all knowledge of the world from what the senses tell us. The classic formulation of an empirical approach came from Aristotle. He said: 'There is nothing in the mind except what was first in the senses.' This view implied a pointed criticism of Plato, who had held that man brought with him a set of innate 'ideas' from the world of ideas. Locke repeats Aristotle's words, and when Locke uses them, they are aimed at Descartes." "There is nothing in the mind... except what was first in the senses?" "We have no innate ideas or conceptions about the world we are brought into before we have seen it. If we do have a conception or an idea that cannot be related to experienced facts, then it will be a false conception. When we, for instance, use words like 'God,"eternity,' or 'substance,' reason is being misused, because nobody has experienced God, eternity, or what philosophers have called substance. So therefore many learned dissertations could be written which in actual fact contain no really new conceptions. An ingeniously contrived philosophical system such as this may seem impressive, but it is pure fantasy. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophers had inherited a number of such learned dissertations. Now they had to be examined under a microscope. They had to be purified of all hollow notions. We might compare it with panning for gold. Most of what you fish up is sand and clay, but in between you see the glint of a particle of gold." "And that particle of gold is real experience?" "Or at least thoughts that can be related to experience. It became a matter of great importance to the British empiricists to scrutinize all human conceptions to see whether there was any basis for them in actual experience. But let us take one philosopher at a time." "Okay, shoot!" "The first was the Englishman John Locke, who lived from 1632 to 1704. His main work was the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, published in 1690. In it he tried to clarify two questions. First, where we get our ideas from, and secondly, whether we can rely on what our senses tell us." "That was some project!" "We'll take these questions one at a time. Locke's claim is that all our thoughts and ideas issue from that which we have taken in through the senses. Before we perceive anything, the mind is a 'tabula rasa'--or an empty slate." "You can skip the Latin." "Before we sense anything, then, the mind is as bare and empty as a blackboard before the teacher arrives in the classroom. Locke also compared the mind to an unfurnished room. But then we begin to sense things. We see the world around us, we smell, taste, feel, and hear. And nobody does this more intensely than infants. In this way what Locke called simple ideas of sense arise. But the mind does not just passively receive information from outside it. Some activity happens in the mind as well. The single sense ideas are worked on by thinking, reasoning, believing, and doubting, thus giving rise to what he calls reflection. So he distinguished between 'sensation' and 'reflection.' The mind is not merely a passive receiver. It classifies and processes all sensations as they come streaming in. And this is just where one must be on guard." "On guard?" "Locke emphasized that the only things we can perceive are simple sensations. When I eat an apple, for example, I do not sense the whole apple in one single sensation. In actual fact I receive a whole series of simple sensations--such as that something is green, smells fresh, and tastes juicy and sharp. Only after I have eaten an apple many times do I think: Now I am eating an 'apple.' As Locke would say, we have formed a complex idea of an 'apple.' When we were infants, tasting an apple for the first time, we had no such complex idea. But we saw something green, we tasted something fresh and juicy, yummy ... It was a bit sour too. Little by little we bundle many similar sensations together and form concepts like 'apple,"pear,"orange.' But in the final analysis, all the material for our knowledge of the world comes to us through sensations. Knowledge that cannot be traced back to a simple sensation is therefore false knowledge and must consequently be rejected." "At any rate we can be sure that what we see, hear, smell, and taste are the way we sense it." "Both yes and no. And that brings us to the second question Locke tried to answer. He had first answered the question of where we get our ideas from. Now he asked whether the world really is the way we perceive it. This is not so obvious, you see, Sophie. We mustn't jump to conclusions. That is the only thing a real philosopher must never do." "I didn't say a word." "Locke distinguished between what he called 'primary' and 'secondary' qualities. And in this he acknowledged his debt to the great philosophers before him-- including Descartes. "By primary qualities he meant extension, weight, motion and number, and so on. When it is a question of qualities such as these, we can be certain that the senses reproduce them objectively. But we also sense other qualities in things. We say that something is sweet or sour, green or red, hot or cold. Locke calls these secondary qualities. Sensations like these--color, smell, taste, sound--do not reproduce the real qualities that are inherent in the things themselves. They reproduce only the effect of the outer reality on our senses." "Everyone to his own taste, in other words." "Exactly. Everyone can agree on the primary qualities like size and weight because they lie within the objects themselves. But the secondary qualities like color and taste can vary from person to person and from animal to animal, depending on the nature of the individual's sensations." "When Joanna eats an orange, she gets a look on her face like when other people eat a lemon. She can't take more than one segment at a time. She says it tastes sour. I usually think the same orange is nice and sweet." "And neither one of you is right or wrong. You are just describing how the orange affects your senses. It's the same with the sense of color. Maybe you don't like a certain shade of red. But if Joanna buys a dress in that color it might be wise to keep your opinion to yourself. You experience the color differently, but it is neither pretty nor ugly." "But everyone can agree that an orange is round." "Yes, if you have a round orange, you can't 'think' it is square. You can 'think' it is sweet or sour, but you can't 'think' it weighs eight kilos if it only weighs two hundred grams. You can certainly 'believe' it weighs several kilos, but then you'd be way off the mark. If several people have to guess how much something weighs, there will always be one of them who is more right than the others. The same applies to number. Either there are 986 peas in the can or there are not. The same with motion. Either the car is moving or it's stationary." "I get it." "So when it was a question of 'extended' reality, Locke agreed with Descartes that it does have certain qualities that man is able to understand with his reason." "It shouldn't be so difficult to agree on that." "Locke admitted what he called intuitive, or 'demonstrative,' knowledge in other areas too. For instance, he held that certain ethical principles applied to everyone. In other words, he believed in the idea of a natural right, and that was a rationalistic feature of his thought. An equally rationalistic feature was that Locke believed that it was inherent in human reason to be able to know that God exists." "Maybe he was right." "About what?" "That God exists." "It is possible, of course. But he did not let it rest on faith. He believed that the idea of God was born of human reason. That was a rationalistic feature. I should add that he spoke out for intellectual liberty and tolerance. He was also preoccupied with equality of the sexes, maintaining that the subjugation of women to men was 'man-made.' Therefore it could be altered." "I can't disagree there." "Locke was one of the first philosophers in more recent times to be interested in sexual roles. He had a great influence on John Stuart Mill, who in turn had a key role in the struggle for equality of the sexes. All in all, Locke was a forerunner of many liberal ideas which later, during the period of the French Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, came into full flower. It was he who first advocated the principle of division of powers..." "Isn't that when the power of the state is divided between different institutions?" "Do you remember which institutions?" "There's the legislative power, or elected representatives. There's the judicial power, or law courts, and then there's the executive power, that's the government." "This division of power originated from the French Enlightenment philosopher Montesquieu. Locke had first and foremost emphasized that the legislative and the executive power must be separated if tyranny was to be avoided. He lived at the time of Louis XIV, who had assembled all power in his own hands. 'I am the State,' he said. We say he was an 'absolute' ruler. Nowadays we would call Louis XIV's rule lawless and arbitrary. Locke's view was that to ensure a legal State, the people's representatives must make the laws and the king or the government must apply them." 洛克    ……赤裸、空虚一如教师来到教室前的黑板…… 苏菲回到家时已经八点半了,比她和妈妈说好的时间迟了一个半小时。其实她也没和妈妈说好,她只是在吃晚饭前离家,留了一张纸条给妈妈说她会七点前回来。 “苏菲,你不能再这样了。我刚才急得打查号台,问他们有没有登记住在旧市区的艾伯特这个人,结果还被人家笑。” “我走不开呀!我想我们正要开始解开这个大谜团。” “胡说八道!” “是真的。” “你请他参加你的生日宴会了吗?” “糟糕,我忘了!” “那么,我现在一定要见见他。最迟在明天。一个年轻女孩像这样和一个年纪比她大的男人见面是不正常的。” “你没有理由担心艾伯特。席德的爸爸可能更糟糕。” “席德是谁?” “那个在黎巴嫩的男人的女儿。他真的很坏,他可能控制了全世界。” “如果你不立刻介绍你的艾伯特给我认识,我就不准你再跟他见面。至少我要知道他长得什么样子,否则我不会放心。” 苏菲想到了一个很好的主意。于是她马上冲到房间去。 “你现在又是怎么回事?”妈妈在她背后叫她。 一转眼的工夫,苏菲就回来了。 “你马上就可以看到他的长相,然后我希望你就不要管这件事了。” 她挥一挥手中的录影带,然后走到录影机旁。 “他给你一卷录影带?” “从雅典……” 不久,雅典的高城就出现在荧屏上。当艾伯特出现,并开始向苏菲说话时,妈妈看得目瞪口呆。 这次苏菲注意到一件她已经忘记的事。高城里到处都是游客,三五成群的往来穿梭。其中有一群人当中举起了一块小牌子,上面写着“席德” …… 艾伯特继续在高城漫步。一会儿之后,他往下面走,穿过人口,并爬上当年保罗对雅典人演讲的小山丘。然后他继续从那里的广场上向苏菲说话。 妈妈坐在那儿,不时发表着评论:“真不可思议……那就是艾伯特吗?他又开始讲关于兔子的事了……可是……没错哎,苏菲,他真的是在对你讲话。我不知道保罗还到过雅典……” 录影带正要放到古城雅典突然从废墟中兴起的部分,苏菲连忙把带子停掉。现在她已经让妈妈看到艾伯特了,没有必要再把柏拉图介绍给她。 客厅里一片静寂。 “你认为他这个人怎么样?长得很好看对不对?”苏菲开玩笑地说。 “他一定是个怪人,才会在雅典拍摄自己的录影带,送给一个他几乎不认识的女孩子。他是什么时候跑到雅典去的?” “我不知道。” “还有……” “还有什么?” “他很像是住在林间小木屋的那个少校。” “也许就是他呢!” “可是已经有十五年都没有人看过他了。” “他也许到处游历……也许到雅典去了。” 妈妈摇摇头。 “我在七十年代看到他时,他一点都不比我刚才看到的这个艾伯特年轻。他有一个听起来像是外国人的名字……” “是艾伯特吗?” “大概吧。” “还是艾勃特?” “我一点都不记得了……你说的这两个人是谁?” “一个是艾伯特,一个是席德的爸爸。” “你把我弄得头都昏了。” “家里有东西吃吗?” “你把肉丸子热一热吧。” 失踪整整两个礼拜过去了,艾伯特消息全无。这期间苏菲又接到了一张寄给席德的生日卡,不过虽然她自己的生日也快到了,她却连一张卡片也没接到。 一天下午,她到旧市区去敲艾伯特的门。他不在家,只见门上贴着一张短短的字条,上面写着:席德,生日快乐!现在那个大转捩点就要到了。孩子,这是关键性的一刻。我每次想到这里,就忍不住笑得差点尿裤子。当然这和柏克莱有点关系,所以把你的帽子抓紧吧!苏菲临走时,把门上的字条撕了下来,塞进艾伯特的信箱。 该死!他不会跑回雅典去吧?还有这么多问题等待解答,他怎么可以离她而去呢?经验主义六月十四日,她放学回家时,汉密士已经在花园里跑来跑去了。苏菲向它飞奔过去,它也快活地迎向她。她用双手抱着它,仿佛它可以解开她所有的谜题。 这天,苏菲又留了一张纸条给妈妈,但这一次她同时写下了艾伯特的地址。 他们经过镇上时,苏菲心里想着明天的事。她想的主要并不是她自己的生日。何况她的生日要等到仲夏节那一天才过。不过,明天也是席德的生日。苏菲相信明天一定会有很不寻常的事发生。至少从明天起不会有人从黎巴嫩寄生日卡来了。 当他们经过大广场,走向旧市区时,经过了一个有游乐场的公园。汉密士在一张椅旁停了下来,仿佛希望苏菲坐下来似的。 于是苏菲便坐了下来。她拍拍汉密士的头,并注视它的眼睛。 突然间汉密士开始猛烈地颤抖。苏菲心想,它要开始吠了。 然后汉密士的下颚开始振动,但它既没有吠,也没有汪汪叫。 它开口说话了:“生日快乐,席德!” 苏菲惊讶得目瞪口呆。汉密士刚才真的跟她讲话了吗?不可能的。那一定是她的幻觉,因为她刚才正想着席德的事。 不过内心深处她仍相信汉密士刚才确实曾开口说话…..•而且声音低沉而厚实。 一秒钟后,一切又恢复正常。汉密士吠了两三声,仿佛是要遮掩刚才开口说人话的事实。然后继续往艾伯特的住所走去。当他们正要进屋时,苏菲抬头看了一下天色。今天整天都是晴朗的天气,但现在远方已经开始聚集了厚重的云层。 艾伯特一打开门,苏菲便说:“别多礼了,拜托。你是个大白痴,你自己知道。” “怎么啦?” “少校让汉密士讲话了!” “哦,已经到了这个地步?” “是呀!你能想象吗?” “那他说些什么呢?” “我让你猜三次。” “我猜他大概是说些类似生日快乐的话。” “答对了!” 艾伯特让苏菲进门。这次他又穿了不同的衣裳,与上次的差别不是很大,但今天他身上几乎没有任何穗带、蝴蝶结或花边。 “可是还有一件事。”苏菲说。 “什么意思?” “你没有看到信箱里的纸条吗?” “喔,你是说那个。我马上把它扔掉。” ;“我才不在乎他每次想到柏克莱时是否真的尿湿了裤子,可是那个哲学家到底是怎么回事,才会使他那个样子?” “这个我们再看看吧。” “你今天不就是要讲他吗?” “是,啊,没错,就是今天。” 艾伯特舒适地坐在沙发上,然后说道:“上次我们坐在这儿时,我向你说明笛卡尔和史宾诺莎的哲学。我们一致同意他们两人有一点很相像,那就是:他们显然都是理性主义者。” “而理性主义者就是坚信理性很重要的人。” “没错,理性主义者相信理性是知识的泉源。不过他可能也同意人在还没有任何经验之前,心中已经先有了一些与生俱来的概念。这些概念愈清晰,必然就愈与实体一致。你应该还记得笛卡尔对于‘完美实体’有清晰的概念,并且以此断言上帝确实存在。” “我的记性还不算差。” “类似这样的理性主义思想是十七世纪哲学的特征,这种思想早在中世纪时就打下了深厚的基础。柏拉图与苏格拉底也有这种倾向。但在十八世纪时,理性主义思想受到的批判日益严格。当时有些哲学家认为,如果不是透过感官的体验,我们的心中将一无所有,这种观点被称为‘经验主义’。” “你今天就是要谈那些主张经验主义的哲学家吗?” “是的。最重要的经验主义哲学家是洛克、柏克莱与休姆,都是英国人。十七世纪主要的理性主义哲学当中,笛卡尔是法国人,史宾诺莎是荷兰人,莱布尼兹则是德国人。所以我们通常区分为‘英国的经验主义’与‘欧陆的理性主义’。” “这些字眼都好难呀!你可以把经验主义的意思再说一次吗?” “经验主义者就是那些从感官的经验获取一切关于世界的知识的人。亚理斯多德曾经说过;‘我们的心灵中所有的事物都是先透过感官而来的。’这是对经验主义的最佳说明。这种观点颇有批评柏拉图的意味。因为柏拉图认为人生下来就从观念世界带来了一整套的‘观念’。洛克则重复亚理斯多德说的话,但他针对的对象是笛卡尔。” “我们心灵中所有的事物都是先透过感官而来的?” “这句话的意思是:我们在看到这个世界之前对它并没有任何固有的概念或观念。如果我们有一个观念或概念是和我们所经验的事实完全不相关的,则它将是一个虚假的观念。举例来说,当我们说出‘上帝’、‘永恒’或‘实体’这些字眼时,我们并没有运用我们的理智,因为没有人曾经体验过上帝、永恒或哲学家所谓的‘实体’这些东西。因此,虽然有许多博学之士著书立说,探讨这些事物,但事实上他们并没有提出什么新见解。这类精心构筑的哲学体系可能令人印象深刻,但却是百分之百的虚幻。十七、十八世纪的哲学家虽然继承了若干这类理论,但他们现在要把这些理论拿到显微镜下检视,以便把所有空洞不实的观念淘汰掉。我们可以将这个过程比喻为淘金。你所淘取的东西大多是沙子和泥土,但偶尔你会发现一小片闪闪发亮的金屑。” “那片金屑就是真正的经验吗?” “至少是一些与经验有关的思想。那些英国的经验主义哲学家认为,仔细检视人类所有的观念,以确定它们是否根据实际的经验而来,乃是一件很重要的事。不过,我们还是一次谈一位哲学家好了。” “好,那就开始吧。” “第一位是英国哲学家洛克(JohnLocke)。他生于一六三二到一七O四年间,主要的作品是《论人之理解力》(EssayConcerningHumanUnderstanding),出版于一六九O年。他在书中试图澄清两个问题:第一,我们的概念从何而来?第二,我们是否可以信赖感官的经验?” “有意思。” “我们一次谈一个问题好了。洛克宣称,我们所有的思想和观念都反映我们曾看过、听过的事物。在我们看过、听过任何事物之前,我们的心灵就像一块Tabularasa,意思是‘空白的板子’。” “请你不要再讲拉丁文了。” “洛克认为,在我们的感官察知任何事物前,我们的心灵就像老师还没有进教室之前的黑板一样空白。他也将此时我们的心灵;比做一间没有家具的房间。可是后来我们开始经验一些事物,我们看到周遭的世界,我们闻到、尝到、摸到、听到各种东西。其中又以婴儿最为敏锐。这是洛克所谓的‘单一感官概念’。然而,我们的心灵除了被动地接收外界的印象之外,同时也积极地进行某种活动,它以思考、推理、相信、怀疑等方式来处理它所得到的各种单一感官概念,因此产生了洛克所谓的‘思维’(reflection)。所以说,他认为感觉(sensation)与思维是不同的,我们的心灵并不只是一具被动的接收器,它也会将所有不断传进来的感觉加以分类、处理。而这些是我们需要当心的地方。” “当心?” “洛克强调,我们唯一能感知的事物是那些‘单一感觉’。例如,当我吃一个苹果时,我并不能一次感知整个苹果的模样与滋味。事实上,我所接到的是一连串的单一感觉,诸如它是绿色的、闻起来很新鲜、尝起来脆又多汁等。一直要等到我吃了许多口之后,我才能说:我正在吃‘苹果’。洛克的意思是,我们自己形成了一个有关‘苹果’的‘复合概念’。当我们还是婴儿,初次尝到苹果时,我们并没有这种复合概念。我们只是看到一个绿色的东西,尝起来新鲜多汁,好吃……还有点酸。我们就这样一点一滴地将许多类似的感觉放在一起,形成‘苹果’、‘梨子’或‘橘子’这些概念。但根本上,使我们得以认识这个世界的所有材料都来自感官。那些无法回溯到一种单一感觉的知识便是虚假的知识,我们不应该接受。” “无论如何,我可以确定这些事物便是像我们所看到、听到、闻到和尝到的一般。” “可以说是,也可以说不是。谈到这点,我们就要讨论洛克尝试解答的第二个问题。刚才他已经回答了‘我们的概念从哪里来?’这个问题。现在他的问题是:‘这世界是否真的就像我们所感知的那样?’答案并不很明显。因此,苏菲,我们不能太早下定论。一个真正的哲学家绝不会遽下定论。” “我一句话也没有说呀!” “洛克将感官的性质分为‘主要’与‘次要’两种。在这方面他承认受到笛卡尔等大哲学家的影响。所谓的‘主要性质’指的是扩延世界的特质,如重量、运动和数量等等。我们谈的是这类特质时,我们可以确定我们的感官已经将它们加以客观地再现。但事物还有其他特质,如酸或甜、绿或红、热或冷等。洛克称它们为‘次要性质,。类似颜色、气息、味道、声音等感觉并不能真正反映事物本身的固有性质,而只是反映外在实体在我们的感官上所产生的作用。” “换句话说,就是人各有所好。” “一点都没有错。在尺寸、重量等性质上,每个人都会有一致的看法,因为这些性质就存在于事物本身之内。但类似颜色、味道等次要性质就可能因人而异,因动物而异,要看每个人感觉的本质而定。” “乔安吃柳丁时,脸上的表情跟别人在吃柠檬时一样。她一次最多只能吃一片,她说柳丁很酸。可是同样的一个柳丁,我吃起来却往往觉得很甜、很好吃。” “你们两个人没有谁对,也没有谁错。你只是描述柳丁对你的感官所产生的作用而已。我们对颜色的感觉也是一样。你也许不喜欢某种色调的红,但如果乔安买了一件那种颜色的衣服,你最好还是不要加以批评。你对颜色的体验与别人不同,但颜色的本身并没有美丑可言。” “可是每一个人都会说柳丁是圆的。” “是的,如果你面前的柳丁是圆的,你就不会‘以为’它是方的。 称会‘以为’它是甜的或酸的,但如果它的重量只有两百克,你不会‘以为’它有八公斤重。你当然可以‘相信’它重达几公斤,但如果这样的话,你一定是个不折不扣的呆子。如果你同时要几个人来猜某东西的重量,那么一定会有一个人的答案比较接近。同样的道理也适用于数目。罐子里豌豆的数量要不就是九八六个,要不就不是,动作方面也是一样。一辆汽车要不就是正在移动,要不就是在静止的状态。” “我懂了。” “所以当牵涉到‘扩延’的实体时,洛克同意笛卡尔的说法,认为确实有些性质是人可用理智来了解的。” “在这方面取得共识应该不会太难才对。” “洛克也承认笛卡尔所谓‘直觉的’或‘明示的’(demonstrative)知识在其他方面也存在。例如,他认为每个人都有相同的一些道德原则。换句话说,他相信世间有所谓‘自然权利’(naturalright)存在。这正是理性主义者的特征。洛克与理性主义者相像的另外一点是:他相信人类凭理性就自然而然可以知道上帝的存在。” “他说的也许没错。” “你是指哪一方面?” “上帝确实存在这件事。” “这当然是有可能的。不过他并不以为这只是一种信仰,他相信关于上帝的概念是原本就存在于人的理性之内的。这也是理性主义者的特色。还有,他也公开提倡知识自由与宽容的精神,并很关心两性平等的问题。他宣称,女人服从男人的现象是受到男人操纵的结果,因此是可以加以改变的。” “这点我不能不同意。” “洛克是近代哲学家中最先关心性别角色的人之一。他对于另外一个英国哲学家弥尔(JohnStuartMill)有很大的影响。而后者又在两性平等运动中扮演了举足轻重的角色。总而言之,洛克倡导了许多开明的观念,而这些观念后来在十八世纪的法国启蒙运动中终于开花结果。他也是首先倡导‘政权分立’原则的人。” “他的意思是不是说国家的政权必须由不同的机构共同持有……?” “你还记得是哪些机构吗?” “人民所选出的代表握有立法权,法院握有司法权,政府握有行政权。” “政权分立的观念最初是由法国启蒙运动时期的哲学家孟德斯鸠(Montesquieu)提出。但洛克最早强调立法权与行政权必须分立,以防止专制政治。他生在路易十四统治的年代。路易十四一人独揽所有政权,并说:‘朕即国家。’因此我们说他是很‘专制’的君主。这种政治我们称之为‘无政府状态’。洛克的观点是:为了确保国家的法治,必须由人民的代表制定法律,而由国王或政府执行法律。” Hume commit it then to the flames Alberto sat staring down at the table. He finally turned and looked out of the window. "It's clouding over," said Sophie. "Yes, it's muggy." "Are you going to talk about Berkeley now?" "He was the next of the three British empiricists. But as he is in a category of his own in many ways, we will first concentrate on David Hume, who lived from 1711 to 1776. He stands out as the most important of the empiricists. He is also significant as the person who set the great philosopher Immanuel Kant on the road to his philosophy." "Doesn't it matter to you that I'm more interested in Berkeley's philosophy?" "That's of no importance. Hume grew up near Edinburgh in Scotland. His family wanted him to take up law but he felt 'an insurmountable resistance to everything but philosophy and learning.' He lived in the Age of Enlightenment at the same time as great French thinkers like Voltaire and Rousseau, and he traveled widely in Europe before returning to settle down in Edinburgh toward the end of his life. His main work, A Treatise of Human Nature, was published when Hume was twenty-eight years old, but he claimed that he got the idea for the book when he was only fifteen." "I see I don't have any time to waste." "You have already begun." "But if I were going to formulate my own philosophy, it would be quite different from anything I've heard up to now." "Is there anything in particular that's missing?" "Well, to start with, all the philosophers you have talked about are men. And men seem to live in a world of their own. I am more interested in the real world, where there are flowers and animals and children that are born and grow up. Your philosophers are always talking about 'man' and 'humans,' and now here's another treatise on 'human nature.' It's as if this 'human' is a middle-aged man. I mean, life begins with pregnancy and birth, and I've heard nothing about diapers or crying babies so far. And hardly anything about love and friendship." "You are right, of course. But Hume was a philosopher who thought in a different way. More than any other philosopher, he took the everyday world as his starting point. I even think Hume had a strong feeling for the way children--the new citizens of the world-- experienced life." "I'd better listen then." "As an empiricist, Hume took it upon himself to clean up all the woolly concepts and thought constructions that these male philosophers had invented. There were piles of old wreckage, both written and spoken, from the Middle Ages and the rationalist philosophy of the seventeenth century. Hume proposed the return to our spontaneous experience of the world. No philosopher 'will ever be able to take us behind the daily experiences or give us rules of conduct that are different from those we get through reflections on everyday life,' he said." "Sounds promising so far. Can you give any examples?" "In the time of Hume there was a widespread belief in angels. That is, human figures with wings. Have you ever seen such a creature, Sophie?" "No." "But you have seen a human figure?" "Dumb question." "You have also seen wings?" "Of course, but not on a human figure." "So, according to Hume, an 'angel' is a complex idea. It consists of two different experiences which are not in fact related, but which nevertheless are associated in man's imagination. In other words, it is a false idea which must be immediately rejected. We must tidy up all our thoughts and ideas, as well as our book collections, in the same way. For as Hume put it: If we take in our hands any volume ... let us ask, 'Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?' No. 'Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence?' No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." "That was drastic." "But the world still exists. More fresh and sharply outlined than ever. Hume wanted to know how a child experiences the world. Didn't you say that many of the philosophers you have heard about lived in their own world, and that you were more interested in the real world?" "Something like that." "Hume could have said the same thing. But let us follow his train of thought more closely." "I'm with you." "Hume begins by establishing that man has two different types of perceptions, namely impressions and ideas. By 'impressions' he means the immediate sensation of external reality. By 'ideas' he means the recollection of such impressions." "Could you give me an example?" "If you burn yourself on a hot oven, you get an immediate 'impression.' Afterward you can recollect that you burned yourself. That impression insofar as it is recalled is what Hume calls an 'idea.' The difference is that an impression is stronger and livelier than your reflective memory of that impression. You could say that the sensation is the original and that the idea, or reflection, is only a pale imitation. It is the impression which is the direct cause of the idea stored in the mind." "I follow you--so far." "Hume emphasizes further that both an impression and an idea can be either simple or complex. You remember we talked about an apple in connection with Locke. The direct experience of an apple is an example of a complex impression." "Sorry to interrupt, but is this terribly important?" "Important? How can you ask? Even though philosophers may have been preoccupied with a number of pseudoproblems, you mustn't give up now over the construction of an argument. Hume would probably agree with Descartes that it is essential to construct a thought process right from the ground." "Okay, okay." "Hume's point is that we sometimes form complex ideas for which there is no corresponding object in the physical world. We've already talked about angels. Previously we referred to crocophants. Another example is Pegasus, a winged horse. In all these cases we have to admit that the mind has done a good job of cutting out and pasting together all on its own. Each element was once sensed, and entered the theater of the mind in the form of a real 'impression.' Nothing is ever actually invented by the mind. The mind puts things together and constructs false 'ideas.' " "Yes, I see. That is important." "All right, then. Hume wanted to investigate every single idea to see whether it was compounded in a way that does not correspond to reality. He asked: From which impression does this idea originate? First of all he had to find out which 'single ideas' went into the making of a complex idea. This would provide him with a critical method by which to analyze our ideas, and thus enable him to tidy up our thoughts and notions." "Do you have an example or two?" "In Hume's day, there were a lot of people who had very clear ideas of 'heaven' or the 'New Jerusalem.' You remember how Descartes indicated that 'clear and distinct' ideas in themselves could be a guarantee that they corresponded to something that really existed?" "I said I was not especially forgetful." "We soon realize that our idea of 'heaven' is compounded of a great many elements. Heaven is made up of 'pearly gates,"streets of gold,"angels' by the score and so on and so forth. And still we have not broken everything down into single elements, for pearly gates, streets of gold, and angels are all complex ideas in themselves. Only when we recognize that our idea of heaven consists of single notions such as 'pearl,"gate,"street,"gold,"white-robed figure,' and 'wings' can we ask ourselves if we ever really had any such 'simple impressions.' " "We did. But we cut out and pasted all these 'simple impressions' into one idea." "That's just what we did. Because if there is something we humans do when we visualize, it's use scissors and paste. But Hume emphasizes that all the elements we put together in our ideas must at some time have entered the mind in the form of 'simple impressions.' A person who has never seen gold will never be able to visualize streets of gold." "He was very clever. What about Descartes having a clear and distinct idea of God?" "Hume had an answer to that too. Let's say we imagine God as an infinitely 'intelligent, wise, and good being.' We have thus a 'complex idea' that consists of something infinitely intelligent, something infinitely wise, and something infinitely good. If we had never known intelligence, wisdom, and goodness, we would never have such an idea of God. Our idea of God might also be that he is a 'severe but just Father'--that is to say, a concept made up of 'severity','justice,' and 'father.' Many critics of religion since Hume have claimed that such ideas of God can be associated with how we experienced our own father when we were little. It was said that the idea of a father led to the idea of a 'heavenly father.' " "Maybe that's true, but I have never accepted that God had to be a man. Sometimes my mother calls God 'Godiva,' just to even things up." "Anyway, Hume opposed all thoughts and ideas that could not be traced back to corresponding sense perceptions. He said he wanted to 'dismiss all this meaningless nonsense which long has dominated metaphysical thought and brought it into disrepute.' "But even in everyday life we use complex ideas without stopping to wonder whether they are valid. For example, take the question of T--or the ego. This was the very basis of Descartes's philosophy. It was the one clear and distinct perception that the whole of his phi-losophy was built on." "I hope Hume didn't try to deny that I am me. He'd be talking off the top of his head." "Sophie, if there is one thing I want this course to teach you, it's not to jump to conclusions." "Sorry. Go on." "No, why don't you use Hume's method and analyze what you perceive as your 'ego.' " "First I'd have to figure out whether the ego is a single or a complex idea." "And what conclusion do you come to?" "I really have to admit that I feel quite complex. I'm very volatile, for instance. And I have trouble making up my mind about things. And I can both like and dislike the same people." "In other words, the 'ego concept' is a 'complex idea.' " "Okay. So now I guess I must figure out if I have had a corresponding 'complex impression' of my own ego. And I guess I have. I always had, actually." "Does that worry you?" "I'm very changeable. I'm not the same today as I was when I was four years old. My temperament and how I see myself alter from one minute to the next. I can suddenly feel like I am a 'new person.' " "So the feeling of having an unalterable ego is a false perception. The perception of the ego is in reality a long chain of simple impressions that you have never experienced simultaneously. It is 'nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed one another with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement,' as Hume expressed it. The mind is 'a kind of theater, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, slide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations.' Hume pointed out that we have no underlying 'personal identity' beneath or behind these perceptions and feelings which come and go. It is just like the images on a movie screen. They change so rapidly we do not register that the film is made up of single pictures. In reality the pictures are not connected. The film is a collection of instants." "I think I give in." "Does that mean you give up the idea of having an unalterable ego?" "I guess it does." "A moment ago you believed the opposite. I should add that Hume's analysis of the human mind and his rejection of the unalterable ego was put forward almost 2,500 years earlier on the other side of the world." "Who by?" "By Buddha. It's almost uncanny how similarly the two formulate their ideas. Buddha saw life as an unbroken succession of mental and physical processes which keep people in a continual state of change. The infant is not the same as the adult; I am not the same today as I was yesterday. There is nothing of which I can say 'this is mine,' said Buddha, and nothing of which I can say 'this is me.' There is thus no T or unalterable ego." "Yes, that was typically Hume." "In continuation of the idea of an unalterable ego, many rationalists had taken it for granted that man had an eternal soul." "Is that a false perception too?" "According to Hume and Buddha, yes. Do you know what Buddha said to his followers just before he died?" "No, how could I?" " 'Decay is inherent in all compound things. Work out your own salvation with diligence.' Hume could have said the same thing. Or Democritus, for that matter. We know at all events that Hume rejected any attempt to prove the immortality of the soul or the existence of God. That does not mean that he ruled out either one, but to prove religious faith by human reason was rationalistic claptrap, he thought. Hume was not a Christian, neither was he a confirmed atheist. He was what we call an agnostic." "What's that?" "An agnostic is someone who holds that the existence of God or a god can neither be proved nor disproved. When Hume was dying a friend asked him if he believed in life after death. He is said to have answered: "It is also possible that a knob of coal placed upon the fire will not burn." "I see." "The answer was typical of his unconditional open-mindedness. He only accepted what he had perceived through his senses. He held all other possibilities open. He rejected neither faith in Christianity nor faith in miracles. But both were matters of faith and not of knowledge or reason. You might say that with Hume's philosophy, the final link between faith and knowledge was broken." "You say he didn't deny that miracles can happen?" "That didn't mean that he believed in them, more the opposite. He made a point of the fact that people seemed to have a powerful need of what we today would call 'supernatural' happenings. The thing is that all the miracles you hear of have always happened in some far distant place or a long, long time ago. Actually, Hume only rejected miracles because he had never experienced any. But he had not experienced that they couldn't happen either." "You'll have to explain that." "According to Hume, a miracle is against the laws of nature. But it is meaningless to allege that we have experienced the laws of nature. We experience that a stone falls to the ground when we let go of it, and if it didn't fall--well, then we experienced that.'1" "I would say that was a miracle--or something supernatural." "So you believe there are two natures--a 'natural' and a 'supernatural.' Aren't you on the way back to the rationalistic claptrap?" "Maybe, but I still think the stone will fall to the ground every time I let go." "Why?" "Now you're being horrible." "I'm not horrible, Sophie. It's never wrong for a philosopher to ask questions. We may be getting to the crux of Hume's philosophy. Tell me how you can be so certain that the stone will always fall to the earth." "I've seen it happen so many times that I'm absolutely certain." "Hume would say that you have experienced a stone falling to the ground many times. But you have never experienced that it will always fall. It is usual to say that the stone falls to the ground because of the law of gravitation. But we have never experienced such a law. We have only experienced that things fall." "Isn't that the same thing?" "Not completely. You say you believe the stone will fall to the ground because you have seen it happen so many times. That's exactly Hume's point. You are so used to the one thing following the other that you expect the same to happen every time you let go of a stone. This is the way the concept of what we like to call 'the unbreakable laws of nature' arises." "Did he really mean it was possible that a stone would not fall?" "He was probably just as convinced as you that it would fall every time he tried it. But he pointed out that he had not experienced why it happens." "Now we're far away from babies and flowers again!" "No, on the contrary. You are welcome to take children as Hume's verification. Who do you think would be more surprised if the stone floated above the ground for an hour or two--you or a one-year-old child?" "I guess I would." "Why?" "Because I would know better than the child how unnatural it was." "And why wouldn't the child think it was unnatural?" "Because it hasn't yet learned how nature behaves." "Or perhaps because nature hasn't yet become a habit?" "I see where you're coming from. Hume wanted people to sharpen their awareness." "So now do the following exercise: let's say you and a small child go to a magic show, where things are made to float in the air. Which of you would have the most fun?" "I probably would." "And why would that be?" "Because I would know how impossible it all is." "So... for the child it's no fun to see the laws of nature being defied before it has learned what they are." "I guess that's right." "And we are still at the crux of Hume's philosophy of experience. He would have added that the child has not yet become a slave of the expectations of habit; he is thus the more open-minded of you two. I wonder if the child is not also the greater philosopher? He comes utterly without preconceived opinions. And that, my dear Sophie, is the philosopher's most distinguishing virtue. The child perceives the world as it is, without putting more into things than he experiences." "Every time I feel prejudice I get a bad feeling." "When Hume discusses the force of habit, he concentrates on 'the law of causation.' This law establishes that everything that happens must have a cause. Hume used two billiard balls for his example. If you roll a black billiard ball against a white one that is at rest, what will the white one do?" "If the black ball hits the white one, the white one will start to move." "I see, and why will it do that?" "Because it was hit by the black one." "So we usually say that the impact of the black ball is the cause of the white ball's starting to move. But remember now, we can only talk of what we have actually experienced." "I have actually experienced it lots of times. Joanna has a pool table in her basement." "Hume would say the only thing you have experienced is that the white ball begins to roll across the table. You have not experienced the actual cause of it beginning to roll. You have experienced that one event comes after the other, but you have not experienced that the other event happens because o/the first one." "Isn't that splitting hairs?" "No, it's very central. Hume emphasized that the expectation of one thing following another does not lie in the things themselves, but in our mind. And expectation, as we have seen, is associated with habit. Going back to the child again, it would not have stared in amazement if when one billiard ball struck the other, both had remained perfectly motionless. When we speak of the 'laws of nature' or of 'cause and effect,' we are actually speaking of what we expect, rather than what is 'reasonable.' The laws of nature are neither reasonable nor unreasonable, they simply are. The expectation that the white billiard ball will move when it is struck by the black billiard ball is therefore not innate. We are not born with a set of expectations as to what the world is like or how things in the world behave. The world is like it is, and it's something we get to know." "I'm beginning to feel as if we're getting off the track again." "Not if our expectations cause us to jump to conclusions. Hume did not deny the existence of unbreakable 'natural laws,' but he held that because we are not in a position to experience the natural laws themselves, we can easily come to the wrong conclusions." "Like what?" "Well, because I have seen a whole herd of black horses doesn't mean that all horses are black." "No, of course not." "And although I have seen nothing but black crows in my life, it doesn't mean that there's no such thing as a white crow. Both for a philosopher and for a scientist it can be important not to reject the possibility of finding a white crow. You might almost say that hunting for 'the white crow' is science's principal task." "Yes, I see." "In the question of cause and effect, there can be many people who imagine that lightning is the cause of thunder because the thunder comes after the lightning. The example is really not so different from the one with the billiard balls. But is lightning the cause of thunder?" "Not really, because actually they both happen at the same time." "Both thunder and lightning are due to an electric discharge. So in reality a third factor causes them both." "Right." "An empiricist of our own century, Bertrand Russell, has provided a more grotesque example. A chicken which experiences every day that it gets fed when the farmer's wife comes over to the chicken run will finally come to the conclusion that there is a causal link between the approach of the farmer's wife and feed being put into its bowl." "But one day the chicken doesn't get its food?" "No, one day the farmer's wife comes over and wrings the chicken's neck." "Yuck, how disgusting!" "The fact that one thing follows after another thus does not necessarily mean there is a causal link. One of the main concerns of philosophy is to warn people against jumping to conclusions. It can in fact lead to many different forms of superstition." "How come?" "You see a black cat cross the street. Later that day you fall and break your arm. But that doesn't mean there is any causal link between the two incidents. In science, it is especially important not to jump to conclusions. For instance, the fact that a lot of people get well after taking a particular drug doesn't mean it was the drug that cured them. That's why it's important to have a large control group of patients who think they are also being given this same medicine, but who are in fact only being given flour and water. If these patients also get well, there has to be a third factor--such as the belief that the medicine works, and has cured them." "I think I'm beginning to see what empiricism is." "Hume also rebelled against rationalist thought in the area of ethics. The rationalists had always held that the ability to distinguish between right and wrong is inherent in human reason. We have come across this idea of a so-called natural right in many philosophers from Socrates to Locke. But according to Hume, it is not reason that determines what we say and do." "What is it then?" "It is our sentiments. If you decide to help someone in need, you do so because of your feelings, not your reason." "What if I can't be bothered to help?" "That, too, would be a matter of feelings. It is neither reasonable nor unreasonable not to help someone in need, but it could be unkind." "But there must be a limit somewhere. Everyone knows it's wrong to kill." "According to Hume, everybody has a feeling for other people's welfare. So we all have a capacity for compassion. But it has nothing to do with reason." "I don't know if I agree." "It's not always so unwise to get rid of another person, Sophie. If you wish to achieve something or other, it can actually be quite a good idea." "Hey, wait a minute! I protest!" "Maybe you can try and explain why one shouldn't kill a troublesome person." "'That person wants to live too. Therefore you ought not to kill them." "Was that a logical reason?" "I don't know." "What you did was to draw a conclusion from a descriptive sentence--That person wants to live too'--to what we call a normative sentence: 'Therefore you ought not to kill them.' From the point of view of reason this is nonsense. You might just as well say 'There are lots of people who cheat on their taxes, therefore I ought to cheat on my taxes too.' Hume said you can never draw conclusions from is sentences to ought sentences. Nevertheless it is exceedingly common, not least in newspaper articles, political party programs, and speeches. Would you like some examples?" "Please." " 'More and more people want to travel by air. Therefore more airports ought to be built.' Do you think the conclusion holds up?" "No. It's nonsense. We have to think of the environment. I think we ought to build more railroads instead." "Or they say: The development of new oilfields will raise the population's living standards by ten percent. Therefore we ought to develop new oilfields as rapidly as possible." "Definitely not. We have to think of the environment again. And anyway, the standard of living in Norway is high enough." "Sometimes it is said that 'this law has been passed by the Senate, therefore all citizens in this country ought to abide by it.' But frequently it goes against people's deepest convictions to abide by such conventions." "Yes, I understand that." "So we have established that we cannot use reason as a yardstick for how we ought to act. Acting responsibly is not a matter of strengthening our reason but of deepening our feelings for the welfare of others. "Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger,' said Hume." "That's a hair-raising assertion." "It's maybe even more hair-raising if you shuffle the cards. You know that the Nazis murdered millions of Jews. Would you say that there was something wrong with the Nazis' reason, or would you say there was something wrong with their emotional life?" "There was definitely something wrong with their feelings." "Many of them were exceedingly clear-headed. It is not unusual to find ice-cold calculation behind the most callous decisions. Many of the Nazis were convicted after the war, but they were not convicted for being 'unreasonable.' They were convicted for being gruesome murderers. It can happen that people who are not of sound mind can be acquitted of their crimes. We say that they were 'not accountable for their actions.' Nobody has ever been acquitted of a crime they committed for being unfeeling." "I should hope not." "But we need not stick to the most grotesque examples. If a flood disaster renders millions of people homeless, it is our feelings that determine whether we come to their aid. If we are callous, and leave the whole thing to 'cold reason,' we might think it was actually quite in order that millions of people die in a world that is threatened by overpopulation." "It makes me mad that you can even think that." "And notice it's not your reason that gets mad." "Okay, I got it." 休姆    ……将它付之一炬…… 艾伯特坐在那儿,低头注视着茶几。最后他转过身来,看着窗外。 “云层愈来愈厚了。”苏菲说。 “嗯,天气很闷热。” “你现在要谈柏克莱了吗?” “他是三位英国经验主义哲学家中的第二位,但在许多方面他可说是自成一个格局。因此我们还是先谈休姆(DavidHume)好了。休姆生于一七一一到一七七六年间。他是经验主义哲学家中最重要的一位,也是启发大哲学家康德,使他开始走上哲学研究道路的人。” “你不介意我对柏克莱的哲学比较有兴趣吗?” 休姆“这不重要。休姆生长在苏格兰的爱丁堡附近,家人希望他修习法律,但他觉得自己‘对哲学和学习以外的事物有不可抗拒的排斥心理’。他生在启蒙时代,与法国大思想家伏尔泰与卢梭等人同一个时期。他早年曾经遍游欧洲各地,最后才回到爱丁堡定居,度过余年。他的主要作品是《人性论》(TreatiseonHumanNature),在他二十八岁时出版。但他宣称他在十五岁的时候就有了写这本书的构想。” “我看我也不应该再浪费时间了。” “你已经开始了。” “但如果我要建立一套自己的哲学,那这套哲学会和我们到目前为止所谈过的任何哲学理论都大不相同。” “你认为我们谈的这些哲学理论缺少了什么东西吗?” “这个嘛,首先,你谈的这些哲学家都是男人,而男人似乎只活在他们自己的世界里。我对真正的世界比较有兴趣。我是指一个有花、有动物、有小孩出生长大的世界。你说的那些哲学家总是谈什么‘人与人类’的理论。现在又有人写了一本《人性论》,好像这里面的‘人’是一个中年男人似的。我的意思是,生命是从怀孕和生产开始的。但是到目前为止,却从来没有人谈到尿布呀、婴儿啼哭呀什么的。也几乎没有人谈到爱和友情。” “你说得当然很对。但在这方面,休姆可能和其他哲学家不太一样。他比任何一位哲学家都要能够以日常生活为起点。我甚至认为他对儿童(世界未来的公民)体验生命的方式的感觉很强烈。” “那我最好洗耳恭听。” “身为一个经验主义者,休姆期许自己要整理前人所提出的一些混淆不清的思想与观念,包括中世纪到十七世纪这段期间,理性主义哲学家留传下来的许多言论和著作。休姆建议,人应回到对世界有自发性感觉的状态。他说,没有一个哲学家‘能够带我们体验日常生活,而事实上哲学家们提示的那些行为准则都是我们对日常生活加以省思后,便可以领悟出来的’。” “到目前为止他说的都不错。你能举一些例子吗?” “在休姆那个时代,人们普遍相信有天使。他们的模样像人,身上长着翅膀。你见过这样的东西吗?” “没有。”“可是你总见过人吧?”“什么傻问题嘛!” “你也见过翅膀吗?”“当然,但不是长在人的身上。” “所以,据休姆的说法,‘天使’是一个复合的概念,由两个不同的经验组成。这两个经验虽然事实上无关,但仍然在人的想象中结合在一起。换句话说,这是一个不实的观念,应该立即受到驳斥。同样的,我们也必须以这种方式厘清自身所有的思想观念和整理自己的藏书。他说,如果我们手里有一本书……我们应该问:‘书里是否包含任何与数量和数目有关的抽象思考?’如果答案是‘没有’,那么我们应该再问:‘书里是否包含任何与事实和存在有关的经验性思考?’如果答案还是‘没有’,那么我们还是将它付之一炬吧,因为这样的书内容纯粹是诡辩和幻象。” “好激烈呀” “但世界仍然会存在,而且感觉更清新,轮廓也更分明。休姆希望人们回到孩提时代对世界的印象。你刚才不是说许多哲学家都活在自己的世界里,还说你对真实的世界比较有兴趣吗?” “没错。” “休姆可能也会说类似的话。不过我们还是继续谈他的理念吧。” “请说。” “休姆首先断定人有两种知觉,一种是印象,一种是观念。‘印象’指的是对于外界实在的直接感受,‘观念’指的是对印象的回忆。” “能不能举个例子呢?” “如果你被热炉子烫到,你会马上得到一个‘印象’。事后你会回想自己被烫到这件事,这就是休姆所谓的‘观念’。两者的不同在于‘印象’比事后的回忆要更强烈,也更生动。你可以说感受是原创的,而‘观念’(或省思)则只不过是模仿物而已。‘印象’是在我们的心灵中形成‘观念’的直接原因。” “到目前为止,我还可以理解。” “休姆进一步强调印象与观念可能是单一的,也可能是复合的。你还记得我们谈到洛克时曾经以苹果为例子吗?对于苹果的直接经验就是一种复合印象。” “对不起,打断你的话。这种东西重要吗?” “你怎么会问这种问题呢?就算哲学家们在建构一个理论的过程中偶尔会讨论一些似乎不是问题的问题,但你也绝对不可以放弃。笛卡尔曾说,一个思考模式必须从最基础处开始建立,我想休姆应该会同意这个说法。” “好吧,好吧。” “休姆的意思是:我们有时会将物质世界中原本并不共存的概念放在一起。刚才我们已经举过天使这个例子。以前我们也曾提到‘鳄象’这个例子,另外还有一个例子是‘飞马’。看过这些例子后,我们不得不承认我们的心灵很擅长剪贴拼凑的工作。因为,这些概念中的每一个元素都曾经由我们的感官体验过,并以真正‘印象’的形式进入心灵这个剧场。事实上没有一件事物是由我们的心灵创造的。我们的心灵只是把不同的事物放在一起,创造一个虚假的‘观念’罢了。” “是的,我明白了。这的确是很重要的。” “明白了就好。休姆希望审查每一个观念,看看它们是不是以不符合现实的方式复合而成的。他会问:这个观念是从哪一个印象而来的?遇到一个复合观念时,他要先找出这个观念是由哪些‘单一概念’共同组成的,这样他才能够加以批判、分析,并进而厘清我们的观念。” “你可以举一两个例子吗?” “在休姆的时代,许多人对‘天堂’或‘新耶路撒冷’有各种生动鲜明的想象。如果你还记得的话,笛卡尔曾说:假使我们对某些事物有‘清楚分明’的概念,则这些事物就可能确实存在。”“我说过,我的记性不差。” “在经过分析后,我们可以发现我们对‘天堂’的概念事实上是由许多元素复合而成的,例如‘珍珠门’、‘黄金街’和无数个‘天使,等。不过到这个阶段,我们仍然还没有把每一件事物都分解为单一的元素,因为珍珠门、黄金街与天使本身都是复合的概念。只有在我们了解到我们对于天堂的概念实际上是由‘珍珠’、‘门’、‘街道’、‘黄金’、‘穿白袍的人’与‘翅膀’等单一概念所组成后,我们才能自问是否真的有过这些‘单一印象’。” “我们确实有过,只是后来又把这些‘单一印象’拼凑成一幅想象的图像。” “对,正是这样。我们在拼凑这类想象图画时除了不用剪刀、浆糊之外,什么都用了。休姆强调,组成一幅想象图画的各个元素必然曾经在某一时刻以‘单一印象’的形式进入我们的心灵。否则一个从未见过黄金的人又怎能想象出黄金街道的模样?” “很聪明,但他怎么解释笛卡尔对于上帝有很清晰判明的观念这个现象呢?” “休姆的解释是:假设我们想象上帝是一个无限‘智慧、聪明、善良的事物’,那么‘上帝’这个观念就是由某个无限智慧、某个无限聪明与某个无限善良的事物共同组成的一个‘复合观念’。如果我们不知道何谓智慧、何谓聪明、何谓良善的话,我们绝不可能形成这样一个对上帝的观念。当然,也有些人认为上帝是一个‘严厉但公正的父亲’,但这个观念同样是由‘严厉’、‘正义’与‘父亲’等元素所组成。休姆之后的许多宗教批评人士都指出,人类之所以对上帝有这些观念,可能和我们孩提时代对父亲的感觉有关。他们认为我们对于父亲的观念导致我们对于‘天父’的概念。” “也许是吧。但我从不认为上帝一定是个男人。有时我妈会叫上帝‘天母’(Godiva)以求公平。” “无论如何,只要是无法回溯到特定感官认知经验的思想与观念,休姆便不接受。他说他要‘推翻那些长久以来主导哲学思想,使得哲学蒙羞的无稽之谈’。在日常生活中,我们也常使用一些复合观念,而不去思考这些观念是否站得住脚。以‘我’(或自我)这个问题为例。这是笛卡尔哲学的基础,是他全部的哲学赖以建立的一个清晰判明的知觉。” “我希望休姆不要否认‘我’就是我,否则就真的是太胡扯了。” “苏菲,我希望这门课能教你不要妄下定论。” “对不起。你继续说吧。” “不,我要你用休姆的方法来分析你所认知的你的‘自我’。” “那我必须先了解自我是一个单一概念,还是复合概念?” “你认为呢?” “我必须承认我觉得自己挺复杂的。比方说,我很容易发脾气,也满优柔寡断的。有时候我会对一个人又爱又恨。” “那么,这个‘自我概念’就是一个‘复合观念’。” “好吧。那我现在得想一想我是否曾经对于这个自我有过这样的‘复合印象’。我想大概有吧。事实上,我一直都有。” “你会因此而担心吗?” “我是很善变的。今天的我已经不是四岁时的我。我的脾气和我对自己的看法可能会在一分钟内改变,我可能会突然觉得自己使‘变了一个人’。” 不可知论者“所以说,以为自己有一个不变的自我事实上是一种不实的认知。你对自我的认知实际上是一长串你同时体验过的单一印象造成的结果。正如休姆说的,这个自我‘只不过是一束不同的知觉以无法想象的速度接连而来,不断改变并移动’的过程。他说,心灵是‘一个剧场。在这个剧场里,不同的感官认知在各种位置和情况下轮流出现、经过、再现、消退及融合’。休姆指出,我们心中有的只是这些来来去去的知觉与感觉,并没有一定的‘自我同一性’(per-sonalidentity)。这就好比我们看电影一样。由于银幕上的影像移动得如此之快,以至于我们无法看出这部电影事实上是由许多不相连的单一图像所‘组成’的。而实际上,一部影片只是许多片刻的集合而已。” “我投降了。” “你是说你不再认为人有一个不变的自我了吗?” “我想是吧。” “你看,不久前你的想法还正好相反呢!我应该再提到一点:休姆的这些理论在两千五百年前世界的另外一端已经有人提出了。” “谁?” “佛陀。不可思议的是,他们两人的想法极为相似。佛陀认为人生就是一连串心灵与肉身的变化,使人处于一种不断改变的状态:婴儿与成人不同,今日的我已非昨日的我。佛陀说,没有什么东西是‘属于我’的,也没有什么东西是我。因此,并没有‘我’或不变的自我。” “确实很像休姆的论调。” “许多理性主义者因为认定人有一个不变的自我,所以也理所当然地认为人有一个不朽的灵魂。” “难道这也是一个不实的认知吗?” “据休姆和佛陀的看法,这的确是一个不实的认知。你知道佛陀在圆寂前对弟子说什么吗?” “我怎么会知道?” “‘世间复合之物必然衰朽,应勤勉修持以求己身之解脱。’这很像是休姆或德漠克里特斯会说的话。无论如何,休姆认为人类没有必要去证明灵魂不朽或上帝确实存在。这并不是因为他认为人没有不朽的灵魂或上帝不存在,而是因为他认为要用人类的理性来证明宗教信仰是不可能的。休姆不是一个基督徒,但也不是一个无神论者,他是我们所谓的‘不可知论者’。” “什么意思?” “就是指一个怀疑上帝是否存在的人。休姆临终时,有一个朋友问他是否相信人死后还有生命。据说他的回答是:‘一块煤炭放在火上也可能不会燃烧。”’“我懂了。” “休姆的心灵没有任何成见。这个回答就是一个典型的例子。 他只接受他用感官所认知的事物。他认为除此之外,一切事情都有待证实。他并不排斥基督教或奇迹,但他认为两者都属于信仰的范踌,与知识或理性无关。我们可以说在休姆哲学的影响下,信仰与知识的关系终于被切断了。” “你说他并不否认奇迹可能会发生?” “但这也并不表示他相信奇迹。事实上正好相反。休姆指出,这些被现代人称为‘超自然现象’的奇迹似乎很少发生,因为我们所听过的奇迹统统发生在一些遥远的地方或古老的年代。实际上,休姆之所以不相信奇迹,只是因为他从未体验过任何奇迹。但他也从来没有体验过奇迹一定不会发生。” “请你说得明白一些。”“根据休姆的看法,奇迹是违反自然法则的。但是我们不能宣÷称自己已经体验过自然法则,因为这是没有意义的。我们放掉一块石头时,会体验到石头掉在地上的事实。但如果石头不掉在地上,那也是我们的体验之一。” “要是我的话,我就会说这是一个奇迹,或是超自然现象。” “这么说你相信有两种自然——一种是‘自然的’自然,一种是‘超自然’的自然。那你不是又回到理性主义的空谈了吗?” “也许吧。但我还是认为我每次把石头放掉时,它一定会掉到地上。” “为什么?” “这还用问吗?” “不是这样,苏菲。哲学家问问题是绝对没有错的。从这个问题出发,我们也许会谈到休姆哲学的要点。请你告诉我你为什么会这么肯定石头每次都会掉下来?” “我看过太多次了,所以我才百分之百肯定。” “休姆会说你只是有许多次石头掉在地上的经验而已,但你从来没有体验过它一定会掉。通常我们会说石头之所以掉到地上是受到重力定律的影响,但我们从未体验到这种定律。我们只是有过东西掉下来的经验而已。” “那不是一样吗?” “不完全一样。你说你相信石头会掉在地上的原因是你见过它发生很多次,这正是休姆的重点所在。事情发生一次又一次之后,你会变得非常习惯,以至于每次你放开石头时,总会期待发生同样的事,所以才会形成我们所谓的‘自然界不变的法则’。” “那么他的意思是说石头可能不会掉下来吗?” “他也许和你一样相信石头每次都会掉下来,但他指出他还没有体验到这种现象发生的原因。” “你看,我们又远离婴儿和花朵了。” “不,事实上正好相反。你大可以拿孩童来证明休姆的理论。如果石头浮在空中一两个小时,你想谁会比较惊讶?是你还是一个一岁大的婴儿?” “我想是我。” “为什么呢?苏菲。” “因为我比那孩子更明白这种现象是超自然的。” “为什么那个孩子不认为这是一种超自然的现象呢?” “因为他还没有了解大自然的规律。” “还是因为他还没有习惯大自然?” “我明白你的意思了。休姆希望人们能够让自己的知觉更敏锐。” “所以现在我要你做个练习;假设你和一个小孩子一起去看一场魔术表演,看到魔术师让一些东西浮在空中。你想,你们两个当中哪一个会看得比较津津有味?” “我想是我。” “为什么呢?” “因为我知道这种现象是多么不可能。” “所以说,在那个孩子还不了解自然法则之前,他看到违反自然法则的现象时,就不会觉得很有意思啰?” “应该是吧。” 习惯性期待“这也是休姆的经验哲学的要点。他可能会说,那孩子还没有成为‘习惯性期待’的奴隶。在你们两个当中,他是比较没有成见的一个。我想,小孩子应该比较可能成为好哲学家,因为他们完全没有任何先人为主的观念。而这正是哲学家最与众不同的地方。小孩子眼中所见到的乃是世界的原貌,他不会再添加任何的东西。。 “每一次我察觉到人家有偏见的时候,感觉都很不好。” “休姆谈到习惯对人的影响时,强调所谓的‘因果法则’,也就是说每一件事的发生必有其原因。他举两个撞球台上的球做为例子。如果你将一个黑球推向一个静止的白球,白球会怎样?” “如果黑球碰到白球,白球就会开始滚动。” “嗯,那么白球为什么会这样呢?” “因为它被黑球碰到了呀。” “所以我们通常说黑球的撞击是白球开始滚动的原因。可是不要忘了,我们只能讨论我们自己实际经验到的。” “我已经有很多这种经验了呀。乔安家的地下室就有一座撞球台。” “如果是休姆的话,他会说你所经验到的唯一事件是白球开始滚过台面。你并没有经验到它滚动的实际原因。你只经验到一件事情发生之后,另外一件事情跟着发生,但你并没有经验到第一件事是第二件事的原因。” “这不是有点吹毛求疵吗?” “不,这是很重要的。休姆强调的是,‘一件事情发生后另外一件事情也会发生’的想法,只是我们心中的一种期待,并不是事物的本质,而期待心理乃是与习惯有关。让我们再回到小孩子的心态吧。一个小孩子就算看到一个球碰到另外一个,而两个球都静止不动时,也不会目瞪口呆。所谓‘自然法则’或‘因果律’,实际上只是我们所期待的现象,并非‘理当如此’。自然法则没有所谓合理或不合理,它们只是存在罢了。白球被黑球碰到后会移动的现象只是我们的期待,并不是天生就会这样。我们出生时对这世界的面貌和世间种种现象并没有什么期待。这世界就是这个样子,我们需要慢慢去了解它。” “我开始觉得我们又把话题扯远了。” “不。因为我们的期待往往使我们妄下定论。休姆并不否认世间有不变的‘自然法则’。但他认为,由于我们无法体验自然法则本身,因此很容易做出错误的结论。” “比如说……?” “比如说,因为自己看到的马都是黑马,就以为世间的马都是黑色的。其实不是这样。” “当然不是。” “我这一辈子只见过黑色的乌鸦,但这并不表示世间没有白色的乌鸦。无论哲学家也好,科学家也好,都不能否认世间可能有白色的乌鸦。这是很重要的。我们几乎可以说科学的主要任务就是找寻‘白色的乌鸦’。” “嗯,我懂了。” “谈到因果问题时,可能很多人会以为闪电是造成打雷的原因,因为每次闪电之后就会打雷,这个例子和黑白球的例子并没有什么不同。可是,打雷真的是闪电造成的吗?” “不是。事实上两者是同时发生的。” “打雷和闪电都是由于放电作用所致,所以事实上是另外一种因素造成了这两个现象。” “对。” “二十世纪的实验主义哲学家罗素(BertrandRussell)举了另外一个比较可怕的例子。他说,有一只鸡发现每天农妇来到鸡舍时,它就有东西可吃。久而久之,它就认定农妇的到来与饲料被放在钵子里这两件事之间必然有某种关联。” “后来是不是有一天这只鸡发现农妇没有喂它?” “不是,有一天农妇跑来把这只鸡的脖子扭断了。” “真恶心。” “所以,我们可以知道:一件事情跟着另外一件事情发生,并不一定表示两者之间必有关联。哲学的目的之一就是教人们不要妄下定论。因为,妄下定论可能会导致许多迷信。” “怎么会呢?” “假设有一天你看到一只黑猫过街,后来你就摔了一交,跌断了手。这并不表示这两件事有任何关联。在做科学研究时,我们尤其要避免妄下结论。举个例子,有很多人吃了某一种药之后,病就好了,但这并不表示他们是被那种药治好的。这也是为什么科学家们在做实验时,总是会将一些病人组成一个所谓的‘控制组’。这些病人以为他们跟另外一组病人服用同样的药,但实际上他们吃的只是面粉和水。如果这些病人也好了,那就表示他们的病之所以痊愈另有原因,也可能是因为他们相信那种药有效,于是在心理作用之下,他们的病就好了。” “我想我开始了解经验主义的意义了。” “在伦理学方面,休姆也反对理性主义者的想法。理性主义者一向认为人的理性天生就能辨别是非对错。从苏格拉底到洛克,许多哲学家都主张有所谓的‘自然权利’。但休姆则认为,我们的言语和行为并不是由理性决定的。” “那么是由什么决定的呢?” “由我们的感情来决定。譬如说,当你决定要帮助某个需要帮助的人时,那是出自你的感情,而不是出自你的理智。” “如果我不愿意帮忙呢?” “那也是由于你的感情。就算你不想帮助一个需要帮助的人,这也没有什么合理或不合理可言,只是不怎么仁慈罢了。” “可是这种事一定有个限度呀。譬如说,每一个人都知道杀人是不对的。” “根据休姆的看法,每一个人都能感受别人的悲喜苦乐,所以我们都有同情心。但这和理智没有什么关系。” “这点我不太同意。” “有时候,除掉一个人并不一定是不智的,甚至可能是个好办法,如果你想达成某个目的的话。” “嘿,慢着!我反对。” “那么请你告诉我,为什么你认为我们不应该把一个使我们头痛的人杀掉。” “那个人也想活下去呀j因此你不应该杀他。” “这个理由是根据逻辑吗?” “我不知道。” “你从一句描述性语句‘那个人也想活’而得出你的结论‘因此你不应该杀他’。后者是我们所谓的‘规范性语句’。从理性的观点来看,这是说不通的。否则我们岂不是也可以说‘有很多人逃漏税,因此我也应该逃漏税’。休姆指出,我们绝不能从‘是不是’的语句,得出‘该不该’的结论。不过,这种现象非常普遍,无论报纸的文章或政党的演讲都充满了这样的句子。你要不要我举一些例子?” “要。” “愈来愈多人出门时想搭飞机,因此我们应该兴建更多的机场。’你认为这样的结论成立吗?” “不,这是说不通的。我们必须考虑环保问题,我想我们应该兴建更多的铁路才对。” “也可能有人会说:‘开发油田将会提高人民的生活水准达百分之十,因此我们应该尽快开发新的油田。” “胡说八道。我们还是应该考虑我们的环境,何况挪威的生活水准已经够高了。” “有时有人会说:‘这项法令已经由参议院通过了,因此所有民众都应该加以遵守。’可是民众常常并不认为他们应该遵守这类法案。” “嗯,我明白。” “所以我们已经肯定我们不能以理智做为行事的标准。因为,我们之所以做出负责任的举动并不是因为我们的理智发达的结果,而是因为我们同情别人的处境。休姆说:‘一个人可能宁愿整个地球遭到毁灭也不愿意自己的手指被割到。这与理智并没有什么冲突。’” “这种说法真可怕。” “如果你看看历史,可能会觉得更可怕。你知道纳粹分子杀害了几百万犹太人,你会说是这些人的理性有问题呢,还是他们的感情有问题?” “他们的感情一定异于常人。” “他们当中有许多都是头脑非常清楚的人。要知道,最无情、最冷血的决定,有时是经过最冷静的筹划的。许多纳粹党人在战后被定了罪,但理由并不是因为他们‘没有理性’,而是因为他们的罪行令人发指。有时那些心智丧失的人倒可以免罪,因为我们说他们‘无法为自己的行为负责’。可是到目前为止还没有人因为丧失感情而被免罪。” “本来就不应该这样。” “我们还是不要谈这么可怕的例子吧。现在如果有几百万人因为洪水而无家可归,我们究竟要不要伸以援手完全是凭感情而定。 如果我们是无情冷血、完全讲求‘理性’的人,我们也许会觉得在世界人口已经过剩的情况下,死掉个几百万人其实也没什么不好。” “太过分了,怎么可以这样想呢?” “请注意,现在生气的并不是你的理智。” “好吧,我懂你的意思了。” Berkeley like a giddy planet round a burning sun Alberto walked over to the window facing the town. Sophie followed him. While they stood looking out at the old houses, a small plane flew in over the rooftops. Fixed to its tail was a long banner which Sophie guessed would be advertising some product or local event, a rock concert perhaps. But as it approached and turned, she saw quite a different message: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HILDE! "Gate-crasher," was Alberto's only comment. Heavy black clouds from the hills to the south were now beginning to gather over the town. The little plane disappeared into the grayness. "I'm afraid there's going to be a storm," said Alberto. "So I'll take the bus home." "I only hope the major isn't behind this, too." "He's not God Almighty, is he?" Alberto did not reply. He walked across the room and sat down again by the coffee table. "We have to talk about Berkeley," he said after a while. Sophie had already resumed her place. She caught herself biting her nails. "George Berkeley was an Irish bishop who lived from 1685 to 1753," Alberto began. There was a long silence. "Berkeley was an Irish bishop ..." Sophie prompted. "But he was a philosopher as well..." "Yes?" "He felt that current philosophies and science were a threat to the Christian way of life, that the all-pervading materialism, not least, represented a threat to the Christian faith in God as creator and preserver of all nature." "He did?" "And yet Berkeley was the most consistent of the empiricists." "He believed we cannot know any more of the world than we can perceive through the senses?" "More than that. Berkeley claimed that worldly things are indeed as we perceive them, but they are not 'things.' " "You'll have to explain that." "You remember that Locke pointed out that we cannot make statements about the 'secondary qualities' of things. We cannot say an apple is green and sour. We can only say we perceive it as being so. But Locke also said that the 'primary qualities' like density, gravity, and weight really do belong to the external reality around us. External reality has, in fact, a material substance." "I remember that, and I think Locke's division of things was important." "Yes, Sophie, if only that were all." "Goon." "Locke believed--just like Descartes and Spinoza-- that the material world is a reality." "Yes?" "This is just what Berkeley questioned, and he did so by the logic of empiricism. He said the only things that exist are those we perceive. But we do not perceive 'material' or 'matter.' We do not perceive things as tangible objects. To assume that what we perceive has its own underlying 'substance' is jumping to conclusions. We have absolutely no experience on which to base such a claim." "How stupid. Look!" Sophie thumped her fist hard on the table. "Ouch," she said. "Doesn't that prove that this table is really a table, both of material and matter?" "How did you feel it?" "I felt something hard." "You had a sensation of something hard, but you didn't feel the actual matter in the table. In the same way, you can dream you are hitting something hard, but there isn't anything hard in a dream, is there?" "No, not in a dream." "A person can also be hypnotized into 'feeling' things like warmth and cold, a caress or a punch." "But if the table wasn't really hard, why did I feel it?" "Berkeley believed in a 'spirit.' He thought all our ideas have a cause beyond our consciousness, but that this cause is not of a material nature. It is spiritual." Sophie had started biting her nails again. Alberto continued: "According to Berkeley, my own soul can be the cause of my own ideas--just as when I dream--but only another will or spirit can be the cause of the ideas that make up the 'corporeal' world. Everything is due to that spirit which is the cause of 'everything in everything' and which 'all things consist in,' he said." "What 'spirit' was he talking about?" "Berkeley was of course thinking of God. He said that 'we can moreover claim that the existence of God is far more clearly perceived than the existence of man."' "Is it not even certain that we exist?" "Yes, and no. Everything we see and feel is 'an effect of God's power,' said Berkeley. For God is 'intimately present in our consciousness, causing to exist for us the profusion of ideas and perceptions that we are constantly subject to.' The whole world around us and our whole life exist in God. He is the one cause of everything that exists. We exist only in the mind of God." "I am amazed, to put it mildly." "So 'to be or not to be' is not the whole question. The question is also who we are. Are we really human beings of flesh and blood? Does our world consist of real things--or are we encircled by the mind?" Sophie continued to bite her nails. Alberto went on: "Material reality was not the only thing Berkeley was questioning. He was also questioning whether 'time' and 'space' had any absolute or independent existence. Our own perception of time and space can also be merely figments of the mind. A week or two for us need not be a week or two for God ..." "You said that for Berkeley this spirit that everything exists in is the Christian God." "Yes, I suppose I did. But for us ..." "Us?" "For us--for you and me--this 'will or spirit' that is the 'cause of everything in everything' could be Hilde's father." Sophie's eyes opened wide with incredulity. Yet at the same time a realization began to dawn on her. "Is that what you think?" "I cannot see any other possibility. That is perhaps the only feasible explanation for everything that has happened to us. All those postcards and signs that have turned up here and there... Hermes beginning to talk ... my own involuntary slips of the tongue." "I..." "Imagine my calling you Sophie, Hilde! I knew all the time that your name wasn't Sophie." "What are you saying? Now you are definitely confused." "Yes, my mind is going round and round, my child. Like a giddy planet round a burning sun." "And that sun is Hilde's father?" "You could say so." "Are you saying he's been a kind of God for us?" "To be perfectly candid, yes. He should be ashamed of himself!" "What about Hilde herself?" "She is an angel, Sophie." "An angel?" "Hilde is the one this 'spirit' turns to." "Are you saying that Albert Knag tells Hilde about us?" "Or writes about us. For we cannot perceive the matter itself that our reality is made of, that much we have learned. We cannot know whether our external reality is made of sound waves or of paper and writing. According to Berkeley, all we can know is that we are spirit." "And Hilde is an angel..." "Hilde is an angel, yes. Let that be the last word. Happy birthday, Hilde!" Suddenly the room was filled with a bluish light. A few seconds later they heard the crash of thunder and the whole house shook. "I have to go," said Sophie. She got up and ran to the front door. As she let herself out, Hermes woke up from his nap in the hallway. She thought she heard him say, "See you later, Hilde." Sophie rushed down the stairs and ran out into the street. It was deserted. And now the rain came down in torrents. One or two cars were plowing through the downpour, but there were no buses in sight. Sophie ran across Main Square and on through the town. As she ran, one thought kept going round and round in her mind: "Tomorrow is my birthday* Isn't it extra bitter to realize that life is only a dream on the day before your fifteenth birthday? It's like dreaming you won a million and then just as you're getting the money you wake up." Sophie ran across the squelching playing field. Minutes later she saw someone come running toward her. It was her mother. The sky was pierced again and again by angry darts of lightning. When they reached each other Sophie's mother put her arm around her. "What's happening to us, little one?" "I don't know," Sophie sobbed. "It's like a bad dream." 柏克莱    ……宛如燃烧的恒星旁一颗晕眩的行星…… 艾伯特走到面向市区的那一扇窗户旁。苏菲也过去站在他身边。 当他们站在那儿看着外面那些古老的房子时,突然有一架小飞机飞到那些屋顶的上方,机尾挂了一块长布条。苏菲猜想那大概是某项产品、某种活动或某场摇滚音乐会的广告。但是当它飞近,机身转向时,她看到上面写的是:“席德,生日快乐!” “不请自来。”艾伯特只说了一句。 这时,从南边山上下来的浓厚乌云已经开始聚集在市区上方了。小飞机逐渐隐没在灰色的云层中。 “恐怕会有暴风雨呢。”艾伯特说。 “所以我回家时必须坐车才行。” “我只希望这不是少校的计谋之一。” “他又不是万能的上帝。” 艾伯特没有回答。他走到房间的另一头,再度坐在茶几旁。 过了一会,他说:“我们得谈谈柏克莱。” 此时苏菲已经坐回原位。她发现自己开始咬起指甲来。 柏克莱“柏克莱(GeorgeBerkeley)是爱尔兰的一位天主教的主教,生于一六八五到一七五三年间。”艾伯特开始说,然后便沉默了很长一段时间。 “你刚才说到柏克莱是爱尔兰的一位主教……”苏菲提醒他。 “他也是一个哲学家……” “是吗?” “他觉得当时的哲学与科学潮流可能会对基督徒的生活方式有不利的影响。他认为他那个时代无所不在的唯物主义,将会腐蚀基督徒对于上帝这位创造者与大自然保护者的信心。” “是吗?” “然而他也是经验主义哲学家中理论最一贯的一位。” “他也认为我们对世界的知识只能经由感官的认知而获得吗?” “不只是这样。柏克莱宣称世间的事物的确是像我们所感知的那样。但它们并非‘事物’。” “请你解释一下好吗?”.“你还记得洛克说我们无法陈述事物的‘次要性质’吗?例如,我们不能说一个苹果是绿的或酸的。我们只能说我们感觉到它是绿的或酸的。但洛克同时也说像密度、比重和重量等‘主要性质’确实是我们周遭的外在真实世界的特性。而外在的真实世界具有物质的实体。” “我记得。而且我也认为洛克区分事物的方式是很重要的。” “是的,苏菲,但事实上并不只于此。” “说下去。” “洛克和笛卡尔、史宾诺莎一样,认为物质世界是真实的。” “然后呢?” “但柏克莱却对这点提出了疑问。他利用经验主义的逻辑提出这个疑问。他说,世间所存在的只有那些我们感受到的事情。但我们并未感受到‘物质’或‘质料’。我们无法察知我们所感受到的事物是否确实存在。他认为,如果我们认定自己所感知到的事物之下有‘实体’存在,我们就是妄下结论,因为我们绝对没有任何经验可以支持这样的说法。” “胡说八道!你看!” 苏菲用拳头重重地捶了一下桌子。 “好痛。”她说。“难道这不能证明这张桌子的确是一张桌子,既是物质,也是质料?” “你觉得这张桌子怎么样呢?” “很硬。” “你感觉到一个硬的东西,可是你并没有感觉到实际存在于桌子里的物质,对不对?同样的,你可以梦见自己碰到一个硬物,可是梦里不会有硬的东西,对不对?” “没错。” “人也会在被催眠的状态下‘感觉’冷或热,感觉被人抚摸或被人打了一拳。” “可是如果桌子实际上不是硬的,我又怎么会有这种感觉呢?” “柏克莱相信人有‘灵’。他认为我们所有的观念都有一个我们意识不到的成因。但这个成因不是物质的,而是精神性的。” 灵苏菲又开始咬指甲了。艾伯特继续说:“根据柏克莱的看法,我们的灵魂可能是形成我们本身各种概念的原因,就像我们在做梦时一般。但世间只有另外一个意志或灵可能形成造就这个‘形体’世界的诸般概念。他说,万物都是因为这个灵而存在,这个灵乃是‘万物中的万物’的成因,也是‘所有事物存在之处’。” “他说的这个‘灵’是怎样的一个东西?” “他指的当然是天主。他宣称:‘我们可以说天主的存在比人的存在要更能够让人清楚地感知到。”’“难道连我们是否存在都不确定吗?” “可以说是,也可以说不是。柏克莱说,我们所看见、所感觉到的每一件事物都是‘天主力量的作用’,因为天主‘密切存在于我们的意识中,造成那些我们不断体会到的丰富概念与感官体验’。他认为,我们周遭的世界与我们的生命全都存在于天主之中。他是万物唯一的成因,同时我们只存在于天主的心中。” “太让人惊讶了。” “因此,tobeornottobe并不是唯一的问题。问题在于我们是什么。我们真的是血肉之躯的人类吗?我们的世界是由真实的事物组成的吗?或者我们只是受到心灵的包围?” 苏菲再度咬起指甲来。艾伯特继续说:“柏克莱不只质疑物质真实性的问题,他也提出了‘时间’和‘空间’是否绝对存在或独立存在的问题。他认为,我们对于时间与空间的认知可能也只是由我们的心灵所虚构的产物而已。我们的----两个星期并不一定等于上帝的一两个星期……” “你刚才说柏克莱认为这个万物所存在于其中的灵乃是天主?” “是的。但对我们来说……” “我们?” “……对于你我来说,这个‘造成万物中之万物’的‘意志或灵’可能是席德的父亲。” 苏菲震惊极了。她的眼睛睁得大大的,一副不可置信的样子。 但同时她也开始悟出一些道理来。 “你真的这么想吗?” “除此之外,我看不出还有别的可能。只有这样,才能解释我们所经历的这些事情,包括那些到处出现的明信片和标语、汉密士开口说人话……还有我经常不由自主地叫错你的名字。” “我……” “我居然叫你苏菲,席德。我一直都知道你的名字不叫苏菲。” “你说什么?你这回是真的胡涂了。” “是的,我的脑子正转呀转的,像围绕燃烧的恒星旋转的一颗晕眩的星球。” “而那颗恒星就是席德的父亲吗?” “可以这么说。” “你是说他有点像是在扮演我们的上帝吗?” “坦白说,是的。他应该觉得惭愧才对。” “那席德呢?” “她是个天使,苏菲。” “天使?” “因为她是这个‘灵’诉求的对象。” “你是说艾勃特把关于我们的事告诉席德?” “也可能是写的。因为我们不能感知那组成我们的现实世界的物质,这是我们到目前为止所学到的东西。我们无法得知我们的外在现实世界是由声波组成还是由纸和书写的动作组成。根据柏克莱的说法,我们唯一能够知道的就是我们是灵。” “而席德是个天使……” “是的,席德是个天使。我们就说到这里为止吧。生日快乐,席德!” 突然间房里充满了一种红光。几秒钟后,他们听见雷电劈空声音,整栋房子都为之摇撼。 “我得回家了。”苏菲说。她站起身,跑到前门。她刚走出来,厉本在门廊上睡午觉的汉密士就醒过来了。她走时,仿佛听到它说“再见,席德。” 苏菲冲下楼梯,跑到街上。整条街都空无一人。雨已经开始滂沱地下着。 偶尔有一两辆车在雨中穿梭而过。但却连一辆公车的影踪也没有。苏菲跑过大广场,然后穿过市区。她一边跑时,脑中不断浮现一个念头。 明天就是我的生日了,苏菲心想。在十五岁生日前夕突然领悟到生命只不过是一场梦境而已,那种感觉真是分外苦涩啊!就好像是你中了一百万大奖,正要拿到钱时,却发现这只不过是南柯一梦。 苏菲啪哒啪哒地跑过泥泞的运动场。几分钟后,她看见有人跑,向她,原来是妈妈。此时闪电正发怒般一再劈过天际。 当她们跑到彼此身边时,妈妈伸出手臂搂着苏菲。 “孩子,我们到底发生什么事了?” “我不知道,”苏菲啜泣。“好像一场噩梦一样。” Bjerkely an old magic mirror Great-grandmother had bought from a Gypsy woman ... Hilde Moller Knag awoke in the attic room in the old captain's house outside Lillesand. She glanced at the clock. It was only six o'clock, but it was already light. Broad rays of morning sun lit up the room. She got out of bed and went to the window. On the way she stopped by the desk and tore a page off her calendar. Thursday, June 14, 1990. She crumpled the page up and threw it in her wastebasket. Friday, June 15, 1990, said the calendar now, shining at her. Way back in January she had written "15th birthday" on this page. She felt it was extra-special to be fifteen on the fifteenth. It would never happen again. Fifteen! Wasn't this the first day of her adult life? She couldn't just go back to bed. Furthermore, it was the last day of school before the summer vacation. The students just had to appear in church at one o'clock. And what was more, in a week Dad would be home from Lebanon. He had promised to be home for Midsummer Eve. Hilde stood by the window and looked out over the garden, down toward the dock behind the little red boat-house. The motorboat had not yet been brought out for the summer, but the old rowboat was tied up to the dock. She must remember to bail the water out of it after last night's heavy downpour. As she was looking out over the little bay, she remembered the time when as a little girl of six she had climbed up into the rowboat and rowed out into the bay alone. She had fallen overboard and it was all she could do to struggle ashore. Drenched to the skin, she had pushed her way through the thicket hedge. As she stood in the garden looking up at the house, her mother had come running toward her. The boat and both oars were left afloat in the bay. She still dreamed about the boat sometimes, drifting on its own, abandoned. It had been an embarrassing experience. The garden was neither especially luxuriant nor particularly well kept. But it was large and it was Hilde's. A weather-beaten apple tree and a few practically barren fruit bushes had just about survived the severe winter storms. The old glider stood on the lawn between granite rocks and thicket. It looked so forlorn in the sharp morning light. Even more so because the cushions had been taken in. Mom had probably hurried out late last night and rescued them from the rain. There were birch trees--bj0rketreer--all around the large garden, sheltering it partly, at least, from the worst squalls. It was because of those trees that the house had been renamed Bjerkely over a hundred years ago. Hilde's great-grandfather had built the house some years before the turn of the century. He had been a captain on one of the last tall sailing ships. There were a lot of people who continued to call it the captain's house. That morning the garden still showed signs of the heavy rain that had suddenly started late last evening. Hilde had been awakened several times by bursts of thunder. But today there was not a cloud in the sky. Everything is so fresh after a summer storm like that. It had been hot and dry for several weeks and the tips of the leaves on the birch trees had started to turn yellow. Now it was as if the whole world had been newly washed. It seemed as if even her childhood had been washed away with the storm. "Indeed, there is pain when spring buds burst..." Wasn't there a Swedish poet who had said something like that? Or was she Finnish? Hilde stood in front of the heavy brass mirror hanging on the wall above Grandmother's old dresser. Was she pretty? She wasn't ugly, anyway. Maybe she was kind of in-between ... She had long, fair hair. Hilde had always wished her hair could be either a bit fairer or a bit darker. This in-between color was so mousy. On the positive side, there were these soft curls. Lots of her friends struggled to get their hair to curl just a little bit, but Hilde's hair had always been naturally curly. Another positive feature, she thought, were her deep green eyes. "Are they really green?" her aunts and uncles used to say as they bent over to look at her. Hilde considered whether the image she was studying was that of a girl or that of a young woman. She decided it was neither. The body might be quite womanly, but the face reminded her of an unripe apple. There was something about this old mirror that always made Hilde think of her father. It had once hung down in the "studio." The studio, over the boathouse, was her father's combined library, writer's workshop, and retreat. Albert, as Hilde called him when he was home, had always wanted to write something significant. Once he had tried to write a novel, but he never finished it. From time to time he had had a few poems and sketches of the archipelago published in a national journal. Hilde was so proud every time she saw his name in print. ALBERT KNAG. It meant something in Lillesan^, anyway. Her great-grandfather's name had also been Albert. The mirror. Many years ago her father had joked about not being able to wink at your own reflection with both eyes at the same time, except in this brass mirror. It was an exception because it was an old magic mirror Great-grandmother had bought from a Gypsy woman just after her wedding. Hilde had tried for ages, but it was just as hard to wink at yourself with both eyes as to run away from your own shadow. In the end she had been given the old family heirloom to keep. Through the years she had tried from time to time to master the impossible art. Not surprisingly, she was pensive today. And not unnaturally, she was preoccupied with herself. Fifteen years old ... She happened to glance at her bedside table. There was a large package there. It had pretty blue wrapping and was tied with a red silk ribbon. It must be a birthday present! Could this be the present? The great big present from Dad that had been so very secret? He had dropped so many cryptic hints in his cards from Lebanon. But he had "imposed a severe censorship on himself." The present was something that "grew bigger and bigger," he had written. Then he had said something about a girl she was soon to meet--and that he had sent copies of all his cards to her. Hilde had tried to pump her mother for clues, but she had no idea what he meant, either. The oddest hint had been that the present could perhaps be "shared with other people." He wasn't working for the UN for nothing! If her father had one bee in his bonnet--and he had plenty--it was that the. UN ought to be a kind of world government. May the UN one day really be able to unite the whole of humanity, he had written on one of his cards. Was she allowed to open the package before her mother came up to her room singing "Happy Birthday to You," with pastry and a Norwegian flag? Surely that was why it had been put there? She walked quietly across the room and picked up the package. It was heavy! She found the tag: To Hilde on her 15th birthday from Dad. She sat on the bed and carefully untied the red silk ribbon. Then she undid the blue paper. It was a large ring binder. Was this her present? Was this the fifteenth-birthday present that there had been so much fuss about? The present that grew bigger and bigger and could be shared with other people? A quick glance showed that the ring binder was rilled with typewritten pages. Hilde recognized them as being from her father's typewriter, the one he had taken with him to Lebanon. Had he written a whole book for her? On the first page, in large handwritten letters, was the title, SOPHIE'S WORLD. Farther down the page there were two typewritten lines of poetry: TRUE ENLIGHTENMENT IS TO MAN LIKE SUNLIGHT TO THE SOIL --N.F.S. Grundtvig Hilde turned to the next page, to the beginning of the first chapter. It was entitled "The Garden of Eden." She got into bed, sat up comfortably, resting the ring binder against her knees, and began to read. Sophie Amundsen was on her way home from school. She had walked the first part of the way with Joanna. They had been discussing robots. Joanna thought the human brain was like an advanced computer. Sophie was not certain she agreed. Surely a person was more than a piece of hardware? Hilde read on, oblivious of all else, even forgetting that it was her birthday. From time to time a brief thought crept in between the lines as she read: Had Dad written a book? Had he finally begun on the significant novel and completed it in Lebanon? He had often complained that time hung heavily on one's hands in that part of the world. Sophie's father was far from home, too. She was probably the girl Hilde would be getting to know ... Only by conjuring up an intense feeling of one day being dead could she appreciate how terribly good life was... . Where does the world come from? ... At some point something must have come from nothing. But was that possible? Wasn't that just as impossible as the idea that the world had always existed? Hilde read on and on. With surprise, she read about Sophie Amundsen receiving a postcard from Lebanon: "Hilde Moller Knag, c/o Sophie Amundsen, 3 Clover Close..." Dear Hilde, Happy 15th birthday. As I'm sure you'll understand, I want to give you a present that will help you grow. Forgive me for sending the card c/o Sophie. It was the easiest way. Love from Dad. The joker! Hilde knew her father had always been a sly one, but today he had really taken her by surprise! Instead of tying the card on the package, he had written it into the book. But poor Sophie! She must have been totally confused! Why would a father send a birthday card to Sophie's address when it was quite obviously intended to go somewhere else? What kind of father would cheat his own daughter of a birthday card by purposely sending it astray? How could it be "the easiest way"? And above all, how was she supposed to trace this Hilde person? No, how could she? Hilde turned a couple of pages and began to read the second chapter, "The Top Hat." She soon came to the long letter which a mysterious person had written to Sophie. Being interested in why we are here is not a "casual" interest like collecting stamps. People who ask such questions are taking part in a debate that has gone on as long as man has lived on this planet. "Sophie was completely exhausted." So was Hilde. Not only had Dad written a book for her fifteenth birthday, he had written a strange and wonderful book. To summarize briefly: A white rabbit is pulled out of a top hat. Because it is an extremely large rabbit, the trick takes many billions of years. All mortals are born at the very tip of the rabbit's fine hairs, where they are in a position to wonder at the impossibility of the trick. But as they grow older they work themselves ever deeper into the fur. And there they stay . . . Sophie was not the only one who felt she had been on the point of finding herself a comfortable place deep down in the rabbit's fur. Today was Hilde's fifteenth birthday, and she had the feeling it was time to decide which way she would choose to crawl. She read about the Greek natural philosophers. Hilde knew that her father was interested in philosophy. He had written an article in the newspaper proposing that philosophy should be a regular school subject. It was called "Why should philosophy be part of the school curriculum?" He had even raised the issue at a PTA meeting in Hilde's class. Hilde had found it acutely em-barrassing. She looked at the clock. It was seven-thirty. It would probably be half an hour before her mother came up with the breakfast tray, thank goodness, because right now she was engrossed in Sophie and all the philosophical questions. She read the chapter called "Democritus." First of all, Sophie got a question to think about: Why is Lego the most ingenious toy in the world? Then she found a large brown envelope in the mailbox: Democritus agreed with his predecessors that transformations in nature could not be due to the fact that anything actually "changed." He therefore assumed that everything was built up of tiny invisible blocks, each of which was eternal and immutable. Democritus called these smallest units atoms. Hilde was indignant when Sophie found the red silk scarf under her bed. So that was where it was! But how could a scarf just disappear into a story? It had to be someplace... The chapter on Socrates began with Sophie reading "something about the Norwegian UN battalion in Lebanon" in the newspaper. Typical Dad! He was so concerned that people in Norway were not interested enough in the UN forces' peacekeeping task. If nobody else was, then Sophie would have to be. In that way he could write it into his story and get some sort of attention from the media. She had to smile as she read the P.P.S. in the philosophy teacher's letter to Sophie: If you should come across a red silk scarf anywhere, please take care of it. Sometimes personal property gets mixed up. Especially at school and places like that, and this is a philosophy school. Hilde heard her mother's footsteps on the stairs. Before she knocked on the door, Hilde had begun to read about Sophie's discovery of the video of Athens in her secret den. "Happy birthday ..." Her mother had begun to sing halfway up the stairs. "Come in," said Hilde, in the middle of the passage where the philosophy teacher was talking directly to Sophie from the Acropolis. He looked almost exactly like Hilde's father--with a "black, well-trimmed beard" and a blue beret. "Happy birthday, Hilde!" "Uh-huh." "Hilde?" "Just put it there." "Aren't you going to ... ?" "You can see I'm reading." "Imagine, you're fifteen!" "Have you ever been to Athens, Mom?" "No, why do you ask?" "It's so amazing that those old temples are still standing. They are actually 2,500 years old. The biggest one is called the Virgin's Place, by the way." "Have you opened your present from Dad?" "What present?" "You must look up now, Hilde. You're in a complete daze." Hilde let the large ring binder slide down onto her lap. Her mother stood leaning over the bed with the tray. On it were lighted candles, buttered rolls with shrimp salad, and a soda. There was also a small package. Her mother stood awkwardly holding the tray with both hands, with a flag under one arm. "Oh, thanks a lot, Mom. It's sweet of you, but I'm really busy." "You don't have to go to school till one o'clock." Not until now did Hilde remember where she was, and her mother put the tray down on the bedside table. "Sorry, Mom. I was completely absorbed in this." "What is it he has written, Hilde? I've been just as mystified as you. It's been impossible to get a sensible word out of him for months." For some reason Hilde felt embarrassed. "Oh, it's just a story." "A story?" "Yes, a story. And a history of philosophy. Or something like that." "Aren't you going to open the package from me?" Hilde didn't want to be unfair, so she opened her mother's present right away. It was a gold bracelet. "It's lovely, Mom! Thank you very much!" Hilde got out of bed and gave her mother a hug. They sat talking for a while. Then Hilde said, "I have to get back to the book, Mom. Right now he's standing on top of the Acropolis." "Who is?" "I've no idea. Neither has Sophie. That's the whole point." "Well, I have to get to work. Don't forget to eat something. Your dress is on a hanger downstairs." Finally her mother disappeared down the stairs. So did Sophie's philosophy teacher; he walked down the steps from the Acropolis and stood on the Areopagos rock before appearing a little later in the old square of Athens. Hilde shivered when the old buildings suddenly rose from the ruins. One of her father's pet ideas had been to let all the United Nations countries collaborate in reconstructing an exact copy of the Athenian square. It would be the forum for philosophical discussion and also for disarmament talks. He felt that a giant project like that would forge world unity. "We have, after all, succeeded in building oil rigs and moon rockets." Then she read about Plato. "The soul yearns to fly home on the wings of love to the world of ideas. It longs to be freed from the chains of the body ..." Sophie had crawled through the hedge and followed Hermes, but the dog had escaped her. After having read about Plato, she had gone farther into the woods and come upon the red cabin by the little lake. Inside hung a painting of Bjerkely. From the description it was clearly meant to be Hilde's Bjerkely. But there was also a portrait of a man named Berkeley. "How odd!" Hilde laid the heavy ring binder aside on the bed and went over to her bookshelf and looked him up in the three-volume encyclopedia she had been given on her fourteenth birthday. Here he was--Berkeley! Berkeley, George, 1685-1753, Eng. Philos., Bishop of Cloyne. Denied existence of a material world beyond the human mind. Our sense perceptions proceed from God. Main work: A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710). Yes, it was decidedly odd. Hilde stood thinking for a few seconds before going back to bed and the ring binder. In one way, it was her father who had hung the two pictures on the wall. Could there be any connection other than the similarity of names? Berkeley was a philosopher who denied the existence of a material world beyond the human mind. That was certainly very strange, one had to admit. But it was not easy to disprove such claims, either. As regards Sophie, it fitted very well. After all, Hilde's father was respon-sible for her "sense perceptions." Well, she would know more if she read on. Hilde looked up from the ring binder and smiled when she got to the point where Sophie discovers the reflection of a girl who winks with both eyes. "The other girl had winked at Sophie as if to say: I can see you, Sophie. I am here, on the other side." Sophie finds the green wallet in the cabin as well-- with the money and everything! How could it have made its way there? Absurd! For a second or two Hilde had really believed that Sophie had found it. But then she tried to imagine how the whole thing must appear to Sophie. It must all seem quite inscrutable and uncanny. For the first time Hilde felt a strong desire to meet Sophie face to face. She felt like telling her the real truth about the whole business. But now Sophie had to get out of the cabin before she was caught red-handed. The boat was adrift on the lake, of course. (Her father couldn't resist reminding her of that old story, could he!) Hilde gulped a mouthful of soda and took a bite of her roll while she read the letter about the "meticulous" Aristotle, who had criticized Plato's theories. Aristotle pointed out that nothing exists in consciousness that has not first been experienced by the senses. Plato would have said that there is nothing in the natural world that has not first existed in the world of ideas. Aristotle held that Plato was thus "doubling the number of things." Hilde had not known that it was Aristotle who had invented the game of "animal, vegetable, or mineral." Aristotle wanted to do a thorough clearing up in nature's "room." He tried to show that everything in nature belongs to different categories and subcategories. When she read about Aristotle's view of women she was both irritated and disappointed. Imagine being such a brilliant philosopher and yet such a crass idiot! Aristotle had inspired Sophie to clean up her own room. And there, together with all the other stuff, she found the white stocking which had disappeared from Hilde's closet a month ago! Sophie put all the pages she had gotten from Alberto into a ring binder. "There were in all over fifty pages." For her own part, Hilde had gotten up to page 124, but then she also had Sophie's story on top of all the correspondence from Alberto Knox. The next chapter was called "Hellenism." First of all, Sophie finds a postcard with a picture of a UN jeep. It is stamped UN Battalion, June 15. Another of these "cards" to Hilde that her father had put into the story instead of sending by mail. Dear Hilde, I assume you are still celebrating your fifteenth birthday. Or is this the morning after? Anyway, it makes no difference to your present. In a sense, that will last a lifetime. But I'd like to wish you a happy birthday one more time. Perhaps you understand now why I send the cards to Sophie. I am sure she will pass them on to you. P.S. Mom said you had lost your wallet. I hereby promise to reimburse you the 150 crowns. You will probably be able to get another school I.D. before they close for the summer vacation. Love from Dad. Not bad! That made her 150 crowns richer. He probably thought a homemade present alone wasn't enough. So it appeared that June 15 was Sophie's birthday, too. But Sophie's calendar had only gotten as far as the middle of May. That must have been when her father had written this chapter, and he had postdated the "birthday card" to Hilde. But poor Sophie, running down to the supermarket to meet Joanna. Who was Hilde? How could her father as good as take it for granted that Sophie would find her? In any case, it was senseless of him to send Sophie the cards instead of sending them directly to his daughter. Hilde, like Sophie, was elevated to the celestial spheres as she read about Plotinus. I believe there is something of the divine mystery in everything that exists. We can see it sparkle in a sunflower or a poppy. We sense more of the unfathomable mystery in a butterfly that flutters from a twig-- or in a goldfish swimming in a bowl. But we are closest to God in our own soul. Only there can we become one with the greatest mystery of life. In truth, at very rare moments we can experience that we ourselves are that divine mystery. This was the most giddying passage Hilde had read up to now. But it was nevertheless the simplest. Everything is one, and this "one" is a divine mystery that everyone shares. This was not really something you needed to believe. It is so, thought Hilde. So everyone can read what they like into the word "divine." She turned quickly to the next chapter. Sophie and Joanna go camping the night before the national holiday on May 17. They make their way to the major's cabin... Hilde had not read many pages before she flung the bedclothes angrily aside, got up, and began to walk up and down, clutching the ring binder in her hands. This was just about the most impudent trick she had ever heard of. In that little hut in the woods, her father lets these two girls find copies of all the cards he had sent Hilde in the first two weeks of May. And the copies were real enough. Hilde had read the very same words over and over. She recognized every single word. Dear Hilde, I am now so bursting with all these secrets for your birthday that I have to stop myself several times a day from calling home and blowing the whole thing. It is something that simply grows and grows. And as you know, when a thing gets bigger and bigger it's more difficult to keep it to yourself. . . Sophie gets a new lesson from Alberto. It's all about Jews and Greeks and the two great cultures. Hilde liked getting this wide bird's-eye view of history. She had never learned anything like it at school. They only gave you details and more details. She now saw Jesus and Christianity in a completely new light. She liked the quote from Goethe: "He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth." The next chapter began with a piece of card which sticks to Sophie's kitchen window. It is a new birthday card for Hilde, of course. Dear Hilde, I don't know whether it will still be your birthday when you read this card. I hope so, in a way; or at least that not too many days have gone by. A week or two for Sophie does not have to mean just as long for us. I shall be coming home for Midsummer Eve, so we can sit together for hours in the glider, looking out over the sea, Hilde. We have so much to talk about. . . Then Alberto calls Sophie, and this is the first time she hears his voice. "You make it sound like a war." "I would rather call it a battle of wills. We have to attract Hilde's attention and get her over on our side before her father comes home to Lillesand." And then Sophie meets Alberto Knox disguised as a medieval monk in the twelfth-century stone church. Oh, no, the church! Hilde looked at the time. A quarter past one ... She had forgotten all about the time. Maybe it wouldn't matter so much that she cut school on her birthday. But it did mean that her classmates wouldn't be celebrating with her. Oh well, she had always had plenty of well-wishers. Soon she found herself receiving a long sermon. Alberto had no problem slipping into the role of a medieval priest. When she read about how Sophia had appeared to Hildegard in visions, she turned once again to her encyclopedia. But this time she found nothing about either of them. Wasn't that typical! As soon as it was a question of women or something to do with women, the en-cyclopedia was about as informative as a moon crater. Was the whole work censored by the Society for the Protection of Men? Hildegard of Bingen was a preacher, a writer, a doctor, a botanist, and a biologist. She was "perhaps an example of the fact that women were often more practical, more scientific even, in the Middle Ages." But there was not a single word about her in the encyclopedia. How scandalous! Hilde had never heard that God had a "female side" or a "mother nature." Her name was Sophia, apparently--but she was apparently not worth printer's ink, either. The nearest she could find in the encyclopedia was an entry about the Santa Sophia Church in Constantinople (now Istanbul), named Hagia Sophia, which means Sacred Wisdom. But there was nothing about it being female. That was censorship, wasn't it? Otherwise, it was true enough that Sophie had revealed herself to Hilde. She was picturing the girl with the straight hair all the time ... When Sophie gets home after spending most of the morning in St. Mary's Church, she stands in front of the brass mirror she took home from the cabin in the woods. She studied the sharp contours of her own pale face framed by that impossible hair which defied any style but nature's own. But beyond that face was the apparition of another girl. Suddenly the other girl began to wink frantically with both eyes, as if to signal that she was really in there on the other side. The apparition lasted only a few seconds. Then she was gone. How many times had Hilde stood in front of the mirror like that as if she was searching for someone else behind the glass? But how could her father have known that? Wasn't it also a dark-haired woman she had been searching for? Great-grandmother had bought it from a Gypsy woman, hadn't she? Hilde felt her hands shaking as they held the book. She had the feeling that Sophie really existed somewhere "on the other side." Now Sophie is dreaming about Hilde and Bjerkely. Hilde can neither see nor hear her, but then--Sophie finds Hilde's gold crucifix on the dock. And the crucifix--with Hilde's initials and everything--is in Sophie's bed when she wakes after her dream! Hilde forced herself to think hard. Surely she hadn't lost her crucifix as well? She went to her dresser and took out her jewelry case. The crucifix, which she had received as a christening gift from her grandmother, was not there! So she really had lost it. All right, but how had her father known it when she didn't even know it herself? And another thing: Sophie had apparently dreamed that Hilde's father came home from Lebanon. But there was still a week to go before that happened. Was Sophie's dream prophetic? Did her father mean that when he came home Sophie would somehow be there? He had written that she would get a new friend ... In a momentary vision of absolute clarity Hilde knew that Sophie was more than just paper and ink. She really existed. 柏客来    ……曾祖母向一名吉普赛妇人买的一面古老魔镜…… 在黎乐桑郊区古老的船长屋的阁楼里,席德醒来了。她看看钟,才六点,但天色已经大亮。早晨的太阳已经将房间内的一整面墙壁都照亮了。 她起床走向窗前,经过书桌时停了一下,看见桌上写着:一九九O年六月十四日星期四。她把这页撕了下来,揉成一团,丢进字纸篓中。 现在桌历上的日期是一九九O年六月十五日星期五,簇新的日历纸闪闪发亮。早在今年一月时,她就在这一页上写下了“十五岁生日”这几个字。她觉得能在十五日这一天过十五岁生日实在很特别。这种机会一生只有一次。 十五岁!今天岂不是她过成人生活的第一天吗?所以,她不能再回床上去睡了。再说,今天是学校放暑假前的最后一天,学生下午一点钟必须在教堂集合。更何况,再过一个星期,爸爸就从黎巴嫩回来了。他答应要在仲夏节前回家。 席德站在窗前,俯瞰着外面的花园,以及红色的小船屋后面的平台。夏天用的汽艇还没有抬出来,但那条老旧的小船已经系在平台边了。她想到昨夜的那场倾盆大雨,便提醒自己今天一定要记得把小舟里的积水舀出来。 现在,她俯视着那个小海湾,想起她还是个六岁的小女孩时,有一次曾经爬进那条小船,独自一人划到狭湾去。后来她掉到水里,勉强挣扎着上岸,然后浑身湿淋淋的穿过矮树篱;当她站在花园里仰望着她家的房子时,她妈妈跑过来了。那条小船和两支桨就一直在狭湾里漂浮着。如今她偶尔还会梦见小船空无一人、径自漂流的情景。那真是很令人难为情的一次经验。 她家的这座园子花草既不特别繁茂,也没有经过刻意修整,但却相当宽敞。这是属于她的花园。园里那棵久经风霜的苹果树和几株光秃秃的灌木经过严寒的冬季暴风雪洗礼之后,仍然劲挺。在早晨明亮的阳光下,花岗岩与灌木丛之间的草坪上那座老旧的秋千显得分外孤零。秋千上的沙发垫子已经不见了。可能是昨天夜里妈妈匆匆跑出去收进来以免被雨淋湿。 为了避免暴风的吹袭,这座大花园四周都种有桦树。正是因为这些桦树,这栋房子才在一百多年前被改名为“柏客来”山庄。 这座山庄是在十九世纪末由席德的曾祖父兴建的。他是一艘大帆船的船长,也因此到现在还有许多人称这座宅子为“船长屋”。 今天早晨花园里仍留有昨夜豪雨的痕迹。这场雨在昨天黄昏时突然下了起来,到了夜里,席德几度被怒吼的雷声惊醒。但是今天却是万里无云的晴朗天气。 在风雨过后,万物显得如此清新。过去好几个星期以来,天气一直炎热干燥,以致桦树的叶尖已经长出了难看的黄色斑点。现在,大地宛如刚刚经过一番清洗。席德觉得自己的童年仿佛也随着这场风雨一去不返。 “春天的芽苞爆裂时确实是痛苦的……”不是有一位瑞典(还是芬兰?)的女诗人说过类似的话吗?她好看吗?至少长得不丑。也许是介于两者之间……席德站在祖母的老五斗柜上方挂的那面沉重的铜镜前。 她好看吗?至少长得不丑。也许是介于两者之间……她有一头金色的长发。以前她总是希望自己的发色能够更亮或更暗一些,因为像这样不上不下的颜色看起来是如此平凡无奇。 还好她的头发天生微鬈,不需要像她那些朋友一般费尽心思,只为了让头发鬈起一点点。她的另一个优点是一双深绿色的眼睛。“真的是绿色的吗?”以前她的叔叔婶婶们总是这么说,同时一边俯身端详她。 席德站在镜前,注视着自己的面容。她还是小女孩吗?或是已经长成少女了?她觉得两者都不是。她的身体也许已经颇有女人味了,但她的脸却还是像一个未成熟的苹果。 这面古老的镜子总是让席德想起她的父亲,因为它从前一度挂在“工作室”里。那间“工作室”就在船屋上面,是她父亲读书、写作、休息的地方。他一直希望能写一些有意义的东西。有一次他曾经试着写一本小说,却一直没有完成。他写的诗和他画的岛屿素描不时刊登在一家全国性期刊上。席德每次看到爸爸的名字“艾勃特”登出来,都觉得好骄傲。这样的事在黎乐桑还是不太常见的。 对于,这面镜子!许多年前她的爸爸曾经开玩笑说,他只有在看着这面铜镜时才能对着镜中的影像同时眨动双眼,因为它是曾祖母刚结完婚后向一个吉普赛妇人买的古老魔镜。 席德曾经试了无数次,但发现要对着镜子眨动双眼几乎就像要逃离自己的影子一样困难。最后爸妈把这件传家宝给了她,由她保存。这几年来她仍然不时练习这个不太可能达成的技巧。 她今天思绪汹涌,不停想着一些有关自己的事。但这是很正常的,毕竟她已经十五岁了……生日礼物这时她偶然瞥见床头几上有一个大包裹,用美丽的蓝纸包着,并绑着红色的丝带。不用说,一定是一份生日礼物!难道这就是爸爸说过要送她的那份神秘的大礼物吗?他从黎巴嫩寄来的明信片中曾经给她许多扑朔迷离的提示,可是却说他“严格禁止自己泄漏天机”。 他在信里透露,这份礼物会“愈来愈大”。然后他又提到一个她很快就会见到的女孩,并说他把寄给她的明信片也寄了一份给那女孩。席德曾试着套妈妈的话,希望她能透露一点口风,但妈妈也不知道爸爸在玩什么把戏。 在各种提示中,最奇怪的一项是:这礼物将是一份她“可与别人共享的”的东西。席德的爸爸为联合国工作不是没有目的的。他的脑袋里有许多想法,其中之一就是联合国应该成为一个类似世界政府的机构。他曾经在一张明信片里表示,希望联合国有一天真的能够使全人类团结起来。 待会儿,妈妈将会拿着面包和汽水及挪威小国旗上楼到她的房里来唱生日快乐歌。她可以在妈妈来到之前打开这个包裹吗?应该可以吧。要不然它为什么会放在那儿呢?她悄悄走上前去,拿起那个包裹。乖乖!很重呢!她看到上面贴着一张纸,写着:“给席德的十五岁生日礼物,爸爸赠。” 她坐在床上,小心地解开那条红色的丝带,然后打开蓝色的包装纸。 里面是一个大大的讲义夹。 这就是爸爸给她的生日礼物吗?这就是他大费周章为她准备的十五岁生日礼物吗?这就是那份会愈来愈大,可以与别人共享的礼物吗?席德很快发现讲义夹内装满了打好字的纸张。她认出这是爸爸用他带到黎巴嫩的那架打字机打出来的字。 难道他为她写了一本书?第一页上面有用手写的几个大字: 苏菲的世界 这是书名。 书名下面用打字机打了两行诗: 真实启蒙之于人如同阳光之于土 葛朗维格(N.F.S.Grundtvig) 席德翻到下一页,也就是第一章的开始。这章题名为《伊甸园》。席德爬上床,舒服地坐在那儿,将讲义夹放在膝盖上,开始看了起来:苏菲放学回家了。有一段路她和乔安同行,她们谈着有关机器人的问题。乔安认为人的脑子就像一部很先进的电脑,这点苏菲并不大赞同。她想:人应该不只是一台机器吧?席德看着看着,忘记了其他一切的事情,甚至忘记了今天是她的生日。她读着读着,脑海中不时浮现一个问号:爸爸写了一本书吗?他在黎巴嫩时是否终于开始撰写那部很有意义的小说,并且完成了呢?他以前时常抱怨他在那儿不知该如何打发时间。 苏菲的爸爸也离家很远。她也许就是那个席德将要开始认识的女孩……唯有清晰的意识到有一天她终将死去,她才能够体会活在世上是多么美好……世界从何而来?……在某一时刻,事物必然曾经从无到有。然而,这可能吗?这不就像世界一直存在的看法一样不可思议吗?席德读着读着。当她读到苏菲接到一封来自黎巴嫩的明信片,上面写着:“苜蓿路三号,苏菲收,请代转席德”时,不禁困惑地扭动着腿。 亲爱的席德: 你满十五岁了,生日快乐!我想你会明白,我希望给你一样能帮助你成长的生日礼物。原谅我请苏菲代转这张卡片,因为这样最方便。 爱你的老爸 这个促狭鬼!席德知道爸爸一向爱耍花样,但今天他才真正教她开了眼界。他没有将卡片绑在包裹上,而是将它写进书里了。 只是可怜了苏菲,她一定困惑极了。 怎么会有父亲把生日卡寄到苏菲家?这明明不是给她的呀!什么样的父亲会故意把信寄到别人家,让女儿收不到生日卡呢?为什么他说这是“最方便”的呢?更何况,苏菲要怎样才能找到这个名叫席德的人?是呀,她怎么找得到呢?席德翻了两三页,然后开始读第二章“魔术师的礼帽”。她很快便读到那个神秘的人写给苏菲的长信。她屏住了呼吸。 想知道为何我们会在这儿并不像搜集邮票一样是一种休闲式的兴趣。那些对这类问题有兴趣的人所要探讨的,乃是自地球有人类以来人们就一直辩论不休的问题。 “苏菲真是累极了。”席德也是。爸爸为她的十五岁生日写了一本书,而这是一本又奇怪又精彩的书。 简而言之,这世界就像魔术师从他的帽子里拉出的一只白兔。 只是这白兔的体积极其庞大,因此这场戏法要数十亿年才变得出来,所有的生物都出生于这只兔子的细毛顶端,他们刚开始对于这场令人不可置信的戏法感到惊奇。然而当他们年纪愈长,也就愈深入兔予的毛皮,并且待了下来…...苏菲并不是唯一觉得自己正要在兔子的毛皮深处找到一个舒适的地方待下来的人。 今天是席德的十五岁生日。她觉得现在正是她决定未来的道路应该怎么走的时候。 她读到希腊自然派哲学家的学说。席德知道爸爸一向对哲学很有兴趣,他曾经在报纸上发表过一篇主张哲学应该列入学校基本课程的文章,题目为:“为何哲学应该列入学校课程?”他甚至曾在席德的班上举行的家长会中提出这项建议,让席德觉得很不好意思。 席德看了一下时钟。七点半了。大概还要再过半小时,妈妈才会端着早餐托盘上楼来。谢天谢地,因为现在她满脑子都是苏菲和那些哲学问题。她读到德谟克里特斯那一章。苏菲正在思考一个问题:为什么积木是世间上最巧妙的玩具?然后她又在信箱里发现了一个“棕色的大信封”:德谟克里特斯同意前面几位哲学家的看法,认为自然界的转变不是因为任何事物真的有所“改变”。他相信每一种事物都是由微小的积木所组成,而每一块积木都是永恒不变的。德谟克里特斯把这些最小的单位称为原子。 席德读到苏菲在床底下发现那条红色丝巾时,不禁大感生气。 原来它跑到那里去了!可是丝巾怎么可能跑到一个故事里去呢?它一定是在别的地方……有关苏格拉底那一章一开始是苏菲在报纸上看到“挪威联合国部队在黎巴嫩的消息”。爸爸就是这样!他很在意挪威人对联合国和平部队的任务不感兴趣这件事,所以才故意做这样的安排,让苏菲非关心不可。这样他就可以把这件事写进他的故事里,借此得到一些媒体的注意。 席德读到哲学家写给苏菲的信后面的附注时,不禁笑了起来。 附注的内容是这样的:如果你在某处看到一条红色的丝巾,请加以保管,那样的东西常常会被人拿错。尤其是在学校等地,而我们这儿又是一所哲学学校。 席德听到妈妈上楼的脚步声。在她敲门前,席德已经开始读到苏菲在她的密洞中发现雅典的录影带那一段。 “祝你生日快乐!祝你生日快乐!……” 楼梯上到一半,妈妈就已经开始唱了。 “亲爱的席德,生日快乐!祝你生日快乐!” “请进。”席德说。这时她正读到哲学家老师从希腊高城向苏菲说话。看起来他和席德的爸爸几乎一模一样,留了一嘴“修剪整齐的黑胡子”,头戴蓝扁帽。 “席德,生日快乐!” “嗯。” “席德?” “放在那儿就好了。” “你不……?” “你没看到我正在看东西吗?” “真奇妙呀,你已经十五岁了!” “妈,你有没有去过雅典?” “没有,你问这干嘛?” “那些古老的神庙到现在还屹立不摇,多奇妙呀!它们真的已经有两千五百年的历史了。还有,最大的一座名叫‘处女之地’。” “你打开爸爸给你的礼物了吗?” “什么礼物?” “席德,请你把头抬起来。你怎么一副迷迷糊糊的样子?” 席德让讲义夹滑到她的怀中。 此时妈妈正站在床头,手端着托盘,俯身看着她。托盘上有几根已经点燃的蜡烛,几个夹着鲜虾沙拉的奶油面包和一罐汽水。旁,边也有一个小包裹。妈妈站在那儿,两手端着托盘,一边的腋下夹着一面旗子,样子很笨拙。 “喔,谢谢妈妈。你真好,可是你看我现在正忙着呢!” “你今天下午一点才要上学。” 这时席德似乎才想起自己身在何处。妈妈把托盘放在床头几上。 “对不起,妈。我完全被这东西吸引住了。” “席德,他写些什么?我和你一样一直搞不清楚你爸爸葫芦里卖什么膏药。这几个月来没听他讲过一句让人听得懂的话。” 不知道为什么,席德觉得很不好意思。 “喔,只不过是个故事而已。” “一个故事?” “嗯,一个故事,也是一部哲学史。反正是这类的东西啦。” “你不想打开我送你的礼物吗?” 席德不想偏心,所以她立刻打开妈妈送的那个小包裹。原来是一条金链子。 “很漂亮。多谢,妈!” 席德从床上站起来,给了妈妈一个拥抱。 她们坐着聊了一会儿。 然后席德说:“妈,可不可以请你离开了。现在他正站在高城居高临下呢。” “谁?” “我不知道,苏菲也不知道。问题就在这里。” “我也该去上班了,别忘了吃点东西。我已经把你的衣服挂在楼下了。” 妈妈终于下去了,苏菲的哲学老师也是。他从高城循着阶梯往下走,然后站在法院小丘的岩石上,不久就消失在雅典古广场的人群间。 当席德看到那些古老的建筑突然从废墟中再现时,不禁打了一个冷颤。她爸爸最得意的构想之一,就是让联合国所有的会员国共同参与重建雅典广场的工作,使它成为进行哲学讨论与裁军会谈的场所。他认为这样一个庞大的计划将可使世界各国团结一致,他说:“毕竟我们在兴建油井和月球、火箭方面已经成功了。” 然后,席德读到了柏拉图的学说。 “灵魂渴望乘着爱的翅膀回‘家’,回到理型的世界中。它渴望自肉体的枷锁……” 苏菲爬过树篱,跟踪汉密士,但被它给摆脱了。在读了柏拉图的理论后,她继续深入树林,发现了小湖边的红色小木屋,里面挂着一幅“柏客来”的画。从书中的描述看来,那房子显然就是席德家。但是墙上另有一幅名叫“柏克莱”的男人的肖像。“多奇怪呀!” 席德将那本沉重的讲义夹放在床上,走到书架旁,找出“读书俱乐部”出版的那三册百科全书(这是她十四岁时的生日礼物),开始查“柏克莱”这个人。找到了!柏克莱:Berkeley,George,一六八五一一七五三年,英国哲学家,克罗尼地区的主教。他否认在人类的心灵之外存在着一个物质世界,认为我们的感官认知乃是自天主而来。他同时也以批评世俗的看法而闻名。主要著作是《人类知识原理》。 的确是很古怪。席德站在那儿想了几秒钟,才回到床上的讲义夹旁。 爸爸一定是故意把那两幅画挂在墙上。但是“柏克莱”和“柏客来”这两者之间除了名字相似之外,还有什么关联呢?“柏克莱否认在人类心灵之外存在有物质世界,这种看法非常奇特,但也不容易反驳。尤其在苏菲身上倒很适用,因为她所有的“感官认知”不都是出自席德父亲的手笔吗?不管怎样,她应该继续看下去。当她读到苏菲发现镜子里有一个女孩同时向她眨着双眼时,不禁仰头微笑起来。“那个女孩仿佛是在向苏菲眨眼,对她说:我可以看见你,苏菲。我在这儿,在另外一边。” 后来,苏菲发现了那个绿色的皮夹,里面有钱,还有其他的东西。它怎样会跑到那儿去呢?荒谬!有一刹那,席德真的相信苏菲找到了那个皮夹。然后她试着想象苏菲对这整件事的感受。她一定觉得很令人费解、很不可思议吧。 席德开始有一股强烈的欲望想要和苏菲见面。她想告诉她整件事情的始末。 现在苏菲必须在被人逮到之前离开小木屋,但小舟这时却正漂浮在湖面上。(当然啦,像爸爸这样的人怎会放弃重提当年小舟事件的机会呢?)席德喝了一口汽水,咬了一口鲜虾沙拉面包。这时她正读到那封谈“严谨”的逻辑学家亚理斯多德的信,其中提到亚理斯多德如何批评柏拉图的理论。 亚理斯多德指出,我们对于自己感官未曾经验过的事物就不可能有意识。柏拉图则会说:不先存在于理型世界中的事物就不可能出现在自然界中。亚理斯多德认为柏拉图如此的主张会使“事物的数目倍增”。 席德从来不知道发明“动物、植物、矿物”这个游戏的人就是亚理斯多德。亚理斯多德想把大自然“房间”内的每样东西都彻底地分门别类。他想要证明自然界里的每一件事物都各自有其所属的类目或次类目。 当她读到亚理斯多德对女人的看法时,觉得非常生气,也很失望。没想到这么聪明的科学家居然是一个瞧不起人的大笨蛋。 亚理斯多德激发了苏菲清理房间的冲动。接着她在房里发现了那只一个月前从席德的衣柜里消失的白长袜!苏菲将所有艾伯特写来舶信都放在一个讲义夹里。“总共有五十多页。”但席德拿到的却有一百二十四页,不过其中还包括苏菲的故事还有所有艾伯特的来信。 下面这一章题名为“希腊文化”。一开始,苏菲发现了一张印有联合国吉普车照片的明信片。上面盖的邮戳是“六月十五日联合国部队”。这又是一张爸爸写给席德但没有投邮,却将它写进故事里的明信片。 亲爱的席德: 我猜想你可能仍在庆祝你的十五岁生日。或者你接到信时,已经是第二天的早上了。无论如何,你都会收到我的礼物。从某个角度看,那是一份可以用一辈子的礼物。不过,我想向你再说一声生日快乐。也许你现在已经明白我为何把这些明信片寄给苏菲了。我相信她一定会把它们转交给你的。 P.S:妈妈说你把你的皮夹弄丢了。我答应你我会给你一百五十决钱做为补偿。还有,在学校放暑假前你也许可以重办一张学生证。 爱你的爸爸不错嘛!她又可以多一百五十块钱了。他也许认为只送她一份自己做的礼物,实在是有点太寒酸了。 如此看来,六月十五日那天也是苏菲的生日。但对苏菲而言,现在还是五月中旬。这一定是爸爸撰写那一章的时间,但他在写给席德的“生日卡”中所注明的日期都是六月十五日。可怜的苏菲,她跑到超级市场去和乔安会面的时候,心里一直纳闷:这个席德是谁?她爸爸为什么会认定苏菲可以找到她?无论如何,他把明信片寄给苏菲,而不直接寄给他的女儿是说不通的。 席德读到普罗汀的理论时,也有宛如置身天外的感受。 世间存在的每一样事物都有这种神秘的神圣之光。我们可以看到它在向日葵或罂粟花中闪烁着光芒。在一只飞离枝头的蝴蝶或在水缸中优游穿梭的金鱼身上,我们可以看到更多这种深不可测的神秘之光。然而,最靠近上帝的还是我们的灵魂。唯有在灵魂中,我们才能与生命的伟大与神秘合而为一。事实上,在某些很偶然的时刻中,我们可以体验到自我就是那神圣的神秘之光。 这是席德到目前为止读到的最令人目炫神驰的一段文字,但它的内容却极其简单:万物都是一体的,而这个“一体”便是万物所共有的神圣的奥秘。 这样的道理是不言可喻的,席德想。事实本来如此。而每一个人对“神圣”这个名词都可以有自己的解释。她很快翻到下一章。苏菲和乔安在五月十七日前夕去露营。她们走到少校的小木屋……席德才读了几页便愤怒地将被子一掀,站起来在房内踱步,手中仍紧握住那本讲义夹。 这实在是太过分了! 她爸爸让这两个女孩在林间的小木屋内,发现了他在五月的前两个星期寄给席德的所有明信片的副本。这些都确实是爸爸写给她的亲笔函,她曾经一读再读,每一个字她都记得。 亲爱的席德:我现在内心满溢有关你生日的秘密,以致我一天里不得不好几次克制自己不要打电话回家,以免把事情搞砸了。那是一件会愈长愈大的事物。而你也知道,当一个东西愈长愈大,你就愈来愈难隐藏它了。 苏菲又上了一课,了解了犹太民族、希腊民族的特色以及他们的伟大文化。席德很高兴能对历史做这样的综览,因为她在学校里从未学到这些。老师们讲的似乎都是一些枝枝节节的东西。她读完这一课后,对耶稣与基督教有了新的认识。 她喜欢那段引自歌德的文字:“不能汲取三千年历史经验的人没有未来可言。” 下面一章开始时,苏菲看到一张明信片贴在她家厨房的窗户上。当然,那又是一封寄给席德的生日卡:亲爱的席德:我不知道你看到这张卡片时,你的生日过了没有。我希望还没有,至少不要过太久。对于苏菲来说,一两个星期也许不像我们所认为的那么漫长。我将回家过仲夏节。到时,我们就可以一起坐在秋千上看海看几个小时。我有好多话要跟你说……然后艾伯特打电话给苏菲。这是她第一次听到他的声音。 “听起来好像在打仗一样。” ;“我宁可说这是一场意志之战。我们必须吸引席德的注意力,并且设法使她在她父亲回到黎乐桑之前站在我们这边。” 于是苏菲在一座十二世纪的古老岩石教堂内与扮成中世纪僧侣的艾伯特见面了。 天哪!那座教堂! 席德看了看时间。一点十五分了……她完全忘记了时间。 在她生日这天不去上学也许没有什么关系,但这样一来她就没办法跟同学一起庆祝了。不过,反正已经有很多人祝她生日快乐了。 现在她读到艾伯特发表长篇大论那一段。这个人扮起中世纪教士的角色可真是一点也不费力。 当她读到苏菲亚在梦中向席德佳显灵那一段,她再次去查她的百科全书,但两个名词都没查到。其实哪次不是这样呢?只要是关于女人的事,这百科全书就像月球表面一样什么也没有。 难道整套书都经过“保护男人学会”审查过了吗?席德佳是传教士、作家、医生、植物学家兼生物学家。 “通常中世纪的妇女要比男人实际,甚至可能有科学头脑,在这方面席德佳也许是一个象征。” 然而“读书俱乐部”的百科全书却没有任何关于她的记载。真是烂透了!席德从来没有听说过上帝也有“女性化的一面”或“母性”。她的名字是苏菲亚,可是那些出版商显然好像觉得不值得为她浪费油墨似的。 她在百科全书中所能找到最近似的条款是关于君士坦丁堡(现在的伊斯坦堡)的圣苏菲亚教堂,名为HagiaSophia,意思是“神圣的智慧”。但里面却没有任何文字提到苏菲亚是女性。这不是言论节制是什么?说到显灵,席德认为苏菲也曾向她“显灵”过,因为她一直都在想象这个长了一头直发的女孩是什么模样……苏菲在圣玛莉教堂几乎待了一整个晚上。她回到家后,站在她从林间小木屋里拿回来的铜镜前面。 她仔细审视着自己那张轮廓分明苍白的脸,以及脸四周那一头做不出任何发型的难缠的头发。但在那张脸之外却浮现了另外一个女孩的幽灵。 突然间,那个女孩疯狂地眨着双眼,仿佛是在向苏菲做信号,说她的确在那儿。这个幽灵出现的时间只有几秒钟,然后便消失了。 不知道有多少次,席德也曾像那样站在镜子前面,仿佛在镜里找寻另外一个人似的。但是爸爸又怎么知道的呢?她不是也一直在找一个深色头发的女人吗?曾祖母不就是向一个吉普赛女人购买那面镜子的吗?席德察觉自己捧着书的双手正在发抖。她觉得苏菲确实存在于“另外一边”的某处。 现在苏菲正梦见席德和柏客来山庄。席德既看不见她,也听不见她。后来苏菲在平台上捡到了席德的金十字架链子,而当她一觉醒来时,那条刻有席德姓名的十字架链子正躺在她的床上!席德强迫自己努力回想。她应该没有把那条祖母送给她当受洗礼物的金十字架链子也弄丢吧?她走到柜子旁,拿出她的珠宝盒。奇怪,链子居然不见了!这么说她真的把它搞丢了。好吧。但这件事连她自己也不晓得,爸爸又是如何知道的呢?还有,苏菲显然曾经梦到席德的父亲从黎巴嫩回来了。但那时距父亲预定回来的日子还有一个星期呀!苏菲的梦难道是一种预兆吗?爸爸的意思难道是当他回家时,苏菲也会在场吗?他在信上曾说她将会有一个新朋友……在那一瞬间,席德很清楚地感觉到苏菲不只是书中的人物而已。她的确存在于这世上。 The Enlightenent ...from the way needles are made to the way cannons are founded Hilde had just begun the chapter on the Renaissance when she heard her mother come in the front door. She looked at the clock. It was four in the afternoon. Her mother ran upstairs and opened Hilde's door. "Didn't you go to the church?" "Yes, I did." "But... what did you wear?" "What I'm wearing now." "Your nightgown?" "It's an old stone church from the Middle Ages." "Hilde!" She let the ring binder fall into her lap and looked up at her mother. "I forgot the time, Mom. I'm sorry, but I'm reading something terribly exciting." Her mother could not help smiling. "It's a magic book," added Hilde. "Okay. Happy birthday once again, Hilde!" "Hey, I don't know if I can take that phrase any more." "But I haven't... I'm just going to rest for a while, then I'll start fixing a great dinner. I managed to get hold of some strawberries." "Okay, I'll go on reading." Her mother left and Hilde read on. Sophie is following Hermes through the town. In Alberto's hall she finds another card from Lebanon. This, too, is dated June 15. Hilde was just beginning to understand the system of the dates. The cards dated before June 15 are copies of cards Hilde had already received from her dad. But those with today's date are reaching her for the first time via the ring binder. Dear Hilde, Now Sophie is coming to the philosopher's house. She will soon be fifteen, but you were fifteen yesterday. Or is it today, Hilde? If it is today, it must be late, then. But our watches do not always agree . . . Hilde read how Alberto told Sophie about the Renaissance and the new science, the seventeenth-century rationalists and British empiricism. She jumped at every new card and birthday greeting that her father had stuck into the story. He got them to fall out of an exercise book, turn up inside a banana skin, and hide inside a computer program. Without the slightest effort, he could get Alberto to make a slip of the tongue and call Sophie Hilde. On top of everything else, he got Hermes to say "Happy birthday, Hilde!" Hilde agreed with Alberto that he was going a bit too far, comparing himself with God and Providence. But whom was she actually agreeing with? Wasn't it her father who put those reproachful--or self-reproachful--words in Alberto's mouth? She decided that the comparison with God was not so crazy after all. Her father really was like an almighty God for Sophie's world. When Alberto got to Berkeley, Hilde was at least as enthralled as Sophie had been. What would happen now? There had been all kinds of hints that something special was going to happen as soon as they got to that philosopher--who had denied the existence of a material world outside human consciousness. The chapter begins with Alberto and Sophie standing at the window, seeing the little plane with the long Happy Birthday streamer waving behind it. At the same time dark clouds begin to gather over the town. "So 'to be or not to be' is not the whole question. The question is also who we are. Are we really human beings of flesh and blood? Does our world consist of real things--or are we encircled by the mind?" Not so surprising that Sophie starts biting her nails. Nail-biting had never been one of Hilde's bad habits but she didn't feel particularly pleased with herself right now. Then finally it was all out in the open: "For us-- for you and me--this 'will or spirit' that is the 'cause of everything in everything' could be Hilde's father." "Are you saying he's been a kind of God for us?" "To be perfectly candid, yes.He should be ashamed of himself!" "What about Hilde herself?" "She is an angel, Sophie." "An angel?" "Hilde is the one this 'spirit' turns to." With that, Sophie tears herself away from Alberto and runs out into the storm. Could it be the same storm that raged over Bjerkely last night--a few hours after Sophie ran through the town? As she ran, one thought kept going round and round in her mind: "Tomorrow is my birthday*. Isn't it extra bitter to realize that life is only a dream on the day before your fifteenth birthday? It's like dreaming you won a million and then just as you're getting the money you wake up." Sophie ran across the squelching playing field. Minutes later she saw someone come running toward her. It was her mother. The sky was pierced again and again by angry darts of lightning. When they reached each other Sophie's mother put her arm around her. "What's happening to us, little one?" "I don't know," Sophie sobbed. "It's like a bad dream." Hilde felt the tears start. "To be or not to be--that is the question." She threw the ring binder to the end of the bed and stood up. She walked back and forth across the floor. At last she stopped in front of the brass mirror, where she remained until her mother came to say dinner was ready. When Hilde heard the knock on the door, she had no idea how long she had been standing there. But she was sure, she was perfectly sure, that her reflection had winked with both eyes. She tried to be the grateful birthday girl all through dinner. But her thoughts were with Sophie and Alberto all the time. How would things go for them now that they knew it was Hilda's father who decided everything? Although "knew" was perhaps an exaggeration. It was nonsense to think they knew anything at all. Wasn't it only her father who let them know things? Still, the problem was the same however you looked at it. As soon as Sophie and Alberto "knew" how everything hung together, they were in a way at the end of the road. She almost choked on a mouthful of food as she suddenly realized that the same problem possibly applied to her own world too. People had progressed steadily in their understanding of natural laws. Could history simply continue to all eternity once the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle of philosophy and science had fallen into place? Wasn't there a connection between the development of ideas and science on the one hand, and the greenhouse effect and deforestation on the other? Maybe it was not so crazy to call man's thirst for knowledge a fall from grace? The question was so huge and so terrifying that Hilde tried to forget it again. She would probably understand much more as she read further in her father's birthday book. "Happy birthday to you ...," sang her mother when they were done with their ice cream and Italian strawberries. "Now we'll do whatever you choose." "I know it sounds a bit crazy, but all I want to do is read my present from Dad." "Well, as long as he doesn't make you completely delirious." "No way." "We could share a pizza while we watch that mystery on TV." "Yes, if you like." Hilde suddenly thought of the way Sophie spoke to her mother. Dad had hopefully not written any of Hilde's mother into the character of the other mother? Just to make sure, she decided not to mention the white rabbit being pulled out of the top hat. Not today, at least. "By the way," she said as she was leaving the table. "What?" "I can't find my gold crucifix anywhere." Her mother looked at her with an enigmatic expression. "I found it down by the dock weeks ago. You must have dropped it, you untidy scamp." "Did you mention it to Dad?" "Let me think ... yes, I believe I may have." "Where is it then?" Her mother got up and went to get her own jewelry case. Hilde heard a little cry of surprise from the bedroom. She came quickly back into the living room. "Right now I can't seem to find it." "I thought as much." She gave her mother a hug and ran upstairs to her room. At last--now she could read on about Sophie and Alberto. She sat up on the bed as before with the heavy ring binder resting against her knees and began the next chapter. Sophie woke up the next morning when her mother came into the room carrying a tray loaded with birthday presents. She had stuck a flag in an empty soda bottle. "Happy birthday, Sophie!" Sophie rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She tried to remember what had happened the night before. But it was all like jumbled pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. One of the pieces was Alberto, another was Hilde and the major. A third was Berkeley, a fourth Bjerkely. The blackest piece of all was the violent storm. She had practically been in shock. Her mother had rubbed her dry with a towel and simply put her to bed with a cup of hot milk and honey. She had fallen asleep immediately. "I think I'm still alive," she said weakly. "Of course you're alive! And today you are fifteen years old." "Are you quite sure?" "Quite sure. Shouldn't a mother know when her only child was born? June 15, 1975 ... and half-past one, Sophie. It was the happiest moment of my life." "Are you sure it isn't all only a dream?" "It must be a good dream to wake up to rolls and soda and birthday presents." She put the tray of presents on a chair and disappeared out of the room for a second. When she came back she was carrying another tray with rolls and soda. She put it on the end of the bed. It was the signal for the traditional birthday morning ritual, with the unpacking of presents and her mother's sentimental flights back to her first contractions fifteen years ago. Her mother's present was a tennis racket. Sophie had never played tennis, but there were some open-air courts a few minutes from Clover Close. Her father had sent her a mini-TV and FM radio. The screen was no bigger than an ordinary photograph. There were also presents from old aunts and friends of the family. Presently her mother said, "Do you think I should stay home from work today?" "No, why should you?" "You were very upset yesterday. If it goes on, I think we should make an appointment to see a psychiatrist." "That won't be necessary." "Was it the storm--or was it Alberto?" "What about you? You said: What's happening to us, little one?" "I was thinking of you running around town to meet some mysterious person ... Maybe it's my fault." "It's not anybody's 'fault' that I'm taking a course in philosophy in my leisure time. Just go to work. School doesn't start till ten, and we're only getting our grades and sitting around." "Do you know what you're going to get?" "More than I got last semester at any rate." Not long after her mother had gone the telephone rang. "Sophie Amundsen." "This is Alberto." "Ah." "The major didn't spare any ammunition last night." "What do you mean." "The thunderstorm, Sophie." "I don't know what to think." "That is the finest virtue a genuine philosopher can have. I am proud of how much you have learned in such a short time." "I am scared that nothing is real." "That's called existential angst, or dread, and is as a rule only a stage on the way to new consciousness." "I think I need a break from the course." "Are there that many frogs in the garden at the moment?" Sophie started to laugh. Alberto continued: "I think it would be better to persevere. Happy birthday, by the way. We must complete the course by Midsummer Eve. It's our last chance." "Our last chance for what?" "Are you sitting comfortably? We're going to have to spend some time on this, you understand." "I'm sitting down." "You remember Descartes?" "I think, therefore I am?" "With regard to our own methodical doubt, we are right now starting from scratch. We don't even know whether we think. It may turn out that we are thoughts, and that is quite different from thinking. We have good reason to believe that we have merely been invented by Hilde's father as a kind of birthday diversion for the major's daughter from Lillesand. Do you see?" "Yes . . ." "But therein also lies a built-in contradiction. If we are fictive, we have no right to 'believe' anything at all. In which case this whole telephone conversation is purely imaginary." "And we haven't the tiniest bit of free will because it's the major who plans everything we say and do. So we can just as well hang up now." "No, now you're oversimplifying things." "Explain it, then." "Would you claim that people plan everything they dream? It may be that Hilde's father knows everything we do. It may be just as difficult to escape his omniscience as it is to run away from your own shadow. However-- and this is where I have begun to devise a plan--it is not certain that the major has already decided on everything that is to happen. He may not decide before the very last minute--that is to say, in the moment of creation. Precisely at such moments we may possibly have an initiative of our own which guides what we say and do. Such an initiative would naturally constitute extremely weak impulses compared to the major's heavy artillery. We are very likely defenseless against intrusive external forces such as talking dogs, messages in bananas, and thunderstorms booked in advance. But we cannot rule out our stubbornness, however weak it may be." "How could that be possible?" "The major naturally knows everything about our little world, but that doesn't mean he is all powerful. At any rate we must try to live as if he is not." "I think I see where you're going with this." "The trick would be if we could manage to do something all on our own--something the major would not be able to discover." "How can we do that if we don't even exist?" "Who said we don't exist? The question is not whether we are, but what we are and who we are. Even if it turns out that we are merely impulses in the major's dual personality, that need not take our little bit of existence away from us." "Or our free will?" "I'm working on it, Sophie." "But Hilde's father must be fully aware that you are working on it." "Decidedly so. But he doesn't know what the actual plan is. I am attempting to find an Archimedian point." "An Archimedian point?" "Archimedes was a Greek scientist who said 'Give me a firm point on which to stand and I will move the earth.' That's the kind of point we must find to move ourselves out of the major's inner universe." "That would be quite a feat." "But we won't manage to slip away before we have finished the philosophy course. While that lasts he has much too firm a grip on us. He has clearly decided that I am to guide you through the centuries right up to our own time. But we only have a few days left before he boards a plane somewhere down in the Middle East. If we haven't succeeded in detaching ourselves from his gluey imagination before he arrives at Bjerkely, we are done for." "You're frightening me!" "First of all I shall give you the most important facts about the French Enlightenment. Then we shall take the main outline of Kant's philosophy so that we can get to Romanticism. Hegel will also be a significant part of the picture for us. And in talking about him we will unavoidably touch on Kierkegaard's indignant clash with Hegelian philosophy. We shall briefly talk about Marx, Darwin, and Freud. And if we can manage a few closing comments on Sartre and Existentialism, our plan can be put into operation." "That's an awful lot for one week." "That's why we must begin at once. Can you come over right away?" "I have to go to school. We are having a class get-together and then we get our grades." "drop it. If we are only fictive, it's pure imagination that candy and soda have any taste." "But my grades ..." "Sophie, either you are living in a wondrous universe on a tiny planet in one of many hundred billion galaxies-- or else you are the result of a few electromagnetic impulses in the major's mind. And you are talking about grades! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" "I'm sorry." "But you'd better go to school before we meet. It might have a bad influence on Hilde if you cut your last school-day. She probably goes to school even on her birthday. She is an angel, you know." "So I'll come straight from school." "We can meet at the major's cabin." "The major's cabin?" ... Click! Hilde let the ring binder slide into her lap. Her father had given her conscience a dig there--she did cut her last day at school. How sneaky of him! She sat for a while wondering what the plan was that Alberto was devising. Should she sneak a look at the last page? No, that would be cheating. She'd better hurry up and read it to the end. But she was convinced Alberto was right on one important point. One thing was that her father had an overview of what was going to happen to Sophie and Alberto. But while he was writing, he probably didn't know everything that would happen. He might dash off something in a great hurry, something he might not notice till long after he had written it. In a situation like that Sophie and Alberto would have a certain amount of leeway. Once again Hilde had an almost transfiguring conviction that Sophie and Alberto really existed. Still waters run deep, she thought to herself. Why did that idea come to her? It was certainly not a thought that rippled the surface. At school, Sophie received lots of attention because it was her birthday. Her classmates were already keyed up by thoughts of summer vacation, and grades, and the sodas on the last day of school. The minute the teacher dismissed the class with her best wishes for the vacation, Sophie ran home. Joanna tried to slow her down but Sophie called over her shoulder that there was something she just had to do. In the mailbox she found two cards from Lebanon. They were both birthday cards: HAPPY BIRTHDAY--15 YEARS. One of them was to "Hilde M0ller Knag, c/o Sophie Amundsen . . ." But the other one was to Sophie herself. Both cards were stamped "UN Battalion--June 15." Sophie read her own card first: Dear Sophie Amundsen, Today you are getting a card as well. Happy birthday, Sophie, and many thanks for everything you have done for Hilde. Best regards, Major Albert Knag. Sophie was not sure how to react, now that Hilde's father had finally written to her too. Hilde's card read: Dear Hilde, I have no idea what day or time it is in Lillesand. But, as I said, it doesn't make much difference. If I know you, I am not too late for a last, or next to last, greeting from down here. But don't stay up too late! Alberto will soon be telling you about the French Enlightenment. He will concentrate on seven points. They are: 1. Opposition to authority 2. Rationalism 3. The enlightenment movement 4. Cultural optimism 5. The return to nature 6. Natural religion 7. Human rights The major was obviously still keeping his eye on them. Sophie let herself in and put her report card with all the A's on the kitchen table. Then she slipped through the hedge and ran into the woods. Soon she was once again rowing across the little lake. Alberto was sitting on the doorstep when she got to the cabin. He invited her to sit beside him. The weather was fine although a slight mist of damp raw air was coming off the lake. It was as though it had not quite recovered from the storm. "Let's get going right away," said Alberto. "After Hume, the next great philosopher was the German, Immanuel Kant. But France also had many important thinkers in the eighteenth century. We could say that the philosophical center of gravity h. Europe in the eighteenth century was in England in the first half, in France in the middle, and in Germany toward the end of it." "A shift from west to east, in other words." "Precisely. Let me outline some of the ideas that many of the French Enlightenment philosophers had in common. The important names are Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau, but there were many, many others. I shall concentrate on seven points." "Thanks, that I am painfully aware of." Sophie handed him the card from Hilde's father. Alberto sighed deeply. "He could have saved himself the trouble ... the first key words, then, are opposition to authority. Many of the French Enlightenment philosophers visited England, which was in many ways more liberal than their home country, and were intrigued by the English natural sciences, especially Newton and his universal physics. But they were also inspired by British philosophy, in particular by Locke and his political philos-ophy. Once back in France, they became increasingly opposed to the old authority. They thought it was essential to remain skeptical of all inherited truths, the idea being that the individual must find his own answer to every question. The tradition of Descartes was very inspiring in this respect." "Because he was the one who built everything up from the ground." "Quite so. The opposition to authority was not least directed against the power of the clergy, the king, and the nobility. During the eighteenth century, these institu-tions had far more power in France than they had in England." "Then came the French Revolution." "Yes, in 1789. But the revolutionary ideas arose much earlier. The next key word is rationalism." "I thought rationalism went out with Hume." "Hume himself did not die until 1776. That was about twenty years after Montesquieu and only two years before Voltaire and Rousseau, who both died in 1778. But all three had been to England and were familiar with the philosophy of Locke. You may recall that Locke was not consistent in his empiricism. He believed, for example, that faith in God and certain moral norms were inherent in human reason. This idea is also the core of the French Enlightenment." "You also said that the French have always been more rational than the British." "Yes, a difference that goes right back to the Middle Ages. When the British speak of 'common sense,' the French usually speak of 'evident.' The English expression means 'what everybody knows,' the French means 'what is obvious'--to one's reason, that is." "I see." "Like the humanists of antiquity--such as Socrates and the Stoics--most of the Enlightenment philosophers had an unshakable faith in human reason. This was so characteristic that the French Enlightenment is often called the Age of Reason. The new natural sciences had revealed that nature was subject to reason. Now the Enlightenment philosophers saw it as their duty to lay a foundation for morals, religion, and ethics in accordance with man's immutable reason. This led to the enlightenment movement." "The third point." "Now was the time to start 'enlightening' the masses. This was to be the basis for a better society. People thought that poverty and oppression were the fault of ig-norance and superstition. Great attention was therefore focused on the education of children and of the people. It is no accident that the science of pedagogy was founded during the Enlightenment." "So schools date from the Middle Ages, and pedagogy from the Enlightenment." "You could say that. The greatest monument to the enlightenment movement was characteristically enough a huge encyclopedia. I refer to the Encyclopedia in 28 volumes published during the years from 1751 to 1772. All the great philosophers and men of letters contributed to it. 'Everything is to be found here,' it was said, 'from the way needles are made to the way cannons are founded.' " "The next point is cultural optimism," Sophie said. "Would you oblige me by putting that card away while I am talking?" "Excuse me." "The Enlightenment philosophers thought that once reason and knowledge became widespread, humanity would make great progress. It could only be a question of time before irrationalism and ignorance would give way to an 'enlightened' humanity. This thought was dominant in Western Europe until the last couple of decades. Today we are no longer so convinced that all 'developments' are to the good. "But this criticism of 'civilization' was already being voiced by French Enlightenment philosophers." "Maybe we should have listened to them." "For some, the new catchphrase was back to nature. But 'nature' to the Enlightenment philosophers meant almost the same as 'reason/ since human reason was a gift of nature rather than of religion or of 'civilization.' It was observed that the so-called primitive peoples were frequently both healthier and happier than Europeans, and this, it was said, was because they had not been 'civilized.' Rousseau proposed the catchphrase, 'We should return to nature.' For nature is good, and man is 'by nature' good; it is civilization which ruins him. Rousseau also believed that the child should be allowed to remain in its 'naturally' innocent state as long as possible. It would not be wrong to say that the idea of the intrinsic value of childhood dates from the Enlightenment. Previously, childhood had been considered merely a preparation for adult life. But we are all human beings--and we live our life on this earth, even when we are children." "I should think so!" "Religion, they thought, had to be made natural." "What exactly did they mean by that?" "They meant that religion also had to be brought into harmony with 'natural' reason. There were many who fought for what one could call a natural religion, and that is the sixth point on the list. At the time there were a lot of confirmed materialists who did not believe in a God, and who professed to atheism. But most of the Enlightenment philosophers thought it was irrational to imagine a world without God. The world was far too rational for that. Newton held the same view, for example. It was also considered rational to believe in the immortality of the soul. Just as for Descartes, whether or not man has an immortal soul was held to be more a question of reason than of faith." "That I find very strange. To me, it's a typical case of what you believe, not of what you know." "That's because you don't live in the eighteenth century. According to the Enlightenment philosophers, what religion needed was to be stripped of all the irrational dogmas or doctrines that had got attached to the simple teachings of Jesus during the course of ecclesiastical history." "I see." "Many people consequently professed to what is known as Deism." "What is that?" "By Deism we mean a belief that God created the world ages and ages ago, but has not revealed himself to the world since. Thus God is reduced to the 'Supreme Being' who only reveals himself to mankind through nature and natural laws, never in any 'supernatural' way. We find a similar 'philosophical God' in the writings of Aristotle. For him, God was the 'formal cause' or 'first mover.' " "So now there's only one point left, human rights." "And yet this is perhaps the most important. On the whole, you could say that the French Enlightenment was more practical than the English philosophy." "You mean they lived according to their philosophy?" "Yes, very much so. The French Enlightenment philosophers did not content themselves with theoretical views on man's place in society. They fought actively for what they called the 'natural rights' of the citizen. At first, this took the form of a campaign against censorship--for the freedom of the press. But also in matters of religion, morals, and politics, the individual's right to freedom of thought and utterance had to be secured. They also fought for the abolition of slavery and for a more humane treatment of criminals." "I think I agree with most of that." "The principle of the 'inviolability of the individual' culminated in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen adopted by the French National Assembly in 178V. This Declaration of Human Rights was the basis for our own Norwegian Constitution of 1814." "But a lot of people still have to fight for these rights." "Yes, unhappily. But the Enlightenment philosophers wanted to establish certain rights that everybody was entitled to simply by being born. That was what they meant by natural rights. "We still speak of a 'natural right' which can often be in conflict with the laws of the land. And we constantly find individuals, or even whole nations, that claim this 'natural right' when they rebel against anarchy, servitude, and oppression." "What about women's rights?" "The French Revolution in 1787 established a number of rights for all 'citizens.' But a citizen was nearly always considered to be a man. Yet it was the French Revolution that gave us the first inklings of feminism." "It was about time!" "As early as 1787 the Enlightenment philosopher Condorcet published a treatise on the rights of women. He held that women had the same 'natural rights' as men. During the Revolution of 1789, women were extremely active in the fight against the old feudal regime. For example, it was women who led the demonstrations that forced the king away from his palace at Versailles. Women's groups were formed in Paris. In addition to the demand for the same political rights as men, they also demanded changes in the marriage laws and in women's social conditions." "Did they get equal rights?" "No. Just as on so many subsequent occasions, the question of women's rights was exploited in the heat of the struggle, but as soon as things fell into place in a new regime, the old male-dominated society was re-introduced." "Typical!" "One of those who fought hardest for the rights of women during the French Revolution was Olympe de Gouges. In 1791--two years after the revolution--she published a declaration on the rights of women. The declaration on the rights of the citizen had not included any article on women's natural rights. Olympe de Gouges now demanded all the same rights for women as for men." "What happened?" "She was beheaded in 1793. And all political activity for women was banned." "How shameful!" "It was not until the nineteenth century that feminism really got under way, not only in France but also in the rest of Europe. Little by little this struggle began to bear fruit. But in Norway, for example, women did not get the right to vote until 1913. And women in many parts of the world still have a lot to fight for." "They can count on my support." Alberto sat looking across at the lake. After a minute or two he said: "That was more or less what I wanted to say about the Enlightenment." "What do you mean by more or less?" "I have the feeling there won't be any more." But as he said this, something began to happen in the middle of the lake. Something was bubbling up from the depths. A huge and hideous creature rose from the surface. "A sea serpent!" cried Sophie. The dark monster coiled itself back and forth a few times and then disappeared back into the depths. The water was as still as before. Alberto had turned away. "Now we'll go inside," he said. They went into the little hut. Sophie stood looking at the two pictures of Berkeley and Bjerkely. She pointed to the picture of Bjerkely and said: "I think Hilde lives somewhere inside that picture." An embroidered sampler now hung between the two pictures. It read: LIBERTY, EQUALITY AND FRATERNITY. Sophie turned to Alberto: "Did you hang that there?" He just shook his head with a disconsolate expression. Then Sophie discovered a small envelope on the mantelpiece. "To Hilde and Sophie," it said. Sophie knew at once who it was from, but it was a new turn of events that he had begun to count on her. She opened the letter and read aloud: Dear both of you, Sophie's philosophy teacher ought to have underlined the significance of the French Enlightenment for the ideals and principles the UN is founded on. Two hundred years ago, the slogan "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" helped unite the people of France. Today the same words should unite the whole world. It is more important now than ever before to be one big Family of Man. Our descendants are our own children and grandchildren. What kind of world are they inheriting from us? Hilde's mother was calling from downstairs that the mystery was starting in ten minutes and that she had put the pizza in the oven. Hilde was quite exhausted after all she had read. She had been up since six o'clock this morning. She decided to spend the rest of the evening celebrating her birthday with her mother. But first she had to look something up in her encyclopedia. Gouges ... no. De Gouges? No again. Olympe de Gouges? Still a blank. This encyclopedia had not written one single word about the woman who was beheaded for her political commitment. Wasn't that scandalous! She was surely not just someone her father had thought up? Hilde ran downstairs to get a bigger encyclopedia. "I just have to look something up," she said to her astounded mother. She took the FORV to GP volume of the big family encyclopedia and ran up to her room again. Gouges ... there she was! Gouges, Marie Olympe (1748-1793), Fr. author, played a prominent role during the French Revolution with numerous brochures on social questions and several plays. One of the few during the Revolution who campaigned for human rights to apply to women. In 1791 published "Declaration on the Rights of Women." Beheaded in 1793 for daring to defend Louis XVI and oppose Robespierre. (Lit: L. Lacour, "Les Origines du feminisme contem-porain," 1900) 启蒙    ……从制针的技术到铸造大炮的方法…… 席德正要开始阅读“文艺复兴”那一章时,听到楼下传来妈妈进门的声音。她看看钟,已经下午四点了。 妈妈跑上楼来,打开席德的房门。 “你没去教堂吗?” “去啦。” “可是……你穿什么衣服去的?” “就是我现在身上穿的呀!” “你的睡衣吗?” “那是一座中世纪的古老岩石教堂。” “席德!” 她把讲义夹滑到怀中,抬起头来看着妈妈。 “妈,我忘记时间了。对不起,可是我正在读一些很有趣的东西。” 妈妈忍不住笑起来。 “这是一本很神奇的书。”席德说。 “好吧。我再说一次生日快乐,席德!” “又来了,我都快听烦了。” “可是我还没有……我要去休息一会,然后我会弄一顿丰盛的晚餐。你知道吗?我好不容易买到一些草莓。” “好。那我就继续看书啰。” 妈妈走出房间。席德继续看下去。 苏菲跟着汉密士来到镇上。在艾伯特的门廊上,她看到一张刚从黎巴嫩寄来的明信片。上面的日期也是六月十五日。 席德已经逐渐了解这些日期安排的模式了。那些在六月十五日以前的明信片是席德已经接到的那些明信片的副本。而那些写着六月十五日的明信片则是她今天才第一次在讲义夹里看到的。 亲爱的席德:现在苏菲已经到哲学家的家里来了。她很快就要满十五岁了,但你昨天就满十五了。还是今天呢?如果是今天的话,那么信到得本迟了。不过我们两个的时间并不一定一致……席德读到艾伯特和苏菲谈论文艺复兴运动与新科学,还有十七世纪理性主义者与英国的经验主义。 每一次席德看到父亲设法夹藏在故事中的明信片和生日贺词时,都吓了一跳。他让它们从苏菲的作业本里掉出来,在香蕉皮内层出现,有的甚至藏在电脑程式里。他轻而易举地让艾伯特把苏菲的名字叫成席德。最过分的是他居然让汉密士开口说:“席德,生日快乐!” 席德同意艾伯特的说法,爸爸是做得太过分了一些,居然把自己比做上帝和天意。可是让艾伯特说这些话的人不正是她的爸爸吗?其实她想想,爸爸将自己比做上帝毕竟也不算很那个,因为在苏菲的世界里面,爸爸不就像是一个无所不能的上帝吗?当艾伯特谈到柏克莱的哲学时,席德和苏菲一样完全被迷惑了。下一步会发生什么事呢?书里已经多次暗示当他们谈到这位不认为人的意识之外有物质世界存在的哲学家(席德偷偷看了一下百科全书)时,就会有一件很特别的事发生。 这章一开始是艾伯特和苏菲两人站在窗前,看着那架拖着长长的“生日快乐”布条的小飞机。这个时候,乌云开始在市区上方聚集。 因此,tobeornottobe并不是唯一的问题。问题在于我们是什么。我们真的是血肉之躯的人类吗?我们的世界是由真实的事物组成的吗?或者我们只是受到心灵的包围?难怪苏菲要开始咬指甲。席德过去从来没有咬指甲的坏习惯,不过她现在很同情苏菲。最后一切终于明朗化了:“……对于你我来说,这个‘造成万物中之万物’的‘意志或灵’可能是席德的父亲。” “你是说他有点像是在扮演我们的上帝吗?” “坦白说,是的。他应该觉得惭愧才对。” “那席德呢?” “她是个天使,苏菲。” “天使?” “因为她是这个‘灵’诉求的对象。” 说到这里,苏菲冲了出去,离开艾伯特,跑进风雨之中。那会是昨天晚上(就在苏菲跑过镇上几个小时之后)吹袭柏客来山庄的那场暴风雨吗?明天就是我的生日了,苏菲心想。在十五岁生日前夕突然领悟到生命只不过是一场梦境而已,那种感觉真是分外苦涩啊。就好像是你中了一百万大奖,正要拿到钱时,却发现这只不过是南柯一梦。 苏菲啪哒啪哒地跑过泥泞的运动场。几分钟后,她看见有人跑向她。原来是妈妈。此时闪电正发怒般一再劈过天际。 当她们跑到彼此身边时,妈妈伸出手臂搂着苏菲。 “孩子,我们到底发生什么事了?” “我不知道,”苏菲啜泣。“好像一场噩梦一样。” 席德觉得她的眼泪要掉下来了。“存在或不存在,这正是问题所在。”她把讲义夹丢到床尾,站了起来,在地板上来回踱步。最后她在那面铜镜前驻足,就这样一直站着。直到妈妈来敲门宣布晚餐已经弄好,她才猛然惊觉自己不知道已经站了多久。 不过有一点她百分之百确定的是:她看到镜中的人影同时向她眨动双眼。 吃晚饭时,她努力要当一个知道惜福感恩的寿星,可是她从头到尾满脑子想的都是苏菲和艾伯特。 真相现在他们已经知道所有事情都是席德的父亲一手安排的,以后他们会发生什么事呢?事实上,说他们“知道”什么事也许是太夸张了,也是没有意义的。不是只有爸爸才能让他们知道任何事情吗?然而,不管从哪一个角度来看,问题都是一样的。一旦苏菲和艾伯特“知道”一切事情的真相,他们就等于走到路的尽头了。 她吃着饭时,突然想到同样的问题可能也存在于她自己的世界。想到这里,她差点哽住。如今,人们对大自然的法则日益了解。 一旦哲学与科学这张拼图板上的最后一片放好时,历史还会一直继续下去吗?观念、科学的发展与温室效应、森林消失这两者之间不是有某种关联吗?也许,将人类对于知识的饥渴称为“远离上帝的恩典”,并不是一种很荒谬的说法。这个问题太大,也太令人害怕,席德试着把它忘掉。她想,她应该继续再读爸爸给她的生日书,这样也许她会了解得更多一些。 “……祝你生日快乐….”她们吃完冰淇淋和意大利草莓后,妈妈又开始唱。“现在我们来做一件你最想做的事。” “妈,我知道我这样有点神经,不过我现在最想做的就是读爸爸送我的那本书。” “好吧,只要他不会让你变得不知所云就好了。” “才不会呢!” “待会儿我们看你爱看的侦探影集时,可以一起吃比萨饼。” “好啊,如果你想吃的话。” 席德想到苏菲对她妈妈说话的方式。爸爸在写苏菲的母亲这个角色时该不会以妈妈为蓝本吧?为了保险起见,席德决定不要提任何有关白兔被魔术师从礼帽里拉出来的事。至少今天不要。 “对了,妈!”在离开餐桌时她突然想到。 “什么事?” “我到处找都找不到我的金十字架。” 妈妈看着她,脸上有一种谜样的表情。 “几个礼拜前我在平台下面捡到它。一定是你掉的,你这个丢三落四的小鬼头。” “你有没有把这件事告诉爸爸呢?” “我想想看……应该有吧。” “那条链子现在在哪里呢?” 妈妈上楼去拿她的珠宝盒。席德听到卧室传来一小声惊讶的叫声。不一会,妈妈就回到客厅来了。 “奇怪,好像不见了。” “我想也是。” 她拥抱了妈妈一下,随即跑上楼到房间去。现在她终于又可以读有关苏菲和艾伯特的种种了。她像以前那样坐在床上,膝盖上放着那本沉重的讲义夹,开始读下一章。 生日第二天早上苏菲醒来时,妈妈正端着一个放满各色生日礼物的托盘进入她的房间。盘子上还有一个空汽水瓶,里面插着一面国旗。 “苏菲,生日快乐!” 苏菲揉一揉惺忪的睡眼。她努力回想昨晚发生的事,可是所有的事却像一堆混杂在一起的拼图一般。其中一片是艾伯特,另外一片是席德和少校。第三片是柏克莱,第四片是柏客来。最黑的一片是昨晚那场狂风暴雨。她当时真的吓呆了。妈妈用一条毛巾帮她擦干全身,让她喝了一杯加了蜂蜜的热牛奶后就让她上床了。然后;她立刻就睡着了。 “我还活着吧?”她有气无力地说。 你当然还活着!今天你满十五岁了呢!” “你确定吗?” “当然确定。难道做妈妈的会不知道她的独生女是什么时候生的吗?那是一九七五年六月十五日……下午一点半的时候。是我一生中最快乐的时刻。” “你确定那不是一场梦吗?” “如果醒来就有面包、汽水和生日礼物的话,那一定是一场好梦啰。” 妈妈把放礼物的托盘摆在一张椅子上,然后走出房间。没一会她就回来了,手里端着另外一个放有面包和汽水的托盘。她把盘子放在床尾。 这表示她们家传统的生日节目就要开始了。先是拆礼物,然后妈妈就无限感怀地回忆起十五年前她第一次阵痛的情景。妈妈送苏菲的礼物是一只网球拍。苏菲从来没有打过网球,不过离苜蓿巷几分钟处就有几座露天网球场。爸爸寄给她的礼物则是一台迷你电视兼调频收音机。电视的荧屏只有一张相片那么大。此外,还有年老的姑妈们和一些叔伯阿姨们送的礼物。 之后,妈妈说道:“你要不要我今天请假在家陪你呢?” “不要,你没有理由这样做呀。” “你昨天好像心情很不好。如果继续这样下去,我想我们应该去看心理医生。” “不用啦!” “是因为暴风雨的缘故吗?还是因为艾伯特呢?” “那你昨天又是怎么回事呢?你说:‘孩子,我们到底发生什么事了?”’“我是想到我不应该让你随随便便跑到镇上去见一个神秘人物……那也许是我的错。” “那不是任何人的‘错’,我只是利用闲暇的时间上一门哲学课而已。你去上班吧!今天学校十点才有课,而且只是去拿成绩单、跟同学聊聊天而已。” “你知道你这学期成绩如何吗?” “反正会比我上学期好就对了。”妈妈走了没多久,电话响了。 “喂,我是苏菲。” “我是艾伯特。” “喔。” “少校连昨天晚上也不放过。” “什么意思?” “那场暴风雨呀。” “我已经不知道该怎么想了。” “这是一个真正的哲学家最崇高的美德。苏菲,我真是以你为荣,你在这么短的时间内就学到了这么多。” “我怕没有一件事情是真的。” “这种感觉叫做‘存在的焦虑’。通常只是在迈向获得新意识的过程中的一个阶段而已。” “我恐怕有一段时间不能上课了。” “现在花园里有那么多青蛙吗?” 苏菲笑了出来。艾伯特继续说:“我想我们还是应该继续下去。对了,顺便说一声:生日快乐。 我们必须在仲夏节前上完这门课。这是我们最后的机会。” 反抗“什么最后机会?” “你现在坐得舒服吗?我们要花一段时间来谈这个。” “好,我坐下来了。” “你还记得笛卡尔吗?” “就是说:‘我思故我在’的那个人?” “对。谈到我们心中的疑问,必须要从头讲起。我们甚至不能确定自己是否在思考。也许我们会发现自己只是别人的一些想法罢了。这和思考是很不一样的。我们有很充分的理由相信我们只不过是席德的父亲创造出来的人物,好做为他女儿生日时的消遣。 你明白吗?”“嗯…” “可是这当中本身就有矛盾。如果我们是虚构的人物,我们就没有权利‘相信’任何事情。如果这样的话,我们这次的电话对谈纯粹都是想象出来的。” “而我们没有一点点自由意志,因为我们的言语行动都是少校计划好的。所以我们现在还不如挂断电话算了。” “不,你现在又把事情看得太简单了。” “那就请你说明白吧。” “你会说人们梦见的事情都是他们自己计划好的吗?也许席德的爸爸确实知道我们做的每一件事,也许我们确实很难逃离他的监视,就像我们很难躲开自己的影子一样。但是我们并不确定少校是否已经决定了未来将发生的每一件事,这也是我开始拟定一项计划的原因。少校也许要到最后一分钟——也就是创造的时刻——才会做成决定。在这样的时刻我们也许可以自己决定要说些什么、做些什么。比起少校的重型大炮来,我们这一点点自主性当然只能算是极其微弱的力量。我们很可能没法抵抗一些外力(如会说话的狗、香蕉里写的字和事先预定的暴风雨等等)的干预,但是我们不能放弃自己顽强抵抗的能力,不管这种能力是多么微弱。” “这怎么做得到呢?” “少校当然知道我们这个小小世界里发生的每一件事,但这并不表示他是无所不能的。无论如何我们必须假装他不是这样,照常过我们的生活。” “我想我明白你的意思了。” “其中关键就在我们是否能设法自己做一些事情,一些不会让少校发现的事情。” “可是,如果我们不存在的话,我们怎么能够做这些事呢?” “谁说我们不存在?问题不在于我们究竟存不存在,而是在于我们是什么?我们是谁?就算最后事实证明我们只不过是少校的双重人格里的一些念头,那也并不一定能否定我们这一点点存在的价值呀。” “也不能否定我们的自由意志,对吗?” “这个我正在想办法。” “可是席德的爸爸一定知道你正在想办法。” “当然哼。可是他并不知道我们确切的计划是什么。我正试图要找到一个阿基米德点。” “阿基米德点?” “阿基米德是希腊的一个科学家。他说:‘给我一个稳固的点,让我站在上面,我就能够移动地球。’我们必须找到那个支点,才能把我们自己移出少校的内在宇宙。” “这可不简单哪!” “问题是在我们还没有上完哲学课之前,我们不可能溜得走。 在上课期间,他会把我们抓得紧紧的。他显然已经决定要我引导你了解从近代到现代这几个世纪的哲学。可是我们只剩下几天的时间了,因为他再过几天就要在中东某个地方登机了。如果在他抵达。柏客来之前,我们还没有脱离他那牛皮糖一般的想象力的话,我们就完了。” “说得真吓人。”“首先我要告诉你法国启蒙运动时期最重要的一些事情,然后我们会扼要地讨论一下康德的哲学,以便接着谈浪漫主义。黑格尔也将是这里面的一个重要人物。谈到他时,我们势必要谈到祁克果(Kierkegaard)如何怒气勃勃地驳斥黑格尔的哲学。然后,我们将简短地谈一下马克思、达尔文和佛洛伊德等人。最后如果我们能够想办法谈一下萨特和存在主义,我们的计划就可以付诸行动了。” “这么多东西,一个星期怎么谈得完?” “所以我们才要马上开始呀。你现在可以过来吗?”“我今天要上学。我们要开同学会,拿成绩单。” “别去了。如果我们只是虚构的人物,我们能尝到糖果和汽水的味道才怪。” “可是我的成绩……” “苏菲,你应该关心你自己究竟是住在一个美妙宇宙中的一个小小星球上的人,还是只是少校心灵中的一些电磁波。但你却只担心你的成绩单!你真应该感到惭愧呀!” “对不起。” “不过你还是先去上学好了。如果你在学期最后一天缺席,可能会把席德带坏。她也许连她生日那一天都会去上学呢!她是个天使,你知道吗?” “那我放学后就直接去你那儿。” “我们可以在少校的小木屋见面。” “少校的小木屋?” “卡!”一声,电话挂上了。 席德让讲义夹滑到怀中。爸爸的话让她有点良心不安——她在学期最后一天的确没有上学。真是的,这个老滑头!她坐了一会,心想不知道艾伯特究竟拟了什么样的计划。她该不该偷看最后一页呢?不,那样就算作弊了。她最好赶紧把它读完。 不过她相信艾伯特有一点(很重要的一点)说得对。爸爸的确对苏菲和艾伯特经历过的事通盘了解。但他在写作时,可能也不完全知道未来将发生的事。他可能会在匆忙之间写下一些东西,并且很久以后才注意到。这样一来,苏菲和艾伯特就有相当的空间可以发挥了。 席德再次觉得她相信苏菲和艾伯特是确实存在的。真人不露相,她心里这么想。 这个意念为什么会进入她心中呢?那当然不是一个会在表面激起涟漪的想法。 就像每次班上有人过生日时一样,同学们今天都围着苏菲纷:纷起哄。由于暑假前的气氛、成绩单和汽水等等,苏菲自己也满高—兴受人注目。 当老师祝大家暑假愉快,并且宣布解散后,苏菲马上冲回家。 乔安本想留住她,但苏菲回过头大声对乔安说她必须去办一件事。 她在信箱里发现了两张从黎巴嫩寄来的明信片,上面都印有“祝你十五岁生日快乐!”的字样。其中一张仍旧写着“请苏菲代转席德”,但另外一张则是直接写给苏菲的。两张明信片上都盖着“六月十五日联合国部队”的邮戳。 苏菲先读那张写给她的明信片: 亲爱的苏菲: 今天我也要向你祝寿,祝你生日快乐。并谢谢你为席德做了这么多事。祝安好。 艾勃特少校 席德的父亲终于也写明信片给她了。苏菲真不知道自己该有什么反应。 给席德的明信片内容是这样的: 亲爱的席德: 我不知道此刻在黎乐桑是什么日期或什么时间。但是,就像我说过的,这并不重要。如果我没有看错你的话,我这段最后(或倒数第二)的生日贺词到得并不算太晚。可是要注意,不要熬夜熬得大晚喔。艾伯特很快就会告诉你法国启蒙运动的思想。他会把重心放在七点上。这七点包括:1.反抗权威2.理性主义3.启蒙运动4.文化上的乐观态度5.回归自然6.自然宗教7.人权他显然仍监视着他们。 苏菲进了门,把全都是A的成绩单放在厨房的桌子上,然后便钻过树篱,跑进树林中。不久她再次划船渡湖。 她到达小屋时,艾伯特已经坐在门前的台阶上等她了。他招手示意,要她坐在他身旁。 今天天气晴朗,不过湖面上有一层薄薄的水气往上升,仿佛湖水尚未完全从那场暴风雨中复原似的。 “我们还是开门见山地谈吧。”艾伯特说。 启蒙运动“休姆之后出现的另一位大哲学家是德国的康德(1mmanuelKant)。但十八世纪的法国也出现了许多重要的思想家。我们可以说,十八世纪前半,欧洲的哲学中心是在英国,十八世纪中期,是在法国,十八世纪末,则是在德国。” “从西边一直换到东边。” “没错。我首先要大略描述一下法国启蒙时期哲学家的一些共同特点。其中最重要的几个人物是盂德斯鸠、伏尔泰和卢梭。当然,除此之外还有很多哲学家。我将把重心放在七点上。” “我早就知道啦!” 苏菲把席德的父亲寄来的明信片递给艾伯特。艾伯特深深叹了口气:“他实在不必这么费事的……首先,这个时期最重要的口号就是反抗权威。当时许多法国哲学家都到过英国。那时的英国在很多方面都比法国开明。这些哲学家受到英国自然科学——尤其是牛顿的宇宙物理学——的吸引,也受到英国哲学——尤其是洛克的政治哲学——的启发。他们回到法国后,对于传统的权威愈来愈不能认同,认为有必要对前人所谓的真理抱持怀疑的态度。他们的想法是:每一个人都必须自行找寻问题的答案。在这方面他们受笛卡尔的启发很大。” “因为他的思想体系是从头建立的。” “可以这么说。不过,反对权威的口号也有一部分是针对当时的教士、国王和贵族。在十八世纪时,这几种人在法国的势力比在英国要大得多。” “后来就发生了法国大革命?” .“是的,一七八九年法国大革命发生了,但是革命的理念是在很早之前就萌芽了。下面一个关键名词是理性主义。” .“我还以为理性主义随着休姆消逝了。” “休姆本人到一七七六年才逝世。那时孟德斯鸠已经死了大约二十年了。两年后,也就是一七七八年,伏尔泰和卢梭双双去世。可是他们三人都到过英国,非常熟悉洛克的哲学。你也许还记得洛克的经验主义理论前后并不一致。例如他相信人对上帝的信仰和若干道德规范是人的理性中所固有的。这个想法也是法国启蒙运动妁核心。 “你说过法国人总是比英国人更理性。” “是的。这项民族性的差异可以回溯到中世纪。英国人通常会说‘这是常识’,但法国人却会说‘这很明显’。英国人说‘这是大家都知道的’,但法国人却会说‘这是很明显的’,也就是说对于人的理性来说是很明显的。” “原来如此。” “大多数启蒙时期的哲学家和苏格拉底及斯多葛学派这些古代的人文主义者一样,坚决相信人的理性,所以法国启蒙运动时期时常被称为‘理性时代’。当时,新兴的自然科学已经证明自然是受理性所管辖的,于是哲学家们认为他们也有责任依据人不变的理性为道德、宗教、伦理奠定基础。启蒙运动因此而产生。” “这是第三点,对不对?” “他们想要‘启’发群众的‘蒙’昧,以建立更好的社会。他们认为人民之所以过着贫穷、备受压迫的生活,是由于他们无知、迷信所致。因此他们把重点放在教育儿童与一般大众上。所以,教育学这门学科创立于启蒙时代并非偶然。” “这么说,学校制度开始于中世纪,而教育学则开始于启蒙时代。” “可以这么说。启蒙时代最大的成就是出版了一套足以代表那个时代的大规模百科全书。这套书共有二十八册,在一七五一年到一七七二年间出版。当时所有知名的哲学家与文人都参与了编纂工作。他们打出的口号是‘你在这套书中可以查到所有的知识,上自铸造大炮的方法,下至制针的技术’。” “下面你是不是要谈到文化上的乐观态度?” “我说话时请你不要看那张明信片好吗?” “喔,对不起。” “启蒙时期的哲学家认为一旦人的理性发达、知识普及之后,人性就会有很大的进步,所有非理性的行为与无知的做法迟早都会被‘文明’的人性取代。这种想法后来成为西欧地区的主要思潮,一直到前几十年为止。今天我们已经不再相信所有的‘发展’都是好的。事实上,早在法国启蒙时期,就已经有哲学家对所谓的‘文明’提出批评。” “也许我们早应该听他们的话。” “当时有些人提出‘回归自然’的口号,但对于启蒙时期的哲学,家而言,‘自然’几乎就代表‘理性’,因为人的理性乃是自然的赐予,而不是宗教或‘文明’的产物。他们的说法是:所谓的‘原始民族’常常比欧洲人要更健康、更快乐,因为他们还没有被‘文明化’。 卢梭提出‘人类应该回归自然’的口号,因为自然是好的,所以人如果能处于‘自然’的状态就是好的,可惜他们却往往受到文明的败坏。卢梭并且相信大人应该让小孩子尽量停留在他们天真无邪的‘自然’状态里。所以我们可以说体认童年的价值的观念从启蒙时代开始。在此之前,人们都认为童年只不过是为成年人的生活做准备而已。可是我们都是人,儿童跟大人一样,也是生活在这个地球上的人。” “可不是嘛!” “他们也认为宗教必须加以自然化。” “怎么说呢?” “他们的意思是,宗教也必须与‘自然’的理性和谐共存。当时有许多人为建立所谓的‘自然宗教’而奋斗。这就是我们要谈的第六点。当时有很多唯物论者不相信上帝,自称为无神论者。但大多数启蒙时期的哲学家认为否认上帝存在是不合乎理性的,因为这个世界太有条理了,因此不可能没有上帝的存在。牛顿就持这样看法。同样的,这些启蒙时期的哲学家也认为相信灵魂不朽是合理的。他们和笛卡尔一样,认为人是否有一个不朽的灵魂不是信仰问题,而是理性的问题。” “我觉得这种说法很奇怪。在我认为,这个问题的关键正在于你相不相信,而不在于你知不知道。” “这是因为你没有生在十八世纪的缘故。据启蒙时期哲学家的看法,宗教上所有不合理的教条或教义都有必要去除。因为耶稣的教诲本来是很简单的,这些不合理的教条或教义都是在后来教会传教的过程才添加上去的。” “原来如此。” “所以后来有许多人宣称他们相信所谓的‘自然神论’。” “那是一种什么样的理论?” “所谓‘自然神论’是指相信上帝在万古之前创造了世界,但从此以后就没有再现身。上帝成了一个‘至高的存在’,只透过大自然与自然法则向人类显现,绝不会透过任何‘超自然’妁方式现身。我们在亚理斯多德的著作中也可以发现类似这种‘哲学上帝’的说法。对他而言,上帝乃是‘目的因’或‘最初的推动者’。” “我们只剩下人权这一点还没讲了。” “但这也许是最重要的一点。大致上来说,法国启蒙时期的哲学家要比英国哲学家更注重实践。” “你是说他们比较依照自己的哲学生活?” “没错,法国启蒙时期的哲学家对于一般人在社会的地位并不满意。他们积极争取所谓的‘自然权利’,并首先发起一项反对言论管制、争取新闻自由的运动。此外他们认为个人在宗教、道德与政治方面的思想与言论自由也有待争取。他们同时也积极提倡废除奴隶制度并以更合乎人性的方式对待罪犯。” “他们大多数的观点我都赞同。” “一七八九年,法国国民议会通过‘人权与民权宣言’,确立了‘个人权利不可侵犯’的原则。挪威在一八一四年制定的宪法正是以这份宣言为基础。” “可是目前世界上仍然有很多人享受不到这些权利呀!” “是的,这很不幸的。不过启蒙时期的哲学家希望能够确立每个人生来就有的一些权利,这就是他们所谓‘自然权利’的意思。到现在我们仍然使用‘自然权利’的字眼来指一种可能会与国家法律发生冲突的权利。此外,也时常有人——甚至整个国家——在反抗专制、奴役和压迫时打着‘自然权利’的口号。” “那妇女的权利呢?” “一七八七年的法国革命确立了所有‘公民’都能享有的一些权利。但问题在于当时所谓‘公民’几乎都是指男人。尽管如此,女权运动还是在法国革命中萌芽了。” “也该是时候了。” “早在一七八七午时,启蒙运动的哲学家龚多塞(Condorcet)就发表了一篇有关女权的论文。他主张妇女也和男人一样有‘自然权利’。在一七八九年法国大革命期间,妇女们非常积极地反抗旧日的封建政权。举例来说,当时领导示威游行,迫使国王离开凡尔赛宫的就是一些女人。后来妇女团体陆续在巴黎成立。她们除了要求和男人享有一样的参政权之外,也要求修改婚姻法,并提高妇女的社会地位。” “结果她们得到和男人相同的权利了吗?” “没有。女权问题只是当时政治斗争的一个工具而已。到了新政权上任,一切恢复正常之后,又恢复了昔日以男人为主的社会制度。这种情形后来也屡次发生。” “每次都这样。” “法国大革命期间争取女权最力的人士之一是德古日(OlympedeGouges)。她在革命结束两年后,也就是一七九一年,出版了一篇有关女权的宣言。在此之前,有关民权的宣言从来没有提到妇女的自然法权。而德古日在这篇宣言中却要求让妇女享有和男人完全相等的权利。” “结果怎么样?” “她在一七九三年被砍头,女权运动也从此被禁。” “真可耻呀!” “直到十九世纪女权运动才真正在法国和欧洲各地展开,并且逐渐开花结果。不过,以挪威为例,妇女直到一九一三年才享有投票权。而目前世界上仍有许多地区的妇女无法享有充分的人权,” “我和她们站在同一条阵线上。” 艾伯特坐在那儿,目光越过湖面。一两分钟后他说:“关于启蒙运动我大致上就谈到这儿了。” “你说大致上是什么意思?” “我有一种感觉,以后不会再有了。” 他说完这话时,湖水开始起一些变化。有某种东西在湖心冒泡,仿佛湖底的水突然一下喷涌上来一般。 “是水怪! ”苏菲说。 那只黑色的怪物前后扭动了几下身子后,便潜入湖水中消失无踪。湖面又恢复了平静。 艾伯特转过身去。 “我们进屋去吧!”他说。 他们便双双起身走进小木屋。 苏菲站在那儿看着“柏克莱”和“柏客来”那两幅画。她指着“柏客来”那幅说:“我想席德大概住在里面的某个地方。” 今天那两幅画中间多了一幅刺绣作品。上面绣着:“自由、平等、博爱。” 苏菲转身对艾伯特说:“是你把它挂在那儿的吗?”他只是摇摇头,脸上有一种忧伤的表情。 然后苏菲在壁炉架上发现一个小小的信封,上面写着:“致席德与苏菲”。苏菲立刻知道是谁写的。他居然开始直接针对她了。 这倒是新鲜事。 她拆开信,大声念出来: 亲爱的苏菲和席德: 苏菲的哲学老师应该强调启蒙运动的意义在于它创立了联合国赖以成立的一些理想与原则。两百年前,“自由、平等、博爱”这个口号使得法国人民团结起来。今天,同样的字眼应该也可以使得全世界团结起来。全人类应该成为一个大家庭,如今这个目标已经比从前更加迫切。想想看,我们的子子孙孙会从我们这里继承什么样的世界呢? 席德听见妈妈在楼下喊说电视的侦探影集在十分钟内就要开演了,同时她也已经把比萨饼放进了烤箱。读了这么多东西后,席德觉得好累。她今天早上六点就起床了。 她决定今晚要好好和妈妈一起庆祝她的生日。不过现在她必须在百科全书里查一些东西。 Gouges……不,是DeGouges吗?还是不对。是O1ympedeGouges吗?还是查不到。这部百科全书中没有一个字提到那个因为献身自己的政治理念而被砍头的女人。这不是太烂了吗?她该不会是爸爸捏造出来的人物吧?席德跑到楼下,找一部比较大的百科全书。 “我必须查一些东西。”她对满脸讶异神色的妈妈说。 她在那一大套家庭百科全书中找出了FORV到GP那一册,然后便再次跑到楼上的房间。 Gouges……有了!德古日(Gouges,MarieOlympe,一七四八一一七九三年),法国作家,在法国革命期间出版了许多社会问题论述和若干剧本,因此成为革命中的知名人物。她是革命期间少数为妇女争取权利的人士之一,于一七九一年出版了《女权宣言》。一七九三年时因为胆敢为路易十六辩护、反抗罗伯斯庇尔被砍头。 (请参照一九oo年所出版的《当代女权运动的起源》) Kant ...the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me... It was close to midnight before Major Albert Knag called home to wish Hilde a happy birthday. Hilde's mother answered the telephone. "It's for you, Hilde." "Hello?" "It's Dad." "Are you crazy? It's nearly midnight!" "I just wanted to say Happy Birthday ..." "You've been doing that all day." "... but I didn't want to call before the day was over." "Why?" "Didn't you get my present?" "Yes, I did. Thank you very much." "I can't wait to hear what you think of it." "It's terrific. I have hardly eaten all day, it's so exciting." "I have to know how far you've gotten." "They just went inside the major's cabin because you started teasing them with a sea serpent." "The Enlightenment." "And Olympe de Gouges." "So I didn't get it completely wrong." "Wrong in what way?" "I think there's one more birthday greeting to come. But that one is set to music." "I'd better read a little more before I go to sleep." "You haven't given up, then?" "I've learned more in this one day than ever before. I can hardly believe that it's less than twenty-four hours since Sophie got home from school and found the first envelope." "It's strange how little time it takes to read." "But I can't help feeling sorry for her." "For Mom?" "No, for Sophie, of course." "Why?" "The poor girl is totally confused." "But she's only ..." "You were going to say she's only made up." "Yes, something like that." "I think Sophie and Alberto really exist." "We'll talk more about it when I get home." "Okay." "Have a nice day." "What?" "I mean good night." "Good night." When Hilde went to bed half an hour later it was still so light that she could see the garden and the little bay. It never got really dark at this time of the year. She played with the idea that she was inside a picture hanging on the wall of the little cabin in the woods. She wondered if one could look out of the picture into what surrounded it. Before she fell asleep, she read a few more pages in the big ring binder. Sophie put the letter from Hilde's father back on the mantel. "What he says about the UN is not unimportant," said Alberto, "but I don't like him interfering in my presentation." "I don't think you should worry too much about that." "Nevertheless, from now on I intend to ignore all extraordinary phenomena such as sea serpents and the like. Let's sit here by the window while I tell you about Kant." Sophie noticed a pair of glasses lying on a small table between two armchairs. She also noticed that the lenses were red. Maybe they were strong sunglasses . . . "It's almost two o'clock," she said. "I have to be home before five. Mom has probably made plans for my birthday." "That gives us three hours." "Let's start." "Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in the East Prussian town of Konigsberg, the son of a master saddler. He lived there practically all his life until he died at the age of eighty. His family was deeply pious, and his own religious conviction formed a significant background to his philosophy. Like Berkeley, he felt it was essential to preserve the foundations of Christian belief." "I've heard enough about Berkeley, thanks." "Kant was the first of the philosophers we have heard about so far to have taught philosophy at a university. He was a professor of philosophy." "Professor?" "There are two kinds of philosopher. One is a person who seeks his own answers to philosophical questions. The other is someone who is an expert on the history of philosophy but does not necessarily construct his own philosophy." "And Kant was that kind?" "Kant was both. If he had simply been a brilliant professor and an expert on the ideas of other philosophers, he would never have carved a place for himself in the history of philosophy. But it is important to note that Kant had a solid grounding in the philosophic tradition of the past. He was familiar both with the rationalism of Descartes and Spinoza and the empiricism of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume." "I asked you not to mention Berkeley again." "Remember that the rationalists believed that the basis for all human knowledge lay in the mind. And that the empiricists believed all knowledge of the world proceeded from the senses. Moreover, Hume had pointed out that there are clear limits regarding which conclusions we could reach through our sense perceptions." "And who did Kant agree with?" "He thought both views were partly right, but he thought both were partly wrong, too. The question everybody was concerned with was what we can know about the world. This philosophical project had been preoccupying all philosophers since Descartes. "Two main possibilities were drawn up: either the world is exactly as we perceive it, or it is the way it appears to our reason." "And what did Kant think?" "Kant thought that both 'sensing' and 'reason' come into play in our conception of the world. But he thought the rationalists went too far in their claims as to how much reason can contribute, and he also thought the empiricists placed too much emphasis on sensory experience." "If you don't give me an example soon, it will all be just a bunch of words." "In his point of departure Kant agrees with Hume and the empiricists that all our knowledge of the world comes from our sensations. But--and here Kant stretches his hand out to the rationalists--in our reason there are also decisive factors that determine how we perceive the world around us. In other words, there are certain conditions in the human mind that are contributive to our conception of the world." "You call that an example?" "Let us rather do a little experiment. Could you bring those glasses from the table over there? Thank you. Now, put them on." Sophie put the glasses on. Everything around her became red. The pale colors became pink and the dark colors became crimson. "What do you see?" "I see exactly the same as before, except that it's all red." "That's because the glasses limit the way you perceive reality. Everything you see is part of the world around you, but how you see it is determined by the glasses you are wearing. So you cannot say the world is red even though you conceive it as being so." "No, naturally." "If you now took a walk in the woods, or home to Captain's Bend, you would see everything the way you normally do. But whatever you saw, it would all be red." "As long as I didn't take the glasses off, yes." "And that, Sophie, is precisely what Kant meant when he said that there are certain conditions governing the mind's operation which influence the way we experience the world." "What kind of conditions?" "Whatever we see will first and foremost be perceived as phenomena in time and space. Kant called 'time' and 'space' our two 'forms of intuition.' And he emphasized that these two 'forms' in our own mind precede every experience. In other words, we can know before we experience things that we will perceive them as phenomena in time and space. For we are not able to take off the 'glasses' of reason." "So he thought that perceiving things in time and space was innate?" "Yes, in a way. What we see may depend on whether we are raised in India or Greenland, but wherever we are, we experience the world as a series of processes in time and space. This is something we can say beforehand." "But aren't time and space things that exist beyond ourselves?" "No. Kant's idea was that time and space belong to the human condition. Time and space are first and foremost modes of perception and not attributes or the physical world." "That was a whole new way of looking at things." "For the mind of man is not just 'passive wax' which simply receives sensations from outside. The mind leaves its imprint on the way we apprehend the world. You could compare it with what happens when you pour water into a glass pitcher. The water adapts itself to the pitcher's form. In the same way our perceptions adapt themselves to our 'forms of intuition.' " "I think I understand what you mean." "Kant claimed that it is not only mind which conforms to things. Things also conform to the mind. Kant called this the Copernican Revolution in the problem of human knowledge. "By that he meant that it was just as new and just as radically different from former thinking as when Copernicus claimed that the earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa." "I see now how he could think both the rationalists and the empiricists were right up to a point. The rationalists had almost forgotten the importance of experience, and the empiricists had shut their eyes to the way our own mind influences the way we see the world." "And even the law of causality--which Hume believed man could not experience--belongs to the mind, according to Kant." "Explain that, please." "You remember how Hume claimed that it was only force of habit that made us see a causal link behind all natural processes. According to Hume, we cannot per-ceive the black billiard ball as being the cause of the white ball's movement. Therefore, we cannot prove that the black billiard ball will always set the white one in motion." "Yes, I remember." "But that very thing which Hume says we cannot prove is what Kant makes into an attribute of human reason. The law of causality is eternal and absolute simply because human reason perceives everything that happens as a matter of cause and effect." "Again, I would have thought that the law of causality lay in the physical world itself, not in our minds." "Kant's philosophy states that it is inherent in us. He agreed with Hume that we cannot know with certainty what the world is like 'in itself.' We can only know what the world is like 'for me'--or for everybody. Kant's greatest contribution to philosophy is the dividing line he draws between things in themselves--das Ding an sich-- and things as they appear to us." "I'm not so good at German." "Kant made an important distinction between 'the thing in itself and 'the thing for me.' We can never have certain knowledge of things 'in themselves.' We can only know how things 'appear' to us. On the other hand, prior to any particular experience we can say something about how things will be perceived by the human mind." "We can?" "Before you go out in the morning, you cannot know what you will see or experience during the day. But you can know that what you see and experience will be perceived as happening in time and space. You can moreover be confident that the law of cause and effect will apply, simply because you carry it with you as part of your consciousness." "But you mean we could have been made differently?" "Yes, we could have had a different sensory apparatus. And we could have had a different sense or time and a different feeling about space. We could even have been created in such a way that we would not go around searching for the cause of things that happen around us." "How do you mean?" "Imagine there's a cat lying on the floor in the living room. A ball comes rolling into the room. What does the cat do?" "I've tried that lots of times. The cat will run after the ball." "All right. Now imagine that you were sitting in that same room. If you suddenly see a ball come rolling in, would you also start running after it?" "First, I would turn around to see where the ball came from." "Yes, because you are a human being, you will inevitably look for the cause of every event, because the law of causality is part of your makeup." "So Kant says." "Hume showed that we can neither perceive nor prove natural laws. That made Kant uneasy. But he believed he could prove their absolute validity by showing that in reality we are talking about the laws of human cognition." "Will a child also turn around to see where the ball came from?" "Maybe not. But Kant pointed out that a child's reason is not fully developed until it has had some sensory material to work with. It is altogether senseless to talk about an empty mind." "No, that would be a very strange mind." "So now let's sum up. According to Kant, there are two elements that contribute to man's knowledge of the world. One is the external conditions that we cannot know of before we have perceived them through the senses. We can call this the material of knowledge. The other is the internal conditions in man himself--such as the perception of events as happening in time and space and as processes conforming to an unbreakable law of causality. We can call this the form of knowledge." Alberto and Sophie remained seated for a while gazing out of the window. Suddenly Sophie saw a little girl between the trees on the opposite side of the lake. "Look!" said Sophie. "Who's that?" "I'm sure I don't know." The girl was only visible for a few seconds, then she was gone. Sophie noticed that she was wearing some kind of red hat. "We shall under no circumstances let ourselves be distracted." "Go on, then." "Kant believed that there are clear limits to what we can know. You could perhaps say that the mind's 'glasses' set these limits." "In what way?" "You remember that philosophers before Kant had discussed the really 'big' questions--for instance, whether man has an immortal soul, whether there is a God, whether nature consists of tiny indivisible particles, and whether the universe is finite or infinite." "Yes." "Kant believed there was no certain knowledge to be obtained on these questions. Not that he rejected this type of argument. On the contrary. If he had just brushed these questions aside, he could hardly have been called a philosopher." "What did he do?" "Be patient. In such great philosophical questions, Kant believed that reason operates beyond the limits of what we humans can comprehend. At the same time, there is in our nature a basic desire to pose these same questions. But when, for example, we ask whether the universe is finite or infinite, we are asking about a totality of which we ourselves are a tiny part. We can therefore never completely know this totality." "Why not?" "When you put the red glasses on, we demonstrated that according to Kant there are two elements that contribute to our knowledge of the world." "Sensory perception and reason." "Yes, the material of our knowledge comes to us through the senses, but this material must conform to the attributes of reason. For example, one of the attributes of reason is to seek the cause of an event." "Like the ball rolling across the floor." "If you like. But when we wonder where the world came from--and then discuss possible answers--reason is in a sense 'on hold.' For it has no sensory material to process, no experience to make use of, because we have never experienced the whole of the great reality that we are a tiny part of." "We are--in a way--a tiny part of the ball that comes rolling across the floor. So we can't know where it came from." "But it will always be an attribute of human reason to ask where the ball comes from. That's why we ask and ask, we exert ourselves to the fullest to find answers to all the deepest questions. But we never get anything firm to bite on; we never get a satisfactory answer because reason is not locked on." "I know exactly how that feels, thank you very much." "In such weighty questions as to the nature of reality, Kant showed that there will always be two contrasting viewpoints that are equally likely or unlikely, depending on what our reason tells us." "Examples, please." "It is just as meaningful to say that the world must have had a beginning in time as to say that it had no such beginning. Reason cannot decide between them. We can allege that the world has always existed, but con anything always have existed if there was never any beginning? So now we are forced to adopt the opposite view. "We say that the world must have begun sometime-- and it must have begun from nothing, unless we want to talk about a change from one state to another. But can something come from nothing, Sophie?" "No, both possibilities are equally problematic. Yet it seems one of them must be right and the other wrong." "You probably remember that Democritus and the materialists said that nature must consist of minimal parts that everything is made up of. Others, like Descartes, believed that it must always be possible to divide extended reality into ever smaller parts. But which of them was right?" "Both. Neither." "Further, many philosophers named freedom as one of man's most important values. At the same time we saw philosophers like the Stoics, for example, and Spinoza, who said that everything happens through the necessity of natural law. This was another case of human reason being unable to make a certain judgment, according to Kant." "Both views are equally reasonable and unreasonable." "Finally, we are bound to fail if we attempt to prove the existence of God with the aid of reason. Here the rationalists, like Descartes, had tried to prove that there must be a God simply because we have the idea of a 'supreme being.' Others, like Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, decided that there must be a God because every-thing must have a first cause." "What did Kant think?" "He rejected both these proofs of the existence of God. Neither reason nor experience is any certain basis for claiming the existence of God. As far as reason goes, it is just as likely as it is unlikely that God exists." "But you started by saying that Kant wanted to preserve the basis for Christian faith." "Yes, he opened up a religious dimension. There, where both reason and experience fall short, there occurs a vacuum that can be filled by faith." "That's how he saved Christianity?" "If you will. Now, it might be worth noting that Kant was a Protestant. Since the days of the Reformation, Protestantism has been characterized by its emphasis on faith. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, has since the early Middle Ages believed more in reason as a pillar of faith. "But Kant went further than simply to establish that these weighty questions should be left to the faith of the individual. He believed that it is essential for morality to presuppose that man has an immortal soul, that God exists, and that man has a free will." "So he does the same as Descartes. First he is very critical of everything we can understand. And then he smuggles God in by the back door." "But unlike Descartes, he emphasizes most particularly that it is not reason which brought him to this point but faith. He himself called faith in the immortal soul, in God's existence, and in man's free will practical postulates." "Which means?" "To 'postulate' something is to assume something that cannot be proved. By a 'practical postulate,' Kant meant something that had to be assumed for the sake of 'praxis,' or practice; that is to say, for man's morality. 'It is a moral necessity to assume the existence of God,' he said." Suddenly there was a knock at the door. Sophie got up, but as Alberto gave no sign of rising, she asked: "Shouldn't we see who it is?" Alberto shrugged and reluctantly got up. They opened the door, and a little girl stood there in a white summer dress and a red bonnet. It was the girl they had seen on the other side of the lake. Over one arm she carried a basket of food. "Hi," said Sophie. "Who are you?" "Can't you see I am Little Red Ridinghood?" Sophie looked at Alberto, and Alberto nodded. "You heard what she said." "I'm looking for my grandmother's house," said the girl. "She is old and sick, but I'm taking her some food." "It's not here," said Alberto, "so you'd better get on your way." He gestured in a way that reminded Sophie of the way you brush off a fly. "But I'm supposed to deliver a letter," continued the girl in the red bonnet. With that, she took out a small envelope and handed it to Sophie. Then she went skipping away. "Watch out for the wolf!" Sophie called after her. Alberto was already on his way back into the living room. "Just think! That was Little Red Ridinghood," said Sophie. "And it's no good warning her. She will go to her grandmother's house and be eaten by the wolf. She never learns. It will repeat itself to the end of time " "But I have never heard that she knocked on the door of another house before she went to her grandmother's." "A bagatelle, Sophie." Now Sophie looked at the envelope she had been given. It was addressed "To Hilde." She opened it and read aloud: Dear Hilde, If the human brain was simple enough for us to understand, we would still be so stupid that we couldn't understand it. Love, Dad. Alberto nodded. "True enough. I believe Kant said something to that effect. We cannot expect to understand what we are. Maybe we can comprehend a flower or an insect, but we can never comprehend ourselves. Even less can we expect to comprehend the universe." Sophie had to read the cryptic sentence in the note to Hilde several times before Alberto went on: "We are not going to be interrupted by sea serpents and the like. Before we stop for today, I'll tell you about Kant's ethics." "Please hurry. I have to go home soon." "Hume's skepticism with regard to what reason and the senses can tell us forced Kant to think through many of life's important questions again. Not least in the area of ethics." "Didn't Hume say that you can never prove what is right and what is wrong2 You can't draw conclusions from is - sentence? to ought-sentences." "For Hume it was neither our reason nor our experience that determined the difference between right and wrong. It was simply our sentiments. This was too tenuous a basis for Kant." "I can imagine." "Kant had always felt that the difference between right and wrong was a matter of reason, not sentiment. In this he agreed with the rationalists, who said the ability to distinguish between right and wrong is inherent in human reason. Everybody knows what is right or wrong, not because we have learned it but because it is born in the mind. According to Kant, everybody has 'practical reason,' that is, the intelligence that gives us the capacity to discern what is right or wrong in every case." "And that is innate?" "The ability to tell right from wrong is just as innate as all the other attributes of reason. Just as we are all intelligent beings, for example, perceiving everything as having a causal relation, we all have access to the same universal moral law. "This moral law has the same absolute validity as the physical laws. It is just as basic to our morality as the statements that everything has a cause, or that seven plus five is twelve, are basic to our intelligence." "And what does that moral law say?" "Since it precedes every experience, it is 'formal.' That is to say, it is not bound to any particular situation of moral choice. For it applies to all people in all societies at all times. So it does not say you shall do this or this if you find yourself in that or that situation. It says how you are to behave in all situations." "But what is the point of having a moral law implanted inside yourself if it doesn't tell you what to do in specific situations?" "Kant formulates the moral law as a categorical imperative. By this he means that the moral law is 'categorical,' or that it applies to all situations. It is, moreover, 'imperative,' which means it is commanding and therefore absolutely authoritative." "Kant formulates this 'categorical imperative' in several ways. First he says: Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a Universal Law of Nature." "So when I do something, I must make sure I want everybody else to do the same if they are in the same situation." "Exactly. Only then will you be acting in accordance with the moral law within you. Kant also formulates the 'categorical imperative' in this way: Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end." "So we must not exploit other people to our own advantage." "No, because every man is an end in himself. But that does not only apply to others, it also applies to you yourself. You must not exploit yourself as a mere means to achieving something, either." "It reminds me of the golden rule: Do unto others . . ." "Yes, that is also a 'formal' rule of conduct that basically covers all ethical choices. You could say that the golden rule says the same thing as Kant's universal law of morals." "But surely this is only an assertion. Hume was probably right in that we can't prove what is right or wrong by reason." "According to Kant, the law of morals is just as absolute and just as universal as the law of causality. That cannot be proved by reason either, but it is nevertheless absolute and unalterable. Nobody would deny that." "I get the feeling that what we are really talking about is conscience. Because everybody has a conscience, don't they?" "Yes. When Kant describes the law of morals, he is describing the human conscience. We cannot prove what our conscience tells us, but we know it, nevertheless." "Sometimes I might only be kind and helpful to others because I know it pays off. It could be a way of becoming popular." "But if you share with others only to be popular, you are not acting out of respect for moral law. You might be acting in accordance with moral law--and that could be fair enough--but if it is to be a moral action, you must have conquered yourself. Only when you do something purely out of duty can it be called a moral action. Kant's ethics is therefore sometimes called duty ethics." "I can feel it my duty to collect money for the Red Cross or the church bazaar." "Yes, and the important thing is that you do it because you know it is right. Even if the money you collect gets lost in the street, or is not sufficient to feed all the mouths it is intended to, you obeyed the moral law. You acted out of good will, and according to Kant, it is this good will which determines whether or not the action was morally right, not the consequences of the action. Kant's ethics is therefore also called a good will ethic." "Why was it so important to him to know exactly when one acts out of respect for moral law? Surely the most important thing is that what we do really helps other peo-pie." "Indeed it is and Kant would certainly not disagree. But only when we know in ourselves that we are acting out of respect for moral law are we acting freely." "We act freely only when we obey a law? Isn't that kind of peculiar?" "Not according to Kant. You perhaps remember that he had to 'assume'or 'postulate' that man has a free will. This is an important point, because Kant also said that everything obeys the law of causality. How, then, can we have a free will?" "Search me." "On this point Kant divides man into two parts in a way not dissimilar to the way Descartes claimed that man was a 'dual creature,' one with both a body and a mind. As material creatures, we are wholly and fully at the mercy of causality's unbreakable law, says Kant. We do not decide what we perceive--perception comes to us through necessity and influences us whether we like it or not. But we are not only material creatures--we are also creatures of reason. "As material beings we belong wholly to the natural world. We are therefore subject to causal relations. As such, we have no free will. But as rational beings we have a part in what Kant calls das Ding an sich--that is, the world as it exists in itself, independent of our sensory impressions. Only when we follow our 'practical reason'-- which enables us to make moral choices--do we exercise our free will, because when we conform to moral law, it is we who make the law we are conforming to." "Yes, that's true in a way. It is me, or something in me, which tells me not to be mean to others." "So when you choose not to be mean--even if it is against your own interests--you are then acting freely." "You're not especially free or independent if you just do whatever you want, in any case." "One can become a slave to all kinds of things. One can even become a slave to one's own egoism. Independence and freedom are exactly what are required to rise above one's desires and vices." "What about animals? I suppose they just follow their inclinations and needs. They don't have any freedom to follow moral law, do they?" "No, that's the difference between animals and humans." "I see that now." "And finally we could perhaps say that Kant succeeded in showing the way out of the impasse that philosophy had reached in the struggle between rationalism and empiricism. With Kant, an era in the history of philosophy is therefore at an end. He died in 1804, when the cultural epoch we call Romanticism was in the ascendant. One of his most quoted sayings is carved on his gravestone in Konigsberg: Two things fill my mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the reflection dwells on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.' " Alberto leaned back in his chair. "That's it," he said. "I think I have told you what's most important about Kant." "Anyway, it's a quarter past four." "But there is just one thing. Please give me a minute." "I never leave the classroom before the teacher is finished." "Did I say that Kant believed we had no freedom if we lived only as creatures of the senses?" "Yes, you said something like that." "But if we obey universal reason we are free and independent. Did I say that, too?" "Yes. Why are you saying it again now?" Alberto leaned toward Sophie, looked deep into her eyes, and whispered: "Don't believe everything you see, Sophie." "What do you mean by that?" "Just turn the other way, child." "Now, I don't understand what you mean at all." "People usually say, I'll believe that when I see it. But don't believe what you see, either." "You said something like that once before." "Yes, about Parmenides." "But I still don't know what you mean." "Well, we sat out there on the step, talking. Then that so-called sea serpent began to flap about in the water." "Wasn't it peculiar!" "Not at all. Then Little Red Ridinghood came to the door. 'I'm looking for my grandmother's house.' What a silly performance! It's just the major's tricks, Sophie. Like the banana message and that idiotic thunderstorm." "Do you think ... ?" "But I said I had a plan. As long as we stick to our reason, he can't trick us. Because in a way we are free. He can let us 'perceive' all kinds of things; nothing would surprise me. If he lets the sky go dark or elephants fly, I shall only smile. But seven plus five is twelve. That's a fact that survives all his comic-strip effects. Philosophy is the opposite of fairy tales." Sophie sat for a moment staring at him in amazement. "Off you go," he said finally. "I'll call you for a session on Romanticism. You also need to hear about Hegel and Kierkegaard. But there's only a week to go before the major arrives at Kjevik airport. Before then, we must manage to free ourselves from his gluey fantasies. I'll say no more, Sophie. Except that I want you to know I'm working on a wonderful plan for both of us." "I'll be off, then." "Wait--we may have forgotten the most important thing." "What's that?" "The birthday song, Sophie. Hilde is fifteen today." "So am I." "You are, too, yes. Let's sing then." They both stood up and sang: "Happy Birthday to You." It was half-past four. Sophie ran down to the water's edge and rowed over to the other side. She pulled the boat up into the rushes and began to hurry through the woods. When she reached the path, she suddenly noticed something moving between the trees. She wondered if it was Little Red Ridinghood wandering alone through the woods to her grandmother's, but the figure between the trees was much smaller. She went nearer. The figure was no bigger than a doll. It was brown and was wearing a red sweater. Sophie stopped dead in her tracks when she realized it was a teddy bear. That someone could have left a teddy bear in the forest was in itself no surprise. But this teddy bear was alive, and seemed intensely preoccupied. "Hi," said Sophie. "My name is Winnie-the-Pooh," said the teddy bear, "and I have unfortunately lost my way in the woods on this otherwise very fine day. I have certainly never seen you before." "Maybe I'm the one who has never been here before," said Sophie. "So for that matter you could still be back home in Hundred Acre Wood." "No, that sum is much too hard. Don't forget I'm only a small bear and I'm not very clever." "I have heard of you." "And I suppose you are Alice. Christopher Robin told us about you one day. I suppose that's how we met. You drank so much out of one bottle that you got smaller and smaller. But then you drank out of another bottle and started to grow again. You really have to be careful what you put in your mouth. I ate so much once that I got stuck in a rabbit hole." "I am not Alice." "It makes no difference who we are. The important thing is that we are. That's what Owl says, and he is very wise. Seven plus four is twelve, he once said on quite an ordinary sunny day. Both Eeyore and me felt very stupid, 'cos it's hard to do sums. It's much easier to figure out the weather." "My name is Sophie." "Nice to meet you, Sophie. As I said, I think you must be new around here. But now this little bear has to go 'cos I've got to find Piglet. We are going to a great big garden party for Rabbit and his friends." He waved with one paw. Sophie saw now that he was holding a little folded piece of paper in the other. "What is that you've got there?" she asked. Winnie-the-Pooh produced the paper and said: "This was what made me lose my way." "But it's only a piece of paper." "No it's not only a piece of paper. It's a letter to Hilde-through-the-Looking-Glass." "Oh--I can take that." "Are you the girl in the looking glass?" "No, but. . ." "A letter must always be delivered personally. Christopher Robin had to teach me that only yesterday." "But I know Hilde." "Makes no difference. Even if you know a person very well, you should never read their letters." "I mean, I can give it to Hilde." "That's quite a different thing. Here you are, Sophie. If I can get rid of this letter, I can probably find Piglet as well. To find Hilde-through-the-Looking-Glassyou must first find a big looking glass. But that is no easy matter round here." And with that the little bear handed over the folded paper to Sophie and set off through the woods on his little feet. When he was out of sight, Sophie unfolded the piece of paper and read it: Dear Hilde, It's too bad that Alberto didn't also tell Sophie that Kant advocated the establishment of a "league of nations." In his treatise Perpetual Peace, he wrote that all countries should unite in a league of the nations, which would assure peaceful coexistence between nations. About 125 years after the appearance of this treatise in 1795, the League of Nations was founded, after the First World War. After the Second World War it was replaced by the United Nations. So you could say that Kant was the father of the UN idea. Kant's point was that man's "practical reason" requires the nations to emerge from their wild state of nature which creates wars, and contract to keep the peace. Although the road to the establishment of a league of nations is laborious, it is our duty to work for the "universal and lasting securing of peace." The establishment of such a league was for Kant a far-distant goal. You could almost say it was philosophy's ultimate goal. I am in Lebanon at the moment. Love, Dad. Sophie put the note in her pocket and continued on her way homeward. This was the kind of meeting in the woods Alberto had warned her about. But she couldn't have let the little teddy wander about in the woods on a never ending hunt for Hilde-through-the-Looking-Glass, could she? 康德    ……头上闪烁的星空与心中的道德规范…… 过了午夜,少校才打电话回家祝席德生日快乐。 是妈妈接的电话。 “席德,是找你的。” “喂?” “我是爸爸。” “你疯了吗?现在已经半夜了。” “我只是想跟你说生日快乐……” “你已经说了一整天了。” “可是……在今天还没过完前,我不想打电话给你。” “为什么?” “你没收到我的礼物吗?” “收到了。谢谢你。” “那你就别卖关子了。你觉得怎么样?” “很棒!我今天几乎一整天都没吃东西。” “你要吃才行。” “可是那本书太吸引人了。” “告诉我你读到哪里了?” “他们进去少校的小木屋了,因为你找了一只水怪来捉弄他们。” “那你是读到启蒙时期那一章了。” “还有德古日。” “那么我并没有弄错。” “弄错什么?” “我想你还会再听到一次生日快乐。不过那次是用音乐来表现的。” “那我想我最好在睡觉前再读一些。” “那么你还没有放弃啰?” “我今天学到的比……比从前都要多。我几乎不能相信现在距离苏菲放学回家发现第一封信时还不到二十四小时。” “是呀,真奇怪,居然只花了这么一点时间。” “可是我还是忍不住替她难过。” “你是指妈妈吗?” “不,我说的当然是苏菲。” “为什么呢?” “她完全被搞胡涂了,真可怜。” “可是她只是……我的意思是……”.“你是不是想说她只是一个虚构的人物?” “是的,可以这么说。” “可是我认为苏菲和艾伯特真有其人。” “等我回家时我们再谈好了。” “好吧!” “祝你有个美好的一天。” “你说什么?” “我是说晚安。” “晚安。” 半小时后,席德上床了。此时天色仍然明亮,她可以看见外面的花园和更远处的小海湾。每年这个时节,天色从来不会变暗。 她脑海里想象着她置身于林间小木屋墙上那幅画的里面。她很好奇,不知道一个人是否可以从画中伸出头来向四周张望。 …入睡前,她又看了几页大讲义夹里的东西。 苏菲将席德的父亲写的信放回壁炉架上。 “有关联合国的事并不是不重要,”艾伯特说,“但我不喜欢他干扰我上课。” “这点你不需要大担心。” “无论如何,从今天起,我决定要无视于所有类似水怪等等的不寻常现象。接下来我要谈康德的哲学。我们就坐在窗户旁吧!” 苏菲注意到两张扶手椅间的小茶几上放着一副眼镜。她还发现那镜片是红色的。 也许是遮挡强光的太阳眼镜吧。 “已经快两点了。”她说。“我得在五点前回家。妈妈可能已经安排了我的生日节目。” “算算还有三小时。” “那我们就开始吧!” “康德于一七二四年诞生于普鲁士东部的哥尼斯堡(Konigs—berg),父亲是一位马鞍师傅。康德一辈子都住在这个小镇上,一直到他八十岁过世为止。他们一家人都是非常虔诚的教徒,而他的宗教信仰也成为他的哲学的重要背景之一。他和柏克莱一样,觉得有必要巩固基督徒信仰的基础。” “谢啦!我已经听太多柏克莱的事了。” “康德是我们到目前为止谈过的哲学家中唯一曾在大学里教授哲学的人。他是一位哲学教授。” “教授?” “世上有两种哲学家。一种是不断找寻他对哲学问题的答案的人。另一种则是精通哲学史,但并不一定曾建立自己的哲学理论的人。” “康德就是那种吗?”“他两者都是。如果他只是一个很好的哲学教授,通晓其他哲学家的理念,他就不会在哲学史上有一席之地。不过,有一点很重要的就是:康德对于古往今来的哲学传统有很深厚的了解。他对笛卡尔和史宾诺莎的理性主义与洛克、柏克莱和休姆等人的经验主义都很精通。” “我说过请你不要再提柏克莱了。” “你应该还记得理性主义者认为人类的心灵是所有知识的基础,而经验主义者则认为我们对于世界的了解都是从感官而来的。 休姆更指出,我们透过感官认知所能获得的结论显然有其限制。” “那么康德同意哪一派说法呢?” “他认为两派的说法都有一部分正确,也有一部分是错误的。 在这方面大家一致关心的问题是:我们对于这个世界能够有什么样的知识?自从笛卡尔以来的哲学家们都专注于思考这个问题。他们提出两种最大的可能性:一、这世界正如我们感官所认知的那样,二、这世界乃是像我们的理性所体悟到的一般。” “那康德怎么想呢?” “康德认为我们对于这个世界的观念是我们同时透过感官与理性而得到的。不过他认为理性主义者将理性的重要性说得太过火了,而经验主义者则过分强调感官的经验。” “如果你不赶快单一个例子,这些话我可是听不懂。” “首先,康德同意休姆和经验主义者的说法,认为我们对于世界的了解都是透过感官而来的,但他也赞成理性主义者的部分说法,认为我们的理性中也有一些因素可以决定我们如何认知周遭的世界。换句话说,他认为我们对于世界的观念会受到人类心灵中某些状况的影响。” “这就是你举的例子呀?” “我们还是来做一个小小的实验好了。请你帮我把那边茶几上的眼镜拿来好吗?对,就是那副。好,请你戴上它。” 苏菲把眼镜戴上。于是她眼中所看到的每一件事物全都变红了。原本淡淡的颜色变成了粉红色,原本是深色的,则变成深红色。 “你看到什么?” “每一件东西都跟以前一样,只不过都变红了。” “这是因为眼镜限制了你感知现实世界的方式。你看到的每一件东西都是你周遭世界的一部分,但你怎么看它们却取决于你所戴的眼镜。因此,即使你看到的一切东西都是红色的,你也不能说世界是红色的。” “当然哼。” “现在你如果到树林里去散步,或回到船长弯去,你会看到平常你见到的一切,只是它们统统会变成红色的。” “对,只要我不拿下这副眼镜。” “这正是康德之所以认为我们的理性中有若干倾向会左右我们获得的经验。” “什么样的倾向?” “我们所见到的事物首先会被看成是时间与空间里的一个现象。康德将‘时间’与‘空间’称为我们的两种‘直观形式’(Formofintuition)。他强调我们心灵中的这两种‘形式’先于一切经验。换句话说,我们在还没有经验事物之前,就可以知道我们感知到的将是一个发生在时间与空间里的现象。因为我们无法脱掉理性这副‘眼镜,。” “所以他认为我们天生就能够在时间与空间里感知事物?” “是的,可以这么说。我们看见什么虽然视我们生长在印度或格陵兰而定,但不管我们在哪里,我们体验到的世界就是一连串发生在时间与空间里的过程。这是我们可以预知的。” “可是时间和空间难道不是存在于我们本身之外的事物吗?” “不。康德的概念是:时间与空间属于人类的条件。时、空乃是人类感知的方式,并非物质世界的属性。”“这种看事情的方式倒是很新颖。” “因为人类的心灵不只是纯粹接收外界感官刺激的‘被动的蜡’,也是一个会主动塑造形状的过程。心灵影响了我们理解世界的方式,就像你把水倒进一个玻璃壶里面,水立刻会顺应水壶的形状一般。同样的,我们的感官认知也会顺应我们的‘直观形式’。” “我想我懂你的意思了。” 因果律“康德宣称,不仅心灵会顺应事物的形状,事物也会顺应心灵。 他把这个现象称为人类认知问题上的‘哥白尼革命’。意思是这种看法和从前的观念截然不同,就像哥白尼当初宣称地球绕着太阳转,而不是太阳绕着地球转一样。” “我现在了解为何他认为理性主义者与经验主义者都只对了一部分了。理性主义者几乎忘记了经验的重要性,而经验主义者则无视于我们的心灵对我们看世界的方式的影响。” “就拿因果律来说,休姆认为这是人可以经验到的,但在康德的想法中,因果律仍然属于心灵这部分。” “请你说明白一些。” “你还记得休姆宣称,我们只是因为受到习惯的驱策,才会以为各种自然现象之向有所关联吗?根据休姆的说法,我们无法感知黑球是促使白球移动的肇因,因此我们无法证明黑球一定会使白球移动。” “对,我记得。” “休姆认为我们无法证明因果律,康德则认为因果律的存在正是人类理性的特色。正因为人类的理性可以感知事物的因果,因此因果律是绝对的,而且永恒不变的。” “可是在我认为因果律是存在于物质世界的法则,并不存在于我们的心灵。” “康德的理论是:因果律是根植于我们的内心的。他同意休姆的说法,认为既然我们无法确知世界本来的真貌,我们只能根据自己的认识来了解世界。康德对哲学最大的贡献在于他认为dasDingansich和dasDingformich是不相同的。” “拜托,我的德文不是很好。” “康德认为‘事物本身’和‘我眼中的事物’是不一样的。这点很重要。我们永远无法确知事物‘本来’的面貌。我们所知道的只是我们眼中‘看到’的事物。从另外一个角度来看,我们在每一次经验之前都可以预知我们的心灵将如何认知事物。” “真的吗?” “你每天早上出门前,一定不知道今天会看到什么事情或有什么经验。但你可以知道你所看到、经验到的事物都是发生在时间和空间里的事物。你也可以确定这些事物可以适用因果律,因为你的意识里就存在着这个因果律。” “你的意思是说我们人类的构造不一定会像现在这样?” “是的,我们可能会有不同的感官构造,对于时间和空间可能也会有不同的感觉。我们甚至可能被创造成一种不会到处去寻求我们四周事物的成因的生物。” “这是什么意思?” “假设有一只猫躺在客厅的地板上,然后突然有一个球滚进来。你想那只猫会有什么反应?” “这个我试过好几次了。这时候猫咪就会去追那个球。” “好,现在再假设坐在客厅里的是你。如果你突然看到一个球滚进来,你也会跑去追那个球吗?” “首先我会转身看看球是从哪里来的。”“对了,因为你是人,你势必会寻求每一件事物的原因,因为因果律是你构造中的一部分。” “然后呢?” “休姆认为我们既不能感知自然法则,也不能证明自然法则。 康德对这点不太苟同。他相信他可以证明事实上我们所谓的自然法则乃是人类认知的法则,由此而证明这些法则的真实性。” “小孩子也会转身看看球从哪里来的吗?” “可能不会。但康德指出,小孩子的理性要等到他有若干感官的材料可以处理后才会充分发展。谈论一个空白的心灵是没有意义的。” “这样的心灵将是很奇怪的心灵。” “所以我们现在可以做个总结。根据康德的说法,人类对于世界的观念受到两种因素左右。一个是我们必须透过感官才能知道的外在情况,我们可以称之为知识的原料。另外一个因素就是人类内在的情况,例如我们所感知的事物都是发生在时、空之中,而且符合不变的因果律等。我们可以称之为知识的形式。” 艾伯特和苏菲继续坐了一会,看着窗外的世界。突然间苏菲瞥见湖对岸的树丛间有一个小女孩。 “你看!”苏菲说。“那是谁?” “我不知道。” 小女孩只出现了几秒钟就消失了。苏菲注意到她好像戴了一顶红色的帽子。 “我们绝对不可以因为那种事情而分心。” “那你就继续说吧。” “康德相信我们的心灵所能感知的事物很明显的有其限制,你可以说是我们的心灵所戴的‘眼镜’给我们加上了这种限制。” “怎么会呢?” “你应该还记得康德之前的哲学家曾经讨论过一些很‘大’的问题,如人是否有不朽的灵魂、上帝是否存在、大自然是否由很多看不见的分子所组成,以及宇宙是有限还是无限的等等。” “嗯。” “康德认为我们不可能得到这些问题确实的答案,这并不是因为他不肯讨论这方面的问题,相反的,如果他对这些问题不屑一顾,那他就不能够称得上是一个哲学家了。” “那他怎么说呢?” “慢慢来,要有耐心。康德认为在这些大问题上,理性所能够运作的范围超过了我们人类所能理解的程度。可是在这同时,我们的本性中有一种基本的欲望要提出这些问题。可是,举个例子,当我钔问‘宇宙是有限还是无限?’时,我们的问题关系到的是一个我们本身在其中占一小部分的事物。因此我们永远无法完全了解这个事物。” “为什么不能呢?” “当你戴上那副红色的眼镜时,根据康德的想法,有两种因素影响我们对世界的了解。” “感官知觉和理性。” “对。我们的知识材料是透过感官而来,但这些材料必须符合理性的特性。举例来说,理性的特性之一就是会寻求事件的原因。” “譬如说看到球滚过地板的时候就会问球从哪里来。” “没错。可是当我们想知道世界从何而来,并且讨论可能的答案时,我们的理性可以说‘暂时停止作用’。因为它没有感官的材料可能加以处理,也没有任何相关的经验可资利用,因为我们从未经验过我们渺小的人类所隶属的这个大宇宙。” “也可以说我们是滚过地板这个球的一小部分,所以我们不知道它是从哪里来的。” “可是人类理性的特色就是一定会问球从哪里来。这也是为什么我们会一问再问,全力解答这些艰深问题的原因。可是我们从来没有获得过任何确定的材料,所以我们永远不能得到满意的答案因为我们的理性不能发挥作用。” “谢啦。这种感觉我很清楚。” “谈到现实世界的本质这类重量级的问题,康德指出,人永远会有两种完全相反,但可能性相当的看法,这完全要看我们的理性怎么说。” “请单一些例子好吗?” “我们可以说世界一定有一个开始的时刻,但我们也可以说,世界无所谓终始。这两种说法同样都有道理。这两种可能性对于人的理性来说,同样都是无法想象的。我们可以宣称世界一直都存在,但如果世界不曾开始的话,如何一直存在呢?因此我们势必被迫采取另外一种相反的观点。于是,我们说世界一定是在某一时刻开始的,而且一定是无中生有的。可是一件事物可能会无中生有吗?” “不,这两种可能性都一样无法想象。可是两者之中一定有一个是对的,有一个是错的。” “你可能还记得德谟克里特斯和那些唯物论者曾说过,大自然中的万物一定是由一些极微小的分子组成的。而笛卡尔等人则认为扩延的真实世界必然可以一再分解成更小的单位。他们两派到底谁对呢?” “两派都对,也都不对。” “还有,许多哲学家都认为自由是人类最珍贵的财产之一。但也有一些哲学家,像是斯多葛学派和史宾诺莎等人,相信万事万物的发生根据自然法则而言都是有必要的。康德认为,在这个问题上人类的理性也一样无法做一个合理的判断。” “这两种看法都一样合理,也一样不合理。” 信仰“最后,如果我们想借理性之助证明上帝存在或不存在的话,也一定不会成功。笛卡尔等理性主义者曾试图证明上帝必然存在,理由是:我们都有一个关于‘至高存在’的概念。而亚理斯多德和圣多玛斯等人之所以相信上帝存在的理由是:一切事物必然有一个最初的原因。” “那康德的看法呢?” “这两种理由他都不接受。他认为无论理性或经验都无法确实怔明上帝的存在。对于理性而言,上帝存在与上帝不存在这两者都有可能。” “可是你刚开始时说过康德想维护基督教信仰的基础。” “是的,他开创了一个宗教的空间。在这个空间中,理性和经验都派不上用场,因此形成了一种真空的状况。这种真空只能用信仰“来填补。” “这就是他挽救基督教的方式吗?” “可以这么说。值得一提的是康德是一个新教徒。自从宗教革命以来,基督新教的特色就是强调信仰的重要性。而天主教自从中世纪初期以来就倾向于相信理性乃是信仰的支柱。” “原来如此。” “不过康德除了认定这些大问题应该交由个人的信仰来决定之外,他还更进一步认为,为了维护道德的缘故,我们应该假定人有不朽的灵魂、上帝确实存在以及人有自由意志。” “这么说他所做的和笛卡尔是一样的。首先他怀疑我们所能理解的事物,然后他从后门把上帝走私进来。” “不过他和笛卡尔不同的一点是:他特别强调让他如此做的并不是他的理性,而是他的信仰。他称这种对灵魂不朽、上帝存在以及自由意志的信仰为‘实践的设准’。”“意思是.....?”“所谓‘设准’就是某个无法证实的假设。而所谓‘实践的设准’则是某个为了实践(也就是说,为了人类的道德)而必须假定为真的说法。康德说:‘为了道德的缘故,我们有必要假定上帝存在。’” 这时突然有人敲门。苏菲立刻起身要开门,但艾伯特却一点也没有要站起来的意思。苏菲问道:“你不想看看是谁吗?”。 艾伯特耸耸肩,很不情愿地站起来。他们打开门,门外站了一个穿着白色夏装、戴着红帽的小女孩,也就是刚才出现在湖对岸的那个女孩。她一只手臂上挽着一个装满食物的篮子。 “嗨!”苏菲说,“你是谁?” “你难道看不出我就是小红帽吗?” 苏菲抬头看着艾伯特,艾伯特点点头。 “你听到她说的话了。” “我在找我奶奶住的地方。”小女孩说。“她年纪大又生病了,所以我带点东西给她吃。” “这里不是你奶奶的家。”艾伯特说,“你最好还是赶快上路吧。” 他手一挥,苏菲觉得他仿佛是在赶苍蝇似的。 “可是有人托我转交一封信。”戴红帽的小女孩说。 接着她抽出一个小信封,递给苏菲,然后就蹦蹦跳跳地走开了。 “小心大野狼啊!”苏菲在她身后喊。 这时艾伯特已经走向客厅了。苏菲跟着他,两人又像从前那样坐了下来。 “哇!居然是小红帽耶!”苏菲说。 “你警告她是没有用的。她还是会到她奶奶家,然后被大野狼吃掉。她不会学到什么教训的。事情会一再重演,一直到时间的尽头。” “可是我从来没有听说过她到奶奶家前曾经敲过别人家的门。” “只不过是一个小把戏罢了。” 苏菲看着小红帽给她的那封信。收信人是席德。她把信拆开,念了出来:亲爱的席德:如果人类的脑袋简单得足以让我们了解的话,我们还是会愚笨得无法理解它。 爱你的爸爸艾伯特点点头。 “没错。我相信康德也说过类似的话。我们不能够期望了解我们是什么。也许我们可以了解一朵花或一只昆虫,但我们永远无法了解我们自己。” 苏菲把信上谜样的句子念了好几遍。艾伯特又继续说:伦理学“我们不要被水怪之类的东西打断。在我们今天结束前,我要和你谈康德的伦理学。” “请快一点,我很快就得回家了。”“由于休姆怀疑我们透过理性与感官能够获得的知识,因此康德不得不把生命中许多重要的问题再想透彻。其中之一就是关于伦理的问题。 “休姆说我们永远不能证明什么是对的,什么是错的,不是吗?他说我们不能从‘是不是’的语句得出‘该不该’的结论。” “休姆认为无论我们的理性或经验都不能决定是非与对错,决定这些的乃是我们的感觉。对于康德而言,这种理论基础实在太过薄弱。” “这是可能想象的。” “康德一向觉得是与非、对与错之间确实是有分别的。在这方面他同意理性主义者的说法,认为辨别是非的能力是天生就存在于人的理性中的。每一个人都知道何谓是、何谓非。这并不是后天学来的,而是人心固有的观念。根据康德的看法,每一个人都有‘实践理性’,也就是说每个人都有辨别是非的智慧。” “这是天生的?” “辨别是非的能力就像理性的其他特质一样是与生俱来的。举个例子,就像我们都有感知事物因果关系的智慧一样,我们也都能够感知普遍的道德法则。这种道德法则和物理法则一样都是绝对能够成立的。对于我们的道德意识而言,这是很基本的法则,就像对我们的智慧而言,‘事出必有因’以及‘七加五等于十二’乃是很基本的观念一样。” “这个道德法则的内容是什么呢?” “由于这个法则在于每个经验之先,因此它是‘形式的’,也就是说,它必不限于任何特定的情况。因为它适宜于古往今来每个社会、每一个人,所以它不会告诉你你在什么情况下应该做什么事,而是告诉你在所有的情况下你应该有的行为。” “可是就算你内心有一套道德法则,如果它不能告诉你在某些情况下应该怎么做,那又有什么用呢?” “康德指出,这套道德法则乃是‘无上命令’(categoricalimper—afive),意思就是这套法则是‘无条件的’、适用于所有情况的。它也是一项‘命令’,是强迫性的,因此也是绝对权威的。” “原来如此。” “康德用好几种方式来说明这个‘无上命令’。首先他说应如此做,好使你做事的原则将透过你的意志而成为普遍的自然法则。” “所以当我做某件事时,我必须确定自己希望其他人在同样情况下也会做同样的事情。” “一点也没错。只有在这种情况下,你才会依据内心的道德法则来行事。康德也说明‘无上命令’的意义乃是:尊重每一个人的本身,而不要将他当成达成某种外在目的的手段。” “所以我们不能为了自己的利益利用别人。” “没错,因为每一个人本身就是目的。不过,这个原则不只适用于他人,也适用于我们自己。我们也不可以利用自己,把自己当成达到某种目的的手段。” “这使我想到圣经上的金科玉律:欲人施于己者,己必施诸人。” “是的,这也是一个‘形式上’的行为准则,基本上适用于所有道德抉择。你可以说你刚才讲的金科玉律正是康德所谓的普遍性道德法则。” “可是这显然只是一种论断而已。休姆说我们无法以理性证明何者是、何者非的说法也许是有道理的。” “根据康德的说法,这个道德法则就像因果律一样是绝对的、放诸四海而皆准的。这当然也是无法用理性来证明的,但是它仍然是绝对的、不可改变的。没有人会否认它。” “我开始觉得我们谈的其实就是良心。因为每个人都有良心,不是吗?” “是的,当康德描述道德法则时,他所说的正是人类的良心。我们无法证明我们的良心告诉我们的事情,但我们仍然知道它。” “有时候我们对别人很好或帮助别人,可能只是因为我们知道:这样做会有好处,也可能是因为我们想成为一个受欢迎的人。” “可是如果你只是为了想受人的欢迎而与别人分享东西,那你就不算是真正依据道德的法则行事。当然你的行为并没有违反道德法则(其实这样就算不错了),但是真正的道德行为是在克服自己的情况下所做的行为。只有那些你纯粹是基于责任所做的事才算是道德行为。所以康德的伦理观有时又被称为‘义务伦理现’。” “譬如说,我们可能会感觉为红十字会或教会的义卖筹款是我们的义务。” “是的,重要的是:你是因为知道一件事情是你应该做的才去做它。即使你筹的款项在街上遗失了,或它的金额不足以使那些你要帮助的人吃饱,你仍然算是已经遵守道德法则了,因为你的行为乃是出自一片善意。而根据康德的说法,你的行为是否合乎德正取决于你是否出自善意而为之,并不取决于你的行为后果。因此康德的伦理学有时也被称为善意的伦理学。” “为什么他一定要分清楚在哪一种情况下我们做的事才真正符合道德原则?我想最重要的应当是我们做的事确实对别人有所帮助。” “的确如此。我想康德一定不会反对你的说法。但是,只有我们自己确知我们纯粹是为了遵守道德法则而行动时,我们的行为才是自由的。” “只有在遵守一项法则的时候,我们的行为才是自由的?这不是很奇怪吗?” “对于康德来说并不奇怪。你也许还记得他必须‘假定’人有自由意志。这一点很重要,因为康德也说过每一件事都服从因果律,那么我们怎么会有自由意志呢?” “我怎么会知道?” “在这点上,康德把人分为两部分,有点像笛卡尔说人是‘二元的受造物’一样,因为人有身体,也有心灵。康德说,做为一个由物质形成的生物,我们完全受到不变的因果律的支配。我们不能决定自己的感官经验。这些经验因为某种必要性而发生在我们身上,并对我们造成影响,不管我们乐意与否。但我们不仅是由物质形成的受造物,也是具有理性的受造物。” “请你再说明一下。” “做为一个由物质形成的存在者,我们完全属于自然界,因此受到因果律的支配。在这种情况下我们没有自由意志可言。可是做为一个有理性的存在者,我们在康德所谓的‘物自身’(与我们的感官印象没有关系的世界本身)中占有一席之地。只有在我们追随我们的‘实践理性’,并因此得以做道德上的抉择时,我们才有自由意志可言。因为当我们遵守道德法则时,我们也正是制定这项法则的人。” “是的,从某个角度来说,这是对的。因为是我自己(或我内心的某种东西)决定不要对别人不好的。” “所以当你选择不要对别人不好时——即使这样会违反你自己的利益——你就是在从事自由的行为。” “而如果你只是做自己想做的事,你就不算自由或独立。” “我们可能会成为各种事物的奴隶,我们甚至可能成为我们的自我中心思想的奴隶。独立与自由正是我们超脱自我的欲望与恶念的方法。” “那动物呢?我想它们大概只是遵循自己的天性和需求,而没有任何遵守道德法则的自由,不是吗?” “对。这正是动物与人不同的地方。” “我懂了。” “最后,我们也许可以说康德指引了一条道路,使哲学走出了理性主义与经验主义之间的僵局。哲学史上的一个纪元于是随着康德而结束。他死于一八O四年,当时我们所谓的‘浪漫主义’正开始发展。康德死后葬在哥尼斯堡。他的墓碑上刻着一句他最常被人引用的名言:‘有两件事物我愈是思考愈觉神奇,心中也愈充满敬畏,那就是我头顶上的星空与我内心的道德准则。它们向我印证:上帝在我头顶,亦在我心中。,” 艾伯特靠回椅背。 “说完了。”他说。“我想我已经把康德最重要的理念告诉你了。” “也已经四点十五分了。” “不过还有一件事。请你再给我一分钟的时间。” “老师没讲完,我是不会离开教室的。” “我有没有说过康德认为如果我们只是过着感官动物的生活,我们就没有自由可言?” “有,你说过类似的话。” “可是如果我们服膺宇宙普遍的理性,我们就是自由和独立的。我也说过这样的话吗?” “说过呀。你干嘛要再说一遍?” 艾伯特倾身向前,靠近苏菲,深深地凝视她的眼睛,并轻声地说道:“苏菲,不要相信你所看到的每一件事物。” “你是什么意思?” “孩子,你要走另外一条路。” “我不懂。” “人们通常说:眼见为信。可是即使是你亲眼见到的,也不一定能相信。” “你以前说过类似的话。” “是的,在我讲帕梅尼德斯的时候。” “可是我还是不懂你的意思。” “唔……我们坐在台阶上讲话的时候,不是有一只所谓的水怪在湖里翻腾吗?” “对呀。真是大奇怪了。” “一点也不奇怪。后来小红帽来到门口说:‘我在找我奶奶住的地方。’多愚蠢的表演哪!那只是少校的把戏,苏菲。就像那香蕉里写的宇和那愚蠢的雷雨一般。” “你以为…...” “我说过我有一个计划。只要我们坚守我们的理性,他就不能骗过我们。因为就某一方面来说,我们是自由的。他可以让我们‘感知’各种事物,但没有一件事物会让我感到惊讶。就算他让天色变黑、让大象飞行,我也只会笑笑而已。可是七加五永远是十二。不管他耍再多的把戏,这仍然会是一个事实。哲学是童话故事的相反。” 有好一会儿,苏菲只是坐在那儿惊奇地注视着他。 “你走吧。”他终于说。“我会打电话通知你来上有关浪漫主义的课。除此以外,你也得听听黑格尔和祁克果的哲学。可是只剩一个礼拜少校就要在凯耶维克机场着陆了。在那之前,我们必须设法挣脱他那死缠不休的想象力。我就说到这里为止了,苏菲。不过我希望你知道我正在为我们两人拟定一个很棒的计划。” “那我走哼。” “等一下——我们可能忘记了最重要的事。” “什么事?” “生日快乐歌。席德今天满十五岁了。” “我也是呀。” “对,你也一样。那么我们就来唱吧。” 于是他们两人便站起身来唱:祝你生日快乐祝你生日快乐祝亲爱的席德生日快乐祝你生日快乐已经四点半了。苏菲跑到湖边,划到对岸。她把船拉进草丛间,然后便开始快步穿过树林。 当她走到小路上时,突然看到树林间有某个东西在动。她心想不知道是不是小红帽独自一人走过树林到她奶奶家,可是树丛间那个东西形状比小红帽要小得多。 她走向前去,那个东西只有一个娃娃大小。它是棕色的,身上穿了一件红色的毛衣。 当她发现那是一个玩具熊时,便陡然停下了脚步。 有人把玩具熊留在森林里,这并不是什么奇怪的事。问题是这只玩具熊是活的,并且正专心一意地忙着某件事。 “嗨!”苏菲向它打招呼。 “我的名字叫波波熊。”它说。“很不幸的。我在树林里迷路了。 唉,本来我今天过得很好的。咦,我以前从来没有见过你。” “也许迷路的人是我。”苏菲说。“所以,你现在可能还是在你的家乡百亩林。” “你说的话太难懂了。别忘了,我只是一只小熊,而且不是很聪明。” “我听说过你的故事。” “你大概是爱丽丝吧!有一天罗宾告诉我们你的事。所以我们才见过面。你从一个瓶子里喝了好多好多的水,于是就愈变愈小。 可是然后你又喝了另外一瓶水,于是又开始变大了。你真该小心不要乱吃东西。有一次我吃得太多,居然在一个兔予洞里被卡住了。” “我不是爱丽丝。” “我们是谁并没有关系,重要的是我们是什么,这是猫头鹰说的话。它是很聪明的。有一天,天气很好时,它说过七加四等于十二。驴子和我都觉得自己好笨,因为算算术是很难的。算天气就容易得多。” “我的名字叫苏菲。” “很高兴见到你,苏菲。我说过了,我想你一定是没到过这儿。 不过我现在得走了,因为我必须要找到小猪。我们要去参加一个为兔子和它的朋友们举行的盛大花园宴会。” 它挥了挥它的手掌。苏菲看到它的另外一只手里拿着一小片卷起来的纸。 “你手里拿的是什么东西?”苏菲问。 小熊拿出那张纸说:“我就是因为这个才迷路的。” “可是那只是一张纸呀!” “不,这不只是一张纸。这是一封写给‘镜子另外一边的席德’的信。”“原来如此,你可以交给我。” “你就是镜子里面的那个女孩吗?” “不是,可是……” “信一定要交给本人。罗宾昨天才教过我。” “可是我认识席德。”。 “那又怎么样?就算你跟一个人很熟,你也不应该偷看他的信。” “我的意思是我可以帮你转交给席德。” “那还差不多。好吧,苏菲,你拿去吧。如果我可以把这封信交出去,也许我也可以找到小猪。你如果要找到镜子那边的席德,必须先找到一面大镜子。可是要在这里找到镜子可不简单哪!” 小熊说完了,就把那张折起来的纸交给苏菲,然后用它那双小脚走过树林。它消失不见后,苏菲打开那张纸开始看:亲爱的席德:很可惜艾伯特没有告诉苏菲,康德曾经倡议成立“国际联盟”。 他在《永远的和平》那篇论文中写道,所有国家都应该联合起来成立一个国际联盟,以确保各国能够和平共存。这篇论文写于一七九五年。过了大约一二五年,在第一次世界大战结束后,国际联盟成立了,但在第二次大战后被联合国取代。所以康德可说是联合国概念之父。康德的主旨是,人的‘实践理性’要求各国脱离制造战争的野蛮状态,并订定契约以维护和平。虽然建立一个国际联盟是一件辛苦的工作,但我们有责任为世界《永久的和平》而努力。对康德而言,建立这样一个联盟是远程目标。我们几乎可以说那是哲学的终极目标。我此刻仍在黎巴嫩。爱你的爸爸苏菲将纸条放进口袋,继续走回家。艾伯特曾经警告她在树林里会发生这样的事,但她总不能让那只小玩具熊在树林里滚来滚去,不停地找寻“镜子那边的席德”吧! Romanticism the path of mystery leads inwards Hilde let the heavy ring binder slide into her lap. Then she let it slide further onto the floor. It was already lighter in the room than when she had gone to bed. She looked at the clock. It was almost three. She snuggled down under the covers and closed her eyes. As she was falling asleep she wondered why her father had begun to write about Little Red Ridinghood and Winnie-the-Pooh ... She slept until eleven o'clock the next morning. The tension in her body told her that she had dreamed intensely all night, but she could not remember what she had dreamed. It felt as if she had been in a totally different reality. She went downstairs and fixed breakfast. Her mother had put on her blue jumpsuit ready to go down to the boathouse and work on the motorboat. Even if it was not afloat, it had to be shipshape when Dad got back from Lebanon. "Do you want to come down and give me a hand?" "I have to read a little first. Should I come down with some tea and a mid-morning snack?" "What mid-morning?" When Hilde had eaten she went back up to her room, made her bed, and sat herself comfortably with the ring binder resting against her knees. * * * Sophie slipped through the hedge and stood in the big garden which she had once thought of as her own Garden of Eden . . . There were branches and leaves strewn everywhere after the storm the night before. It seemed to her that there was some connection between the storm and the fallen branches and her meeting with Little Red Ridinghood and Winnie-the-Pooh. She went into the house. Her mother had just gotten home and was putting some bottles of soda in the refrigerator. On the table was a delicious-looking chocolate cake. "Are you expecting visitors?" asked Sophie; she had almost forgotten it was her birthday. "We're having the real party next Saturday, but I thought we ought to have a little celebration today as well." "How?" "I have invited Joanna and her parents." "Fine with me." The visitors arrived shortly before half-past seven. The atmosphere was somewhat formal--Sophie's mother very seldom saw Joanna's parents socially. It was not long before Sophie and Joanna went upstairs to Sophie's room to write the garden party invitations. Since Alberto Knox was also to be invited, Sophie had the idea of inviting people to a "philosophical garden party." Joanna didn't object. It was Sophie's party after all, and theme parties were "in" at the moment. Finally they had composed the invitation. It had taken two hours and they couldn't stop laughing. Dear. . . You are hereby invited to a philosophical garden party at 3 Clover Close on Saturday June 23 (Midsummer Eve) at 7 p.m. During the evening we shall hopefully solve the mystery of life. Please bring warm sweaters and bright ideas suitable for solving the riddles of philosophy. Because of the danger of woodland fires we unfortunately cannot have a bonfire, but everybody is free to let the flames of their imagination flicker unimpeded. There will be at least one genuine philosopher among the invited guests. For this reason the party is a strictly private arrangement. Members of the press will not be admitted. With regards,Joanna Ingebrigtsen (organizing committee) and Sophie Amundsen (hostess) The two girls went downstairs to their parents, who were now talking somewhat more freely. Sophie handed the draft invitation, written with a calligraphic pen, to her mother. "Could you make eighteen copies, please." It was not the first time she had asked her mother to make photocopies for her at work. Her mother read the invitation and then handed it to Joanna's father. "You see what I mean? She is going a little crazy." "But it looks really exciting," said Joanna's father, handing the sheet on to his wife. "I wouldn't mind coming to that party myself." Barbie read the invitation, then she said: "Well, I must say! Can we come too, Sophie?" "Let's say twenty copies, then," said Sophie, taking them at their word. "You must be nuts!" said Joanna. Before Sophie went to bed that night she stood for a long time gazing out of the window. She remembered how she had once seen the outline of Alberto's figure in the darkness. It was more than a month ago. Now it was again late at night, but this was a white summer night. Sophie heard nothing from Alberto until Tuesday morning. He called just after her mother had left for work. "Sophie Amundsen." "And Alberto Knox." "I thought so." "I'm sorry I didn't call before, but I've been working hard on our plan. I can only be alone and work undisturbed when the major is concentrating wholly and com-pletely on you." "That's weird." "Then I seize the opportunity to conceal myself, you see. The best surveillance system in the world has its limitations when it is only controlled by one single person ... I got your card." "You mean the invitation?" "Dare you risk it?" "Why not?" "Anything can happen at a party like that." "Are you coming?" "Of course I'm coming. But there is another thing. Did you remember that it's the day Hilde's father gets back from Lebanon?" "No, I didn't, actually." "It can't possibly be pure coincidence that he lets you arrange a philosophical garden party the same day as he gets home to Bjerkely." "I didn't think about it, as I said." "I'm sure he did. But all right, we'll talk about that later. Can you come to the major's cabin this morning?" "I'm supposed to weed the flower beds." "Let's say two o'clock, then. Can you make that?" "I'll be there." Alberto Knox was sitting on the step again when Sophie arrived. "Have a seat," he said, getting straight down to work. "Previously we spoke of the Renaissance, the Baroque period, and the Enlightenment. Today we are going to talk about Romanticism, which could be described as Europe's last great cultural epoch. We are approaching the end of a long story, my child." "Did Romanticism last that long?" "It began toward the end of the eighteenth century and lasted till the middle of the nineteenth. But after 1850 one can no longer speak of whole 'epochs' which comprise poetry, philosophy, art, science, and music." "Was Romanticism one of those epochs?" "It has been said that Romanticism was Europe's last common approach to life. It started in Germany, arising as a reaction to the Enlightenment's unequivocal emphasis on reason. After Kant and his cool intellectualism, it was as if German youth heaved a sigh of relief." "What did they replace it with?" "The new catchwords were 'feeling,"imagination,"experience,' and 'yearning.' Some of the Enlightenment thinkers had drawn attention to the importance of feel-ing--not least Rousseau--but at that time it was a criticism of the bias toward reason. What had been an undercurrent now became the mainstream of German culture." "So Kant's popularity didn't last very long?" "Well, it did and it didn't. Many of the Romantics saw themselves as Kant's successors, since Kant had established that there was a limit to what we can know of 'das Ding an sich.' On the other hand, he had underlined the importance of the ego's contribution to knowledge, or cognition. The individual was now completely free to interpret life in his own way. The Romantics exploited this in an almost unrestrained 'ego-worship,' which led to the exaltation of artistic genius." "Were there a lot of these geniuses?" "Beethoven was one. His music expresses his own feelings and yearnings. Beethoven was in a sense a 'free' artist--unlike the Baroque masters such as Bach and Handel, who composed their works to the glory of God, mostly in strict musical forms." "I only know the Moonlight Sonata and the Fifth Symphony." "But you know how romantic the Moonlight Sonata is, and you can hear how dramatically Beethoven expresses himself in the Fifth Symphony." "You said the Renaissance humanists were individualists too." "Yes. There were many similarities between the Renaissance and Romanticism. A typical one was the importance of art to human cognition. Kant made a considerable contribution here as well. In his aesthetics he investigated what happens when we are overwhelmed by beauty--in a work of art, for instance. When we abandon ourselves to a work of art with no other intention than the aesthetic experience itself, we are brought closer to an experience of 'das Ding an sich.' " "So the artist can provide something philosophers can't express?" "That was the view of the Romantics. According to Kant, the artist plays freely on his faculty of cognition. The German poet Schiller developed Kant's thought further. He wrote that the activity of the artist is like playing, and man is only free when he plays, because then he makes up his own rules. The Romantics believed that only art could bring us closer to 'the inexpressible.' Some went as far as to compare the artist to God." "Because the artist creates his own reality the way God created the world." "It was said that the artist had a 'universe-creating imagination.' In his transports of artistic rapture he could sense the dissolving of the boundary between dream and reality. "Novalis, one of the young geniuses, said that 'the world becomes a dream, and the dream becomes reality.' He wrote a novel called Heinrich von Ofterdingen set in Medieval times. It was unfinished when he died in 1801, but it was nevertheless a very significant novel. It tells of the young Heinrich who is searching for the 'blue flower' that he once saw in a dream and has yearned for ever since. The English Romantic poet Coleridge expressed the same idea; saying something like this: What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed? And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?" "How pretty!" "This yearning for something distant and unattainable was characteristic of the Romantics. They longed for bygone eras, such as the Middle Ages, which now became enthusiastically reappraised after the Enlightenment's negative evaluation. And they longed for distant cultures like the Orient with its mysticism. Or else they would feel drawn to Night, to Twilight, to old ruins and the supernatural. They were preoccupied with what we usually refer to as the dark side of life, or the murky, uncanny, and mystical." "It sounds to me like an exciting period. Who were these Romantics?" "Romanticism was in the main an urban phenomenon. In the first half of the last century there was, in fact, a flourishing metropolitan culture in many parts of Europe, not least in Germany. The typical Romantics were young men, often university students, although they did not always take their studies very seriously. They had a decidedly anti-middle class approach to life and could refer to the police or their landladies as philistines, for example, or simply as the enemy." "I would never have dared rent a room to a Romantic!" "The first generation of Romantics were young in about 1 800, and we could actually call the Romantic Movement Europe's first student uprising. The Romantics were not unlike the hippies a hundred and fifty years later." "You mean flower power and long hair, strumming their guitars and lying around?" "Yes. It was once said that 'idleness is the ideal of genius, and indolence the virtue of the Romantic.' It was the duty of the Romantic to experience life--or to dream himself away from it. Day-to-day business could be taken care of by the philistines." "Byron was a Romantic poet, wasn't he?" "Yes, both Byron and Shelley were Romantic poets of the so-called Satanic school. Byron, moreover, provided the Romantic Age with its idol, the Byronic hero--the alien, moody, rebellious spirit--in life as well as in art. Byron himself could be both willful and passionate, and being also handsome, he was besieged by women of fashion. Public gossip attributed the romantic adventures of his verses to his own life, but although he had numerous liaisons, true love remained as illusive and as unattainable for him as Novalis's blue flower. Novalis became engaged to a fourteen-year-old girl. She died four days after her fifteenth birthday, but Novalis remained devoted to her for the rest of his short life." "Did you say she died four days after her fifteenth birthday?" "Yes . . ." "I am fifteen years and four days old today." "So you are." "What was her name?" "Her name was Sophie." "What?" "Yes, it was. . ." "You scare me. Could it be a coincidence?" "I couldn't say, Sophie. But her name was Sophie." "Go on!" "Novalis himself died when he was only twenty-nine. He was one of the 'yun9 dead.' Many of the Romantics died young, usually of tuberculosis. Some committed suicide . . ." "Ugh!" "Those who lived to be old usually stopped being Romantics at about the age of thirty. Some of them went on to become thoroughly middle-class and conservative." "They went over to the enemy, then." "Maybe. But we were talking about romantic love. The theme of unrequited love was introduced as early as 1774 by Goethe in his novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. The book ends with young Werther shooting himself when he can't have the woman he loves . . ." "Was it necessary to go that far?" "The suicide rate rose after the publication of the novel, and for a time the book was banned in Denmark and Norway. So being a Romantic was not without danger. Strong emotions were involved." "When you say 'Romantic/ I think of those great big landscape paintings, with dark forests and wild, rugged nature ... preferably in swirling mists." "Yes, one of the features of Romanticism was this yearning for nature and nature's mysteries. And as I said, it was not the kind of thing that arises in rural areas. You may recall Rousseau, who initiated the slogan 'back to nature.' The Romantics gave this slogan popular currency. Romanticism represents not least a reaction to the Enlightenment's mechanistic universe. It was said that Romanticism implied a renaissance of the old cosmic consciousness." "Explain that, please." "It means viewing nature as a whole; the Romantics were tracing their roots not only back to Spinoza, but also to Plotinus and Renaissance philosophers like Jakob Bohme and Giordano Bruno. What all these thinkers had in common was that they experienced a divine 'ego' in nature." "They were Pantheists then . . ." "Both Descartes and Hume had drawn a sharp line between the ego and 'extended' reality. Kant had also left behind him a sharp distinction between the cognitive 'I' and nature 'in itself.' Now it was said that nature is nothing but one big 'I.' The Romantics also used the expressions 'world soul' or 'world spirit.' " "I see." "The leading Romantic philosopher was Schelling, who lived from 1775 to 1854. He wanted to unite mind and matter. All of nature--both the human soul and physical reality--is the expression of one Absolute, or world spirit, he believed." "Yes, just like Spinoza." "Nature is visible spirit, spirit is invisible nature, said Schelling, since one senses a 'structuring spirit' everywhere in nature. He also said that matter is slumbering intelligence." "You'll have to explain that a bit more clearly." "Schelling saw a 'world spirit' in nature, but he saw the same 'world spirit' in the human mind. The natural and the spiritual are actually expressions of the same thing." "Yes, why not?" "World spirit can thus be sought both in nature and in one's own mind. Novalis could therefore say 'the path of mystery leads inwards.' He was saying that man bears the whole universe within himself and comes closest to the mystery of the world by stepping inside himself." "That's a very lovely thought." "For many Romantics, philosophy, nature study, and poetry formed a synthesis. Sitting in your attic dashing off inspired verses and investigating the life of plants or the composition of rocks were only two sides of the same coin because nature is not a dead mechanism, it is one living world spirit." "Another word and I think I'll become a Romantic." "The Norwegian-born naturalist Henrik Steffens--whom Wergeland called 'Norway's departed laurel leaf because he had settled in Germany--went to Copenhagen in 1801 to lecture on German Romanticism. He characterized the Romantic Movement by saying, 'Tired of the eternal efforts to fight our way through raw matter, we chose another way and sought to embrace the infinite. We went inside ourselves and created a new world ... ' " "How can you remember all that?" "A bagatelle, child." "Go on, then." "Schelling also saw a development in nature from earth and rock to the human mind. He drew attention to very gradual transitions from inanimate nature to more complicated life forms. It was characteristic of the Romantic view in general that nature was thought of as an organism, or in other words, a unity which is constantly developing its innate potentialities. Nature is like a flower unfolding its leaves and petals. Or like a poet unfolding his verses." "Doesn't that remind you of Aristotle?" "It does indeed. The Romantic natural philosophy had Aristotelian as well as Neoplatonic overtones. Aristotle had a more organic view of natural processes than the mechanical materialists . . ." "Yes, that's what I thought. . ." "We find similar ideas at work in the field of history. A man who came to have great significance for the Romantics was the historical philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder, who lived from 1744 to 1803. He believed that history is characterized by continuity, evolution, and design. We say he had a 'dynamic' view of history be-cause he saw it as a process. The Enlightenment philosophers had often had a 'static' view of history. To them, there was only one universal reason which there could be more or less of at various periods. Herder showed that each historical epoch had its own intrinsic value and each nation its own character or 'soul.' The question is whether we can identify with other cultures." "So, just as we have to identify with another person's Situation to understand them better, we have to identify with other cultures to understand them too." "That is taken for granted nowadays. But in the Romantic period it was a new idea. Romanticism helped strengthen the feeling of national identity. It is no coinci-dence that the Norwegian struggle for national independence flourished at that particular time--in 1814." "I see." "Because Romanticism involved new orientations in so many areas, it has been usual to distinguish between two forms of Romanticism. There is what we call Universal Romanticism, referring to the Romantics who were preoccupied with nature, world soul, and artistic genius. This form of Romanticism flourished first, especially around 1800, in Germany, in the town of Jena." "And the other?" "The other is the so-called National Romanticism, which became popular a little later, especially in the town of Heidelberg. The National Romantics were mainly interested in the history of 'the people,' the language of 'the people,' and the culture of 'the people' in general. And 'the people' were seen as an organism unfolding its innate potentiality--exactly like nature and history." "Tell me where you live, and I'll tell you who you are." "What united these two aspects of Romanticism was first and foremost the key word 'organism.' The Romantics considered both a plant and a nation to be a living organism. A poetic work was also a living organism. Language was an organism. The entire physical world, even, was considered one organism. There is therefore no sharp dividing line between National Romanticism and Universal Romanticism. The world spirit was just as much present in the people and in popular culture as in nature and art." "I see." "Herder had been the forerunner, collecting folk songs from many lands under the eloquent title Voices of the People. He even referred to folktales as 'the mother tongue of the people.' The Brothers Grimm and others began to collect folk songs and fairy tales in Heidelberg. You must know of Grimm's Fairy Tales." "Oh sure, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Rumpelstiltskin, The Frog Prince, Hansel and Gretel . . ." "And many more. In Norway we had Asbj0rnsen and Moe, who traveled around the country collecting 'folks' own tales.' It was like harvesting a juicy fruit that was suddenly discovered to be both good and nourishing. And it was urgent--the fruit had already begun to fall. Folk songs were collected; the Norwegian language began to be studied scientifically. The old myths and sagas from heathen times were rediscovered, and composers all over Europe began to incorporate folk melodies into their compositions in an attempt to bridge the gap between folk music and art music." "What's art music?" "Art music is music composed by a particular person, like Beethoven. Folk music was not written by any particular person, it came from the people. That's why we don't know exactly when the various folk melodies date from. We distinguish in the same way between folktales and art tales." "So art tales are ... ?" "They are tales written by an author, like Hans Christian Andersen. The fairy tale genre was passionately cultivated by the Romantics. One of the German masters of the genre was E.T.A, Hoffmann." "I've heard of The Tales of Hoffmann." "The fairy tale was the absolute literary ideal of the Romantics--in the same way that the absolute art form of the Baroque period was the theater. It gave the poet full scope to explore his own creativity." "He could play God to a fictional universe." "Precisely. And this is a good moment to sum up." "Go ahead." "The philosophers of Romanticism viewed the 'world soul' as an 'ego' which in a more or less dreamlike state created everything in the world. The philosopher Fichte said that nature stems from a higher, unconscious imagination. Scheliing said explicitly that the world is 'in God.' God is aware of some of it, he believed, but there are other aspects of nature which represent the unknown in God. For God also has a dark side." "The thought is fascinating and frightening. It reminds me of Berkeley." "The relationship between the artist and his work was seen in exactly the same light. The fairy tale gave the writer free rein to exploit his 'universe-creating imagination.' And even the creative act was not always completely conscious. The writer could experience that his story was being written by some innate force. He could practically be in a hypnotic trance while he wrote." "He could?" "Yes, but then he would suddenly destroy the illusion. He would intervene in the story and address ironic comments to the reader, so that the reader, at least momentarily, would be reminded that it was, after all, only a story." "I see." "At the same time the writer could remind his reader that it was he who was manipulating the fictional universe. This form of disillusion is called 'romantic irony.' Henrik Ibsen, for example, lets one of the characters in Peer Gynt say: 'One cannot die in the middle of Act Five.' " "That's a very funny line, actually. What he's really saying is that he's only a fictional character." "The statement is so paradoxical that we can certainly emphasize it with a new section." "What did you mean by that?" "Oh, nothing, Sophie. But we did say that Novalis's fiancee was called Sophie, just like you, and that she died when she was only fifteen years and four days old ..." "You're scaring me, don't you know that?" Alberto sat staring, stony faced. Then he said: "But you needn't be worriedthat you will meet the same fate as Novalis's fiancee." "Why not?" "Because there are several more chapters." "What are you saying?" "I'm saying that anyone reading the story of Sophie and Alberto will know intuitively that there are many pages of the story still to come. We have only gotten as far as Romanticism." "You're making me dizzy." "It's really the major trying to make Hilde dizzy. It's not very nice or him, is it? New section!" * * * Alberto had hardly finished speaking when a boy came running out of the woods. He had a turban on his head, and he was carrying an oil lamp. Sophie grabbed Alberto's arm. "Who's that?" she asked. The boy answered for himself: "My name is Aladdin and I've come all the way from Lebanon." Alberto looked at him sternly: "And what do you have in your lamp?" The boy rubbed the lamp, and out of it rose a thick cloud which formed itself into the figure of a man. He had a black beard like Alberto's and a blue beret. Floating above the lamp, he said: "Can you hear me, Hilde? I suppose it's too late for any more birthday greetings. I just wanted to say that Bjerkely and the south country back home seem like fairyland to me here in Lebanon. I'll see you there in a few days." So saying, the figure became a cloud again and was sucked back into the lamp. The boy with the turban put the lamp under his arm, ran into the woods, and was gone. "I don't believe this," said Sophie. "A bagatelle, my dear." "The spirit of the lamp spoke exactly like Hilde's father." "That's because it was Hilde's father--in spirit." "But. . ." "Both you and I and everything around us are living deep in the major's mind. It is late at night on Saturday, April 28, and all the UN soldiers are asleep around the major, who, although still awake, is not far from sleep himself. But he must finish the book he is to give Hilde as a fifteenth birthday present. That's why he has to work, Sophie, that's why the poor man gets hardly any rest." "I give up." "New section!" Sophie and Alberto sat looking across the little lake. Alberto seemed to be in some sort of trance. After a while Sophie ventured to nudge his shoulder. "Were you dreaming?" "Yes, he was interfering directly there. The last few paragraphs were dictated by him to the letter. He should be ashamed of himself. But now he has given himself away and come out into the open. Now we know that we are living our lives in a book which Hilde's father will send home to Hilde as a birthday present. You heard what I said? Well, it wasn't 'me' saying it." "If what you say is true, I'm going to run away from the book and go my own way." "That's exactly what I am planning. But before that can happen, we must try and talk with Hilde. She reads every word we say. Once we succeed in getting away from here it will be much harder to contact her. That means we must grasp the opportunity now." "What do we say?" "I think the major is just about to fall asleep over his typewriter--although his fingers are still racing feverishly over the keys ..." "It's a creepy thought." "This is the moment when he may write something he will regret later. And he has no correction fluid. That's a vital part of my plan. May no one give the major a bottle of correction fluid!" "He won't get so much as a single coverup strip from me!" "I'm calling on that poor girl here and now to rebel against her own father. She should be ashamed to let herself be amused by his self-indulgent playing with shad-ows. If only we had him here, we'd give him a taste of our indignation!" "But he's not here." "He is here in spirit and soul, but he's also safely tucked away in Lebanon. Everything around us is the major's ego." "But he is more than what we can see here." "We are but shadows in the major's soul. And it is no easy matter for a shadow to turn on its master, Sophie. It requires both cunning and strategy. But we have an opportunity of influencing Hilde. Only an angel can rebel against God." "We could ask Hilde to give him a piece of her mind the moment he gets home. She could tell him he's a rogue. She could wreck his boat--or at least, smash the lantern." Alberto nodded. Then he said: "She could also run away from him That would be much easier for her than it is for us. She could leave the major's house and never return. Wouldn't that be fitting for a major who plays with his 'universe-creating imagination' at our expense?" "I can picture it. The major travels all over the world searching for Hilde. But Hilde has vanished into thin air because she can't stand living with a father who plays the fool at Alberto's and Sophie's expense." "Yes, that's it! Plays the fool! That's what I meant by his using us as birthday amusement. But he'd better watch out, Sophie. So had Hilde!" "How do you mean?" "Are you sitting tight?" "As long as there are no more genies from a lamp." "Try to imagine that everything that happens to us goes on in someone else's mind. We are that mind. That means we have no soul, we are someone else's soul. So far we are on familiar philosophical ground. Both Berkeley and Schelling would prick up their ears." "And?" "Now it is possible that this soul is Hilde M0ller Knag's father. He is over there in Lebanon writing a book on philosophy for his daughter's fifteenth birthday. When Hilde wakes up on June 15, she finds the book on her bedside table, and now she--and anyone else--can read about us. It has long been suggested that this 'present' could be shared with others." "Yes, I remember." "What I am saying to you now will be read by Hilde after her father in Lebanon once imagined that I was telling you he was in Lebanon ... imagining me telling you that he was in Lebanon." Sophie's head was swimming. She tried to remember what she had heard about Berkeley and the Romantics. Alberto Knox continued: "But they shouldn't feel so cocky because of that. They are the last people who should laugh, because laughter can easily get stuck in their throat." "Who are we talking about?" "Hilde and her father. Weren't we talking about them?" "But why shouldn't they feel so cocky?" "Because it is feasible that they, too, are nothing but mind." "How could they be?" "If it was possible for Berkeley and the Romantics, it must be possible for them. Maybe the major is also a shadow in a book about him and Hilde, which is also about us, since we are a part of their lives." "That would be even worse. That makes us only shadows of shadows." "But it is possible that a completely different author is somewhere writing a book about a UN Major Albert Knag, who is writing a book for his daughter Hilde. This book is about a certain Alberto Knox who suddenly begins to send humble philosophical lectures to Sophie Amundsen, 3 Clover Close." "Do you believe that?" "I'm just saying it's possible. To us, that author would be a 'hidden God.' Although everything we are and everything we say and do proceeds from him, because we are him we will never be able to know anything about him. We are in the innermost box." Alberto and Sophie now sat for a long time without saying anything. It was Sophie who finally broke the silence: "But if there really is an author who is writing a story about Hilde's father in Lebanon, just like he is writing a story about us . . ." "Yes?" "... then it's possible that author shouldn't be cocky either." "What do you mean?" "He is sitting somewhere, hiding both Hilde and me deep inside his head. Isn't it just possible that he, too, is part of a higher mind?" Atberto nodded. "Of course it is, Sophie. That's also a possibility. And if that is the way it is, it means he has permitted us to have this philosophical conversation in order to present this possibility. He wishes to emphasize that he, too, is a helpless shadow, and that this book, in which Hilde and Sophie appear, is in reality a textbook on philosophy." "A textbook?" "Because all our conversations, all our dialogues ..." "Yes?" "... are in reality one long monologue." "I get the feeling that everything is dissolving into mind and spirit. I'm glad there are still a few philosophers left. The philosophy that began so proudly with Thales, Em-pedocles, and Democritus can't be stranded here, surely?" "Of course not. I still have to tell you about Hegel. He was the first philosopher who tried to salvage philosophy when the Romantics had dissolved everything into spirit." "I'm very curious." "So as not to be interrupted by any further spirits or shadows, we shall go inside." "It's getting chilly out here anyway." "Next chapter!" 浪漫主义    ……神秘之路通向内心…… 席德任由那本沉重的讲义夹滑入怀中,并继而滑落到地板上。 现在的天色已经比她刚上床时明亮。她看看时钟,已经快三点了。她钻进被窝,闭上眼睛。她入睡时心里仍在好奇为何爸爸会开始将小红帽和波波熊写进书中……第二天早上她睡到十一点。醒来时全身肌肉都绷得紧紧的,于是她知道自己昨晚又做了许多梦,可是她已经不记得自己梦见什么了,感觉上就好像她活在一个完全不同的世界似的。 她下楼准备早餐。妈妈已经把她那套蓝色的工人装拿出来了,预备到船屋那儿去修理汽艇。虽然它一直都没有下水,在爸爸从黎巴嫩回来前还是得把它整理得比较像样些。 “你想不想来帮我的忙?” “我得先读一点书。你要不要我带一杯茶和一些点心去呢?” “都快中午了还用吃点心吗?” 席德吃完早餐就回到房里。她把床铺整理了一下,然后舒服地坐在上面,膝上放着那本讲义夹。 哲学宴会 苏菲钻过树篱,站在花园里。这座大花园曾经是她心目中属于她的伊甸园……园里到处散布着昨天晚上被暴风雨吹落的枝叶。她觉得那场暴风雨和落叶和她遇见小红帽与波波熊这件事似乎有某种关联。 苏菲信步走到秋千那儿,挥落上面的松针与松枝。还好秋千上的坐垫是塑胶的,所以下雨时也不需要把它们收进屋里去。 苏菲走进屋里。妈妈已经回到家了,正把几瓶汽水放进冰箱里。餐桌上放着一块花结状的乳酪饼和一小堆杏仁圈圈饼。 “我们家有客人要来吗?”苏菲问。她几乎已经忘记今天是她的生日了。 “我们要到星期六才请客,不过我想我们今天也应该稍微庆祝一下。” “怎么庆祝呢?” “我请了乔安和她的爸妈。” 苏菲耸耸肩。 “好啊!” 快到七点半时,客人就到了。气氛满拘谨的,因为苏菲的妈妈很少和乔安的爸妈往来。 不久苏菲与乔安就到楼上苏菲的房间去写花园宴会的邀请函。由于艾伯特也在应邀之列,因此苏菲兴起了举办一个“哲学花园宴会”的念头,乔安也没有反对,毕竟这是苏菲的宴会。于是她们便决定举办一个有主题的宴会。 她们花了两个小时才拟好邀请函。两个女孩都笑弯了腰。 亲爱的……敬邀您在六月二十三日仲夏节当天晚上七点,前来苜蓿巷三号参加哲学性的花园宴会,以期解开生命之谜。请携带保暖的毛衣与适于解开哲学之谜的高明土意。为免引发森林火灾,我们很遗憾后时将无法升起营火,不过欢迎大家尽情燃亮想象力的火焰。应邀贵宾中将至少有一位是真正的哲学家。因此之故,此一宴会将不对外开放。新闻界人士也恕不招待。 顺颂时祺筹备委员乔安宴会主人苏菲写完后,她们便下楼去见爸妈。此时他们正在聊天,气氛已经比较轻松自然了。苏菲将她用钢笔写的邀请函文稿交给妈妈。 “请帮我复印十八份。”这已经不是苏菲第一次请妈妈利用上班时间帮她影印东西了。 妈妈看过邀请函后,便将它递给乔安的爸爸。 “你看我说得没错吧?她已经晕头转向了。” “不过看起来还满吸引人的。”乔安的爸爸说,一边把那张文稿递给他太太。“如果可以的话,我也想参加呢i” 乔安的妈妈芭比看了邀请函后说道:“嗯,真不错。苏菲,我们也可以参加吗?” 苏菲信以为真,便说:“妈,那你就帮我印二十份吧。” “你疯了不成!”乔安说。 当天晚上苏菲上床前,在窗前站了许久,看着窗外的景色。她还记得有一次曾经在黑暗中看到艾伯特的身影。这已经是一个多月前的事了。现在又是深夜时分,只不过由于已是夏日,天色仍然明亮。 直到星期二上午,艾伯特才和她联络。苏菲的妈妈刚出门上班,他就打电话来了。 “喂,我是苏菲。” “我是艾伯特。” “我猜到了。” “很抱歉我没有早一点打电话来,因为我一直忙着拟定我们的计划。这段时间少校把全副注意力都放在你的身上,所以我才能够单独做一些事,不受干扰。” “这事实在很诡异。” “然后我就抓住这个机会躲了起来,你明白吗?就算是全世界最好的监视网络,如果只由一个人控制的话,也会有它的缺点……我收到你的卡片了。” “你是说邀请函吗?” “你敢冒这个险吗?” “为什么不敢?” “像那样的宴会,什么事都可能发生。” “你来不来呢?” “当然来啦。可是有一件事:你还记得那天席德的爸爸会从黎巴嫩回来吗?” “老实说,我忘记了。” “他让你在他回到柏客来那一天举行哲学性的花园宴会,一定不可能是什么巧合。” “我没想到这个耶!” “我敢说他一定想到了。不过没有关系,我们以后再谈这件事好了。你今天上午能到少校的小木屋来吗?” “我今天要修剪花坛的草。” “那就下午两点好了。你能来吗?” “可以。” 苏菲到达小木屋时,艾伯特已经坐在门前的台阶上了。 “到这里来坐!”他说,然后就马上开始上课了。 浪漫主义“我们已经讲过了文艺复兴运动、巴洛克时期与启蒙运动。今天我们要谈浪漫主义。这可以说是欧洲最后一个伟大的文化纪元。 到这里,我们就接近尾声了。” “浪漫主义时期有这么久吗?” “它从十八世纪末开始,一直持续到十九世纪中期。到了一八五O年以后就不再有一个涵盖诗、哲学、艺术、科学与音乐的‘纪元’了。” “浪漫主义时期就是这些纪元当中的一个吗?” “有人说浪漫主义是欧洲人士最后一次对生命的‘共同进路’。 这个运动从德国开始,最初是为了反对启蒙时期的哲学家过于强调理性的做法。在康德和他那冷静的知性主义成为过去式后,德国的青年仿佛松了一口气,如释重负。” “那他们用什么东西来取代康德的哲学呢?” “当时的新口号是‘感情’、‘想象’、‘经验’和‘渴望’。过去部分启蒙时期的哲学家,包括卢梭在内,也曾经提到感情的重要性。到了浪漫主义时期,人们开始批评过于偏重理性的做法。以往隐而不显的浪漫主义如今成为德国文化的主流。” “这么说康德对人们的影响力并没有持续很久哼?” “可以说是,也可以说不是。许多浪漫主义者自认是康德的传人,因为康德已经确认我们对于‘物自身’所知有限,同时他也强调自我的作用对于知识(或认知)的重要性。在这种情况下,个人可以完全随心所欲的以自己的方式来诠释生命。浪漫主义者便利用这点发展出几乎毫无限制的‘自我崇拜’,并且因此而歌颂艺术方面的天才。” “那时候有很多这样的天才吗?” “贝多芬就是其中之一。他用音乐来表达自我的情感与渴望,比起巴哈和韩德尔这些多半以严格的音乐形式创作乐曲,以歌颂上帝的巴洛克时期大音乐家,贝多芬可以说是一个‘自由的’艺术家。” “我只听过月光奏鸣曲和第五号交响曲。” “那你应该可以听得出月光奏鸣曲是多么浪漫,而贝多芬在第五号交响乐中又是如何生动地表现自己。” “你说过文艺复兴时期的人文主义者也是个人主义者。” “是的。文艺复兴时期与浪漫主义时期有许多相似的地方,其中最典型的就是两者都强调艺术对人类认知的重要性。在这方面康德有很大的贡献,他在他的美学理论中研究了当我们受到美(例如一幅艺术作品)的感动时会发生什么情况。他认为,当我们忘记自我,忘记一切,完全沉浸于艺术作品的时候,我们就比较能够体验到‘物自身’。” “这么说艺术家可以提供一些哲学家无法表达的东西哼?’:“这正是浪漫主义者的看法。根据康德的说法,艺术家可以随心所欲地运用他的认知能力。德国诗人席勒(Shller)更进一步发挥康德的想法。他说,艺术家的创作活动就像玩游戏一般,而人唯有在玩游戏的时候才是自由的,因为那时他可以自己订定游戏规则。浪漫主义者相信,唯有艺术才能使我们更接近那‘无以言喻’的经验。有人甚至将艺术家比做上帝。” “因为艺术家创造自己的世界,就像上帝创造这个世界一般。” “有人说艺术家有一种‘创造宇宙的想象力’。当他内心充满艺术的狂喜时,他可以跨越梦境与现实的藩篱。年轻的艺术天才诺瓦里思(Novalis)曾经说过:‘人世变成了一场梦,而梦境成为现实。’他写了一部名为海因利希•冯•欧夫特丁根(Heinrich von Ohter—dingen)的中世纪小说。此书虽然在他一八O一年去世时仍未完成,但仍是一本非常重要的小说。书中叙述年轻的海因利希一心一意找寻他曾经在梦中见到、渴望已久的‘蓝色花朵’。除此之外,英国的浪漫主义诗人柯立芝(Co1eridge)也曾表达同样的意念:‘万一你睡着了呢?万一你在睡眠时做梦了呢?万一你在梦中到了天堂,在那儿采下了一朵奇异而美丽的花?万一你醒来时,花儿正在手中?啊,那时你要如何呢?’” “好美啊!” “这种渴望遥不可及的事物的心态正是浪漫主义者的特色。他们也可能会怀念一个已经逝去的年代,例如中世纪。历经启蒙时期对中世纪的贬谪后,浪漫主义者开始热烈重估中世纪的价值。此外,他们对神秘的东方等遥远的文化也怀有一分憧憬。有些浪漫主义者则受到夜晚、黄昏、古老的废墟与超自然事物的吸引。他们满脑子都是我们通常所说的人生的‘黑暗面’,也就是一些阴暗、神秘、不可思议的事物。” “听起来像是一个满刺激的时代。那些浪漫主义者都是些什么人呢?” “浪漫主义主要兴盛于都市地区。十九世纪的前半在德国等许多欧洲地区,都可见到兴盛蓬勃的都市文化。最典型的浪漫主义者都是年轻人,通常是一些并不一定很认真读书的大学生。他们有一种明显的反中产阶级的生活态度,有时会称警察或他们的房东为‘庸俗市侩’,或甚至称他们是‘敌人’。” “要是我的话,可不敢租房子给浪漫主义者!” “一八OO年左右的第一代浪漫主义者都是年轻人。事实上我们可以称浪漫主义运动为欧洲的第一个学生运动。那些浪漫主义者有点像是一百五十年后的嬉皮。” “你是说那些留长发、漫不经心地弹吉他并且随地躺来躺去的人?” “对。曾有人说:‘闲散是天才的理想,懒惰是浪漫主义者的美德。’浪漫主义者的职责就是体验生活——或是成天做白日梦、浪费生命。至于日常的事务留给那些俗人做就行了。” “拜伦是浪漫主义时期的诗人,不是吗?” “是的。拜伦和雪莱都是所谓的‘恶魔派’的浪漫主义诗人。拜伦更成为浪漫主义时期的偶像。所谓的‘拜伦式的英雄’就是指那些无论在生活上还是艺术上都特立独行、多愁善感、叛逆成性的人。拜伦本人可能就是一个既任性又热情的人,再加上他外貌英俊、因此受到了许多时髦妇女包围。一般人认为,拜伦那些充满了浪漫奇遇的诗其实就是反映他个人的生活。然而,他虽然有过许多韵事绯闻,但对于他而言,真爱却像诺瓦里思梦中的蓝色花朵一般不可捉摸、遥不可及。诺瓦里思曾和一名十四岁的少女订婚,但她却在满十五岁生日的四天之后去世。可是诺瓦里思对她的爱却是一生不渝。” “你说她在满十五岁生日的四天后死去吗?” “是的……” “我今天就是十五岁又加四天。” “喔。” “她叫什么名字?” “她的名字叫苏菲。” “什么?” “是的,她的名字就叫……” “吓死我了。难道是巧合吗?” “我不知道。不过她的名字确实叫苏菲。” “继续。” “诺瓦里思本人二十九岁时去世。他是那些‘早夭’的人之一。 许多浪漫主义者都在很年轻时死去,通常是由于肺结核的缘故,有些人则是自杀而死。” “噢!” “那些活得比较久的人通常到大约三十岁时就不再信仰浪漫主义了,其中有些人后来甚至成为彻头彻尾的中产阶级保守人士。” “那他们不等于是投诚到敌方去了吗?” “也许吧。刚才我们讲到浪漫主义的爱情。单恋式的爱情这个主题早在一七四四年就出现了。那年歌德写了一本书信体的小说《少年维特的烦恼》。书中的男主角维特最后因为无法获得所爱女人的芳心而举枪自杀……” “有必要这么极端吗?” “自从这本书出版后,自杀率似平有上升的趋势,因此有一段时间这本书在丹麦和挪威都被列入禁书。所以做一个浪漫主义者并不是没有危险的。他们的情绪通常都很强烈。” “当你说‘浪漫主义’的时候,我脑海里出现的就是那些巨幅的风景画,上面有幽暗的森林、蛮荒崎岖的自然景观……还有,最好笼罩在一片缭绕的雾气中。” “是的。浪漫主义的特征之一就是向往大自然和大自然的神秘。就像我刚才所说的,这种向往并不是乡村生活的产物。你可能还记得卢梭首先提出‘回归自然’的口号,但真正使这句口号风行起来的却是浪漫主义者。浪漫主义代表人们对启蒙时期哲学家眼中机械化宇宙的反动。有人说浪漫主义骨子里是古老宇宙意识的一种复兴。” “请你说明一下。” “意思就是将大自然看成是一个整体。浪漫主义者宣称不仅史宾诺莎,连普罗汀和波赫姆(Jakob Bohme)、布鲁诺等文艺复兴时期的哲学家都可以算是他们的祖师爷。这些思想家的共同特色是他们都在大自然中体验到一种神圣的‘自我’。” “那么他们是泛神论者哼……” “笛卡尔和休姆两人曾经将自我与‘扩延’的实在界区分得很清楚。康德也认为‘自我’对自然的认知与自然‘本身’是明显不同的。浪漫主义时期的说法则是:大自然就是一个大‘我’。浪漫主义同时也使用‘世界灵魂’与‘世界精神’等名称。” 谢林“原来如此。” “浪漫主义时期最主要的哲学家是谢林(Schelling),生于一七七五年到一八五四年间。他主张将心灵与物质合而为一。他认为,大自然的全部——包括人的灵魂与物质世界——都是一个‘绝对存在’(Abso1ute)(或世界精神)的表现。” “就像史宾诺莎一样。” “谢林说,自然是肉眼可见的精神,精神则是肉眼看不见的自然,因为我们在大自然中到处都可感受到‘产生结构的精神’(structuring spirit)。他说,物质乃是沉睡中的智性。” “请你解释得清楚些。” “谢林在大自然中看到了‘世界精神’,但他也在人类心灵中看到同样的‘世界精神’。自然与精神事实上都是同一事物的显现。” “对呀。” “因此我们无论在大自然中或自我的心灵中都可发现世界精神。所以,诺瓦里思才说:‘神秘之路通往内心。’他的意思是整个大自然都存在于人的心中,如果人能进入自己的心中,将可以接近世界的神秘。” “这种想法很不错。” “对于许多浪漫主义者而言,哲学、自然科学研究和诗学都是:不分家的。坐在自家的阁楼上,写一些灵感泉涌的诗歌和研究植物的生命或岩石的成分只是一体的两面,因为大自然不是一个死的机械,而是一个活生生的世界精神。” “再听你讲下去,我也要变成一个浪漫主义者了。” “定居在德国,并因此被沃格兰(Wergeland)称为‘自挪威飘落的月桂叶’的挪威裔自然学家史代芬(Henrik Steffens),一八o一年在哥本哈根发表有关德国浪漫主义的演讲时,曾一语道破了浪漫主义运动的特色。他说:‘我们厌倦了无休无止地与粗糙的物质世界奋战,因此决定选择另外一个方式,企图拥抱无限。我们进入自己的内心,在那里创造了一个新的世界……,” “你怎么会背得这么清楚呢?” “小事一桩。” “继续讲吧。” “谢林并且发现在大自然中,从泥土、岩石到人类的心灵,有一种逐渐发展的现象。他提醒人们注意大自然从无生物逐渐发展到较复杂的生命体的现象。大致上来说,浪漫主义者把大自然视为一个有机体,也就是一个不断发展其内在潜能的一个整体。大自然就像一株不断伸展枝叶与花瓣的花,也像一个不断吟咏出诗歌的诗人。” “这不是和亚理斯多德的说法很像吗?” “确实如此。浪漫主义埋藏的自然哲学与亚理斯多德和新柏拉图派的哲学有点相似。亚理斯多德要比持机械论的唯物主义者更倾向于认为大自然是一个有机体。” “我也是这么想……” “在历史方面,浪漫主义者也有同样的看法。生于一七四四年到一八O三年间的历史哲学家赫德(Johann Gottfried von Herder)后来成为对浪漫主义者而言非常重要的一位人物。他认为历史的特性就是连续、进化与设计。我们说他的历史观是‘动态的’,因为他把历史当咸一个过程。过去,启蒙时期哲学家的历史观通常是‘静态的’。对于他们而言,世间只有一种普遍理性,而历史上的各个时期或多或少都具有这种理性。但赫德指出,每一个历史纪元各自有其价值,而每一个国家也都各有其个性或‘灵魂’。问题在于我们是否能认同其他的文化。” “嗯。我们必须要认同别人的情况才能了解他们,同样的,我们也必须认同别的文化才能理解这些文化。” “这个观念如今已经被视为理所当然的了。可是在浪漫主义时期,这仍然是一个新观念。浪漫主义加强了人们对自己民族的认同感,因此,挪威争取民族独立的运动在一八一四这一年澎湃汹涌并不是偶然的。” “原来如此。” “由于浪漫主义使得许多领域都重新定位,因此一般通常将浪漫主义分为两种。一种是我们所称的‘普世性的浪漫主义’,就是指那些满脑子自然、世界灵魂与艺术天才的浪漫主义者。这种浪漫主义最先兴起,尤其是在一八OO年左右在耶纳(Jena)这个小镇上。” “那另外一种呢?” “另外一种被称为‘民族浪漫主义’,不久就日益风行,尤其是在海德堡。民族浪漫主义关切的重点是‘民族’的历史、‘民族’的语言和‘民族’的文化。他们将发展视为一个不断开展它的内在潜能的有机体,就像自然与历史一样。” “就像人家说的:‘告诉我你住哪里,我就可以告诉你你是谁。’” 艺术“使这两种浪漫主义相连结的主要是‘有机体’这个名词。浪漫主义者把植物和国家都当成活生生的有机体。因此一首诗也是一个有生命的有机体,语言也是一个有机体,甚至整个物质世界都被看成有机体。从这方面说,民族浪漫主义与一般性浪漫主义之间并没有明显的区分。民族与民间文化之中也像自然与艺术一样存在有世界精神。” “然后呢?” “赫德首开风气之先,前往各地采集民谣,将它们称为‘民族之声’。他甚至把民俗故事称为‘民族的母语’。人们也开始在海德堡采集民谣与童话故事。你可能听过格林童话故事。” “当然啦,像白雪公主和七个小矮人、小红帽、灰姑娘、汉斯和桂桃……” “……还有其他许多许多。在挪威则有艾思比杨生(Asbj&rnsen)和莫伊(Moe)等人走访全国各地采集‘人民自己的故事’。在当时,民间故事就好像是一种才刚被人发现的、既美味又营养的水果一般,必须赶紧加以采收,因为它们已经开始从枝头掉落了。除了民间故事之外,他们也采集各种民谣、整理挪威的语言,并挖掘异教时代各种古老的神话与传奇冒险故事。欧洲各地的作曲家也开始将民俗音乐写进他们的作品中,以拉近民俗音乐与艺术音乐之间的距离。” “什么叫艺术音乐?” “艺术音乐是由个人(如贝多芬)创作的音乐,民俗音乐则不是由任何人写成的,它来自整个民族。这也是为什么我们无法确知各个民谣发源的时间的缘故。同样的,民俗故事和艺术故事也是不同的。” “所谓艺术故事是……” “它们是由某位作家——如安徒生(Hans ChristianAndersen)——所写成的。而民俗故事则是浪漫主义者所积极开发的类型。德国有位霍夫曼(Hoffmann)就是此中大师。” “我好像听过‘霍夫曼的故事’。” “童话故事是浪漫主义者理想中最完美的文学类型,就像剧场是巴洛克时期最完美的艺术形式一般。它使得诗人有充分的空间探索他自己的创造力。” “他可以在他虚构的世界中扮演上帝的角色。” “正是如此。说到这里我们也可以做个总结了。” “请说吧。” “浪漫主义的哲学家将‘世界灵魂’看成是一个‘自我’,而这个自我在梦般的情境下创造了世间的一切。哲学家费希特(Fichte)说,大自然源自一个更高的、无意识的想象力。谢林则明白地说世界‘在上帝之内’。他相信上帝意识到世界的一部分,但是大自然中也有另外一些部分代表上帝不为人知的一面。因为上帝也有他的黑暗面。” “这种想法既有趣又吓人,使我想起柏克莱。” “艺术家和他的作品之间的关系也是一样的。童话故事让作家可以自由自在地利用他那‘创世的想象力’,但即使是这样的创造行为也并不一定完全是有意识的。作家可能会感觉到他的内心有一股力量驱策他把一个故事写出来。他在写作时也许是处于一种被催眠般的恍恍惚惚的状态。” “真的吗?” “是的,不过后来他也可能会突然打破这种幻象。他会出面干涉,向读者说一些讽刺性的话,让他们至少在那一刹那间会想起他们所读的毕竟只是一个虚构的故事而已。” “原来如此。” “同时作者也可能会提醒他的读者,使他们明白是他在操纵这个虚构的世界。这种打破幻象的形式叫做‘浪漫主义的反讽’(ro—mantlc irony)。例如在挪威剧作家易卜生所写的《皮尔金》这出戏里,有一个角色就说出‘没有人会在第五幕演到一半的时候死掉’这样的台词。” “真滑稽。他真正的意思是他只不过是一个虚构的人物罢了。” “这话充满反讽的意味。我们真应该另起一段来加以强调。” “你的意思是……” “没什么,苏菲。不过我们刚才曾讲到诺瓦里思的未婚妻和你一样名叫苏菲,而且她在十五岁又四天的时候就去世了……” “你把我吓坏了。你难道不知道吗?” 艾伯特坐在那儿看着她,脸色凝重。然后他说:“可是你不需要担心你的命运会像诺瓦里思的未婚妻一样。” “为什么呢?” “因为后面还有好几章。” “你在说什么呀?” “我是说任何一个读到苏菲和艾伯特的故事的人都可以凭直觉知道后面还有很多页,因为我们才谈到浪漫主义而已。” “我真是被你弄昏头了。” “事实上是少校想把席德弄昏头。他这样做不是很恶劣吗?另起一段吧。” 艾伯特才刚讲完,就有一个男孩从树林里跑出来。他穿着阿拉伯人的服装。头上包着头巾,手中提着一盏油灯。 苏菲抓住艾伯特的手臂。 “那是谁呀?”她问。 男孩自己先回答了。 “我名叫阿拉丁。我是一路从黎巴嫩来的。” 艾伯特严肃地看着他。 “那你的油灯里有什么呢?” 男孩擦了擦油灯,便有一股浓雾从中升起,最后变成一个人形。他有一嘴像艾伯特一样的黑胡子,头上戴着蓝扁帽,在油灯上方飘浮。他说:“席德,你能听到我讲话吗?我猜现在再向你说生日快乐已经太迟了。我只想跟你说柏客来山庄和南部的乡村对我而言,也好像是童话世界一般。过几天我们就能够在那儿见面了。” 说完后,这个人形便再度变成一股云雾,被吸回油灯里。包着头巾的男孩将油灯夹在腋下,又跑回树林中不见了。 “我简直没办法相信。” “只不过是个小把戏罢了。” “油灯的精灵说话的样子就像席德的爸爸一样。” “那是因为它就是席德的爸爸的精灵。” “可是......” 礼物 “你我两人和我们周遭的每一件事物都活在少校的内心深处。 现在是四月二十八日星期六深夜,少校周围的所有联合国士兵都熟睡了。少校本身虽然还醒着,但他的眼皮已经很沉重。可是他必须完成这本要给席德做十五岁生日礼物的书,所以他必须工作。也因此,这个可怜人几乎都没有休息。” “我放弃了!” “另起一段吧。” 苏菲和艾伯特坐在那儿,看着小湖的对岸。艾伯特似乎有点神智恍惚,过了一会后,苏菲鼓起勇气轻轻推了一下他的肩膀。 …“你在做梦吗?” “他这回真的是直接进来干涉了,最后几段完全是他在讲话。 他真该觉得惭愧。不过现在他可是露了马脚,无所遁形了。现在我们知道我们是活在一本席德的父亲将寄回家给席德做为生日礼物的书中。你听到我说的话了吗?事实上,说话的人并不是‘我’。” “如果真是这样,那我要从这本书里面逃走,过我自己的生活。” “这就是我正在计划的事情。可是在这之前,我们必须试着和席德谈谈。她读了我们所说的每一句话。一旦我们从这里逃走,以后想再跟她联络就难了,所以我们必须现在就把握机会。” “那我们要说些什么呢?” “我想少校就快要坐在打字机前睡着了,虽然他的手指仍然快速地在键盘上移动……” “真恐怖!” “现在他也许会写出一些他事后会后悔的东西,而且他没有修正液。这是我的计划中很重要的一部分。你可不许拿修正液给少校!” “我连一小片修正带也不会给他。” “我现在就要请求可怜的席德反抗她的父亲。她应该很惭愧自己居然会被他这种肆意玩弄影子的把戏所取悦。如果他本人也在这里面就好了,我们要让他尝一尝我们愤怒的滋味。” “可是他不在这里呀!” “他的精神和灵魂在这里面,可是他同时也很安全地躲在黎巴嫩。我们周遭的一切事物都是少校的自我。” “可是他还有一些部分是我们在这里看不到的。” “我们只是少校灵魂里的影子,一个影子要攻击它的主人可不容易,需要聪明和谋略才行。可是我们有机会影响席德,她是天使,只有天使才能够反抗上帝。” “我们可以请席德在他回家后把他骂一顿,说他是个恶棍。她可以把他的船撞坏,或至少把那盏油灯砸掉。” 艾伯特点点头。然后他说:“她也可以逃离他身边。她这样做会比我们容易得多。她可以离开少校的家,从此再也不回去。这样岂不是他应得的惩罚吗?谁教他要把他那‘创世的想象力’建筑在我们的痛苦上。” “嗯。我可以想象那种情景。到时候少校会走遍全世界找寻席德,但她已经消失无踪了,因为她不能忍受跟一个利用艾伯特和苏菲来装疯卖傻的爸爸住在一起。” “对了,就是这样。装疯卖傻。我说他用我们做为生日的余兴节目就是一种装疯卖傻的手段。可是他最好小心一点。席德也是!” “你是什么意思?” “你坐得很安稳吗?” “只要什么油灯精灵的东西不要再来就没事。” “你不妨试着想象我们身上所发生的每一件事都是在另一个人的心中进行的。我们就是那心灵。这表示我们自己没有灵魂,而是别人的灵魂。这些都是我们已经谈过的哲学理论。无论柏克莱或谢林都会竖起耳朵注意听。” “然后呢?” “很可能这个灵魂就是席德的父亲。他在遥远的黎巴嫩写一本有关哲学的书以庆贺他女儿的十五岁生日。六月十五日那一天席德醒来时,发现她身旁的桌子上放了这本书。现在她——或任何其他人——也许正在读我们的故事。他很早就曾经提示说这个‘礼物’可以和别人分享。” “对呀,我记得。” “我现在对你说的话将会被席德读到,就在她远在黎巴嫩的父亲想像我告诉你他在黎巴嫩之后……想像我告诉你他在黎巴嫩......” 苏菲觉得头昏脑胀。她努力回想过去所听过的有关柏克莱和浪漫主义的话。艾伯特继续说:“不过他们不应该因此洋洋得意。他们是最不应该得意洋洋的人,因为乐极可能生悲。” “你说的他们是谁?” “席德和她的父亲。我们说的难道不是他们吗?” “可是他们为什么不应该洋洋得意呢?” “因为可能他们自己同样也是活在别人的心灵里。” “怎么可能呢?” “如果对柏克莱和浪漫主义者来说是可能的,那就有可能是这样。说不定少校也是一本有关他和席德的书当中的一个影子。当然那本书也是有关我们两人的,因为我们是他们生活中的一部分。” “这样一来,我们就只是影子的影子。这不是更糟糕了吗?” “不过很可能某个地方有另外一个作者正在写一本,关于一个为他的女儿席德写一本书的联合国少校艾勃特的书,而艾勃特所写的这本书则是,关于一个叫艾伯特的人突然开始寄一些讨论哲学的信函给住在苜蓿巷三号的苏菲。” “你相信吗?” “我只说这是有可能的。对于我们而言,那位作者将是一个‘看不见的上帝’。虽然我们所做、所说的每一件事都是从他而来的(因为我们就是他),但我们将永远无法知道有关他的任何事情。我们是在那最里面的一个盒子里面。” 艾伯特和苏菲坐在那儿,很久彼此都没有说话。最后苏菲终于打破沉默:“可是如果真有一个作者正在写一个有关席德的爸爸在黎巴嫩的故事,就像他正在写一个关于我们的故事一样……” “怎么样?” “……那么也许他也不应该太洋洋得意。” “你的意思是……” “他坐在某个地方,脑袋里的深处装着席德和我。难道他不也可能是某个更高高在上的心灵的一部分吗?” 艾伯特点点头。 “当然可能。如果真是这样,那表示他让我们进行这席哲学性的对话是为了提出这种可能。他想要强调他也是一个无助的影子,而这本关于席德和苏菲的书事实上是一本哲学教科书。” “教科书?” “因为我们所有的谈话,所有的对话……” “怎么样?” “……事实上只是一段很长的独白。” “我感觉好像每一件事物都融进心灵与精神中去了。我很高兴我们还有一些哲学家没谈。随着泰利斯、恩培窦可里斯和德谟克里特斯这些人而堂堂皇皇展开的哲学思潮不会就这样被困在这里吧?” “当然不会。我还没跟你谈黑格尔呢。当浪漫主义者将每一件事都融进精神里去时,他是第一个出来拯救哲学的哲学家。” “我倒很想听听他怎么说。” “为了不要再受到什么精神或影子的打扰,我们还是进屋里去好了。” “好吧,反正这里也愈来愈冷了。” Hegel ... the reasonable is that which is viable Hilde let the big ring binder fall to the floor with a heavy thud. She lay on her bed staring up at the ceiling. Her thoughts were in a turmoil. Now her father really had made her head swim. The rascal! How could he? Sophie had tried to talk directly to her. She had asked her to rebel against her father. And she had really managed to plant an idea in Hilde's mind. A plan ... Sophie and Alberto could not so much as harm a hair on his head, but Hilde could. And through Hilde, Sophie could reach her father. She agreed with Sophie and Alberto that he was going too far in his game of shadows. Even if he had only made Alberto and Sophie up, there were limits to the show of power he ought to permit himself. Poor Sophie and Alberto! They were just as defenseless against the major's imagination as a movie screen is against the film projector. Hilde would certainly teach him a lesson when he got home! She could already see the outline of a really good plan. She got up and went to look out over the bay. It was almost two o'clock. She opened the window and called over toward the boathouse. "Mom!" Her mother came out. "I'll be down with some sandwiches in about an hour. Okay?" "Fine." "I just have to read a chapter on Hegel." Alberto and Sophie had seated themselves in the two chairs by the window facing the lake. "Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hege/was a legitimate child of Romanticism," began Alberto. "One could almost say he developed with the German spirit as it gradually evolved in Germany. He was born in Stuttgart in 1770, and began to study theology in Tubingen at the age of eighteen. Beginning in 1799, he worked with Schelling in Jena during the time when the Romantic Movement was experiencing its most explosive growth. After a period as assistant professor in Jena he became a professor in Heidelberg, the center of German National Romanticism. In 1818 he was appointed professor in Berlin, just at the time when the city was becoming the spiritual center of Europe. He died of cholera in 1831, but not before 'He-gelianism' had gained an enormous following at nearly all the universities in Germany." "So he covered a lot of ground." "Yes, and so did his philosophy. Hegel united and developed almost all the ideas that had surfaced in the Romantic period. But he was sharply critical of many of the Romantics, including Schelling." "What was it he criticized?" "Schelling as well as other Romantics had said that the deepest meaning of life lay in what they called the 'world spirit.' Hegel also uses the term 'world spirit,' but in a new sense. When Hegel talks of 'world spirit' or 'world reason,' he means the sum of human utterances, because only man has a 'spirit.' "In this sense, he can speak of the progress of world spirit throughout history. However, we must never forget that he is referring to human life, human thought, and human culture." "That makes this spirit much less spooky. It is not lying in wait anymore like a 'slumbering intelligence' in rocks and trees." "Now, you remember that Kant had talked about something he called 'das Ding an sich.' Although he denied that man could have any clear cognition of the in-nermost secrets of nature, he admitted that there exists a kind of unattainable 'truth.' Hegel said that 'truth is subjective/ thus rejecting the existence of any 'truth' above or beyond human reason. All knowledge is human knowledge, he said." "He had to get the philosophers down to earth again, right?" "Yes, perhaps you could say that. However, Hegel's philosophy was so all-embracing and diversified that for present purposes we shall content ourselves with highlighting some of the main aspects. It is actually doubtful whether one can say that Hegel had his own 'philosophy' at all. What is usually known as Hegel's philosophy is mainly a method for understanding the progress of history. Hegel's philosophy teaches us nothing about the inner nature of life, but it can teach us to think productively." "That's not unimportant." "All the philosophical systems before Hegel had had one thing in common, namely, the attempt to set up eternal criteria for what man can know about the world. This was true of Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, and Kant. Each and every one had tried to investigate the basis of human cognition. But they had all made pronouncements on the timeless factor of human knowledge of the world." "Isn't that a philosopher's job?" "Hegel did not believe it was possible. He believed that the basis of human cognition changed from one generation to the next. There were therefore no 'eternal truths/ no timeless reason. The only fixed point philosophy can hold on to is history itself." "I'm afraid you'll have to explain that. History is in a constant state of change, so how can it be a fixed point?" "A river is also in a constant state of change. That doesn't mean you can't talk about it. But you cannot say at which place in the valley the river is the 'truest' river." "No, because it's just as much river all the way through." "So to Hegel, history was like a running river. Every tiny movement in the water at a given spot in the river is determined by the falls and eddies in the water higher upstream. But these movements are determined, too, by the rocks and bends in the river at the point where you are observing it." "I get it... I think." "And the history of thought--or of reason--is like this river. The thoughts that are washed along with the current of past tradition, as well as the material conditions prevailing at the time, help to determine how you think. You can therefore never claim that any particular thought is correct for ever and ever. But the thought can be correct from where you stand." "That's not the same as saying that everything is equally right or equally wrong, is it?" "Certainly not, but some things can be right or wrong in relation to a certain historical context. If you advocated slavery today, you would at best be thought foolish. But you wouldn't have been considered foolish 2,500 years ago, even though there were already progressive voices in favor of slavery's abolition. But we can take a more local example. Not more than 100 years ago it was not considered unreasonable to burn off large areas of forest in order to cultivate the land. But it is extremely unreasonable today. We have a completely different--and better--basis for such judgments." "Now I see." "Hegel pointed out that as regards philosophical reflection, also, reason is dynamic; it's a process, in fact. And the 'truth' is this same process, since there are no criteria beyond the historical process itself that can determine what is the most true or the most reasonable." "Examples, please." "You cannot single out particular thoughts from antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, or the Enlightenment and say they were right or wrong. By the same token, you cannot say that Plato was wrong and that Aristotle was right. Neither can you say that Hume was wrong but Kant and Schelling were right. That would be an antihistorical way of thinking." "No, it doesn't sound right." "In fact, you cannot detach any philosopher, or any thought at all, from that philosopher's or that thought's historical context. But--and here I come to another point--because something new is always being added, reason is 'progressive.' In other words, human knowledge is constantly expanding and progressing." "Does that mean that Kant's philosophy is nevertheless more right than Plato's?" "Yes. The world spirit has developed--and progressed--from Plato to Kant. And it's a good thing! If we return to the example of the river, we could say that there is now more water in it. It has been running for over a thousand years. Only Kant shouldn't think that his 'truths' will remain on the banks of the river like immovable rocks. Kant's ideas get processed too, and his 'reason' becomes the subject of future generations' criticism. Which is exactly what has happened." "But the river you talked about. . ." "Yes?" "Where does it go?" "Hegel claimed that the 'world spirit' is developing toward an ever-expanding knowledge of itself. It's the same with rivers--they become broader and broader as they get nearer to the sea. According to Hegel, history is the story of the 'world spirit' gradually coming to consciousness of itself. Although the world has always existed, human culture and human development have made the world spirit increasingly conscious of its intrinsic value." "How could he be so sure of that?" "He claimed it as a historical reality. It was not a prediction. Anybody who studies history will see that humanity has advanced toward ever-increasing 'self-knowledge' and 'self-development.' According to Hegel, the study of history shows that humanity is moving toward greater rationality and freedom. In spite of all its capers, historical development is progressive. We say that history is purposeful." "So it develops. That's clear enough." "Yes. History is one long chain of reflections. Hegel also indicated certain rules that apply for this chain of reflections. Anyone studying history in depth will observe that a thought is usually proposed on the basis of other, previously proposed thoughts. But as soon as one thought is proposed, it will be contradicted by another. A tension arises between these two opposite ways of thinking. But the tension is resolved by the proposal of a third thought which accommodates the best of both points of view. Hegel calls this a dialectic process." "Could you give an example?" "You remember that the pre-Socratics discussed the question of primeval substance and change?" "More or less." "Then the Eleatics claimed that change was in fact impossible. They were therefore forced to deny any change even though they could register the changes through their senses. The Eleatics had put forward a claim, and Hegel called a standpoint like that a thesis." "Yes?" "But whenever such an extreme claim is proposed, a contradictory claim will arise. Hegel called this a nega-tion. The negation of the Eleatic philosophy was Heracli-tus, who said that everything flows. There is now a tension between two diametrically opposed schools of thought. But this tension was resolved when Empedocles pointed out that both claims were partly right and partly wrong." "Yes, it all comes back to me now . . ." "The Eleatics were right in that nothing actually changes, but they were not right in holding that we cannot rely on our senses. Heraclitus had been right in that we can rely on our senses, but not right in holding that everything flows." "Because there was more than one substance. It was the combination that flowed, not the substance itself." "Right! Empedocles' standpoint--which provided the compromise between the two schools of thought--was what Hegel called the negation of the negation." "What a terrible term!" "He also called these three stages of knowledge thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. You could, for example, say that Descartes's rationalism was a thesis--which was contradicted by Hume's empirical antithesis. But the contradiction, or the tension between two modes of thought, was resolved in Kant's synthesis. Kant agreed with the rationalists in some things and with the empiricists in others. But the story doesn't end with Kant. Kant's synthesis now becomes the point of departure for another chain of reflections, or 'triad.' Because a synthesis will also be contradicted by a new antithesis." "It's all very theoretical!" "Yes, it certainly is theoretical. But Hegel didn't see it as pressing history into any kind of framework. He believed that history itself revealed this dialectical pattern. He thus claimed he had uncovered certain laws for the development of reason--or for the progress of the 'world spirit' through history." "There it is again!" "But Hegel's dialectic is not only applicable to history. When we discuss something, we think dialectically. We try to find flaws in the argument. Hegel called that 'negative thinking.' But when we find flaws in an argument, we preserve the best of it." "Give me an example." "Well, when a socialist and a conservative sit down together to resolve a social problem, a tension will quickly be revealed between their conflicting modes of thought. But this does not mean that one is absolutely right and the other totally wrong. It is possible that they are both partly right and partly wrong. And as the argument evolves, the best of both arguments will often crystallize." "I hope." "But while we are in the throes of a discussion like that, it is not easy to decide which position is more rational. In a way, it's up to history to decide what's right and what's wrong. The reasonable is that which is viable." "Whatever survives is right." "Or vice versa: that which is right survives." "Don't you have a tiny example for me?" "One hundred and fifty years ago there were a lot of people fighting for women's rights. Many people also bitterly opposed giving women equal rights. When we read the arguments of both sides today, it is not difficult to see which side had the more 'reasonable' opinions. But we must not forget that we have the knowledge of hindsight. If 'proved to be the case' that those who fought for equality were right. A lot of people would no doubt cringe if they saw in print what their grandfathers had said on the matter." "I'm sure they would. What was Hegel's view?" "About equality of the sexes?" "Isn't that what we are talking about?" "Would you like to hear a quote?" "Very much." " 'The difference between man and woman is like that between animals and plants,' he said. 'Men correspond to animals, while women correspond to plants because their development is more placid and the principle that underlies it is the rather vague unity of feeling. When women hold the helm of government, the state is at once in jeopardy, because women regulate their actions not by the demands of universality but by arbitrary inclinations and opinions. Women are educated--who knows how?--as it were by breathing in ideas, by living rather than by acquiring knowledge. The status of manhood, on the other hand, is attained only by the stress of thought and much technical exertion.' " "Thank you, that will be quite enough. I'd rather not hear any more statements like that." "But it is a striking example of how people's views of what is rational change all the time. It shows that Hegel was also a child of his time. And so are we. Our 'obvious' views will not stand the test of time either." "What views, for example?" "I have no such examples." "Why not?" "Because I would be exemplifying things that are already undergoing a change. For instance, I could say it's stupid to drive a car because cars pollute the environment. Lots of people think this already. But history will prove that much of what we think is obvious will not hold up in the light of history." "I see." "We can also observe something else: The many men in Hegel's time who could reel off gross broadsides like that one on the inferiority of women hastened the development of feminism." "How so?" "They proposed a thesis. Why? Because women had already begun to rebel. There's no need to have an opinion on something everyone agrees on. And the more grossly they expressed themselves about women's inferiority, the stronger became the negation." "Yes, of course." "You might say that the very best that can happen is to have energetic opponents. The more extreme they become, the more powerful the reaction they will have to face. There's a saying about 'more grist to the mill.' " "My mill began to grind more energetically a minute ago!" "From the point of view of pure logic or philosophy, there will often be a dialectical tension between two concepts." "For example?" "If I reflect on the concept of 'being,' I will be obliged to introduce the opposite concept, that of 'nothing.' You can't reflect on your existence without immediately realizing that you won't always exist. The tension between 'being' and 'nothing' becomes resolved in the concept of 'becoming.' Because if something is in the process of becoming, it both is and is not." "I see that." "Hegel's 'reason' is thus dynamic logic. Since reality is characterized by opposites, a description of reality must therefore also be full of opposites. Here is another example for you: the Danish nuclear physicist Niels Bohr is said to have told a story about Newton's having a horseshoe over his front door." "That's for luck." "But it is only a superstition, and Newton was anything but superstitious. When someone asked him if he really believed in that kind of thing, he said, 'No, I don't, but I'm told it works anyway.' " "Amazing." "But his answer was quite dialectical, a contradiction in terms, almost. Niels Bohr, who, like our own Norwegian poet Vinje, was known for his ambivalence, once said: There are two kinds of truths. There are the superficial truths, the opposite of which are obviously wrong. But there are also the profound truths, whose op-posites are equally right." "What kind of truths can they be?" "If I say life is short, for example . . ." "I would agree." "But on another occasion I could throw open my arms and say life is long." "You're right. That's also true, in a sense." "Finally I'll give you an example of how a dialectic tension can result in a spontaneous act which leads to a sudden change." "Yes, do." "Imagine a young girl who always answers her mother with Yes, Mom ... Okay, Mom ... As you wish, Mom ... At once, Mom." "Gives me the shudders!" "Finally the girl's mother gets absolutely maddened by her daughter's overobedience, and shouts: Stop being such a goody-goody! And the girl answers: Okay, Mom." "I would have slapped her." "Perhaps. But what would you have done if the girl had answered instead: But I wonf to be a goody-goody?" "That would have been an odd answer. Maybe I would have slapped her anyway." "In other words, the situation was deadlocked. The dialectic tension had come to a point where something had to happen." "Like a slap in the face?" "A final aspect of Hegel's philosophy needs to be mentioned here." "I'm listening." "Do you remember how we said that the Romantics were individualists?" "The path of mystery leads inwards ..." "This individualism also met its negation, or opposite, in Hegel's philosophy. Hegel emphasized what he called the 'objective' powers. Among such powers, Hegel emphasized the importance of the family, civil society, and the state. You might say that Hegel was somewhat skeptical of the individual. He believed that the individual was an organic part of the community. Reason, or 'world spirit/ came to light first and foremost in the interplay of people." "Explain that more clearly, please!" "Reason manifests itself above all in language. And a language is something we are born into. The Norwegian language manages quite well without Mr. Hansen, but Mr. Hansen cannot manage without Norwegian. It is thus not the individual who forms the language, it is the language which forms the individual." "I guess you could say so." "In the same way that a baby is born into a language, it is also born into its historical background. And nobody has a 'free' relationship to that kind of background. He who does not find his place within the state is therefore an unhistorical person. This idea, you may recall, was also central for the great Athenian philosophers. Just as the state is unthinkable without citizens, citizens are unthinkable without the state." "Obviously." "According to Hegel, the state is 'more' than the individual citizen. It is moreover more than the sum of its citizens. So Hegel says one cannot 'resign from society.' Anyone who simply shrugs their shoulders at the society they live in and wants to 'find their soul/ will therefore be ridiculed." "I don't know whether I wholly agree, but okay." "According to Hegel, it is not the individual that finds itself, it is the world spirit." "The world spirit finds itself?" "Hegel said that the world spirit returns to itself in three stages. By that he means that it becomes conscious of itself in three stages." "Which are?" "The world spirit first becomes conscious of itself in the individual. Hegel calls this subjective spirit. It reaches a higher consciousness in the family, civil society, and the state. Hegel calls this objective spirit because it appears in interaction between people. But there is a third stage ..." "And that is ... ?" "The world spirit reaches the highest form of self-realization in absolute spirit. And this absolute spirit is art, religion, and philosophy. And of these, philosophy is the highest form of knowledge because in philosophy, the world spirit reflects on its own impact on history. So the world spirit first meets itself in philosophy. You could say, perhaps, that philosophy is the mirror of the world spirit." "This is so mysterious that I need to have time to think it over. But I liked the last bit you said." "What, that philosophy is the mirror of the world spirit?" "Yes, that was beautiful. Do you think it has anything to do with the brass mirror?" "Since you ask, yes." "What do you mean?" "I assume the brass mirror has some special significance since it is constantly cropping up." "You must have an idea what that significance is?" "I haven't. I merely said that it wouldn't keep coming up unless it had a special significance for Hilde and her father. What that significance is only Hilde knows." "Was that romantic irony?" "A hopeless question, Sophie." "Why?" "Because it's not us working with these things. We are only hapless victims of that irony. If an overgrown child draws something on a piece of paper, you can't ask the paper what the drawing is supposed to represent." "You give me the shudders." 黑格尔    ……可以站得住脚的就是有道理的…… “砰!”一声,席德腿上的大讲义夹落到地上。她躺在床上瞪着天花板,脑中的思绪一团混乱。 爸爸真的把她弄得头昏脑胀。这个坏蛋!他怎么可以这样呢?苏菲已经试着直接对她说话了。她要求她反抗她的父亲,而且她真的已经让她脑中浮现了某个念头。一个计划……苏菲和艾伯特对他是完全无可奈何,但是席德却不然。透过席德,苏菲可以找到她爸爸。 她同意苏菲和艾伯特的说法,爸爸在玩他的影子游戏时的确是做得太过分了。就算艾伯特和苏菲只是他虚构的人物,可是他在展示他的力量时也应该有个限度呀。 可怜的苏菲和艾伯特!他们对于少校的想象力完全没有抵抗能力,就像电影银幕无法抵抗放映机一般。 席德心想,在他回家时,她一定得给他一些教训j她已经大致想出一个捉弄他的好办法了。 她起床走到窗前去眺望海湾。已经快两点了。她打开窗户,对着船屋的方向喊:“妈!” 妈妈出来了。 “我再过一个小时左右就会带三明治到你那儿去,好吗?” “好。”“我要读有关黑格尔那一章。” 艾伯特和苏菲坐在面湖的窗户旁边的两张椅子上。 黑格尔“黑格尔(GeorgWihelmFriedrichHegel)乃是浪漫主义的传人。”艾伯特开始说。“我们几乎可以说他是随着德国精神的发展而成长的。他在一七七O年出生于斯图加特,十八岁时开始在上宾根(Tubingen)研究神学。一七九九午时他在耶纳镇与谢林一起工作。 当时正是浪漫主义运动狂飙的年代。他在耶纳当了一段时间的助理教授后,便前往德国民族浪漫主义的中心海德堡担任学校教授。 一八一八年时,他在柏林任教。当时柏林正逐渐成为德国的精神中心。他在一八三一年死于霍乱。后来他的‘黑格尔主义’在德国各大学内吸引了无数的信徒。” “这么说他的历练很广哼?” “没错,他的哲学也是。黑格尔几乎统一了所有曾在浪漫主义时期出现的理念,并且加以发展。可是他却受到谢林等许多人的尖锐批评。” “谢林怎么批评他的?” “谢林和其他的浪漫主义者曾经说过,生命最深刻的意义在于他们所谓的‘世界精神’上。黑格尔也用‘世界精神’这个名词,可是意义却不相同。黑格尔所指的‘世界精神’或‘世界理性’乃是人类理念的总和,因为惟独人类有‘精神’可言。只有从这个角度,他才可以谈世界精神在历史上的进展。但我们不可以忘记:这里他所说的世界精神是指人类的生命、思想与文化。” “这样子这个精神听起来就不会这么恐怖了。不再像是个潜伏在岩石、树丛间的一个‘沉睡的精灵’。” “你应该还记得康德曾经谈过一种他称为‘物自身’的东西。虽然他否认人可以清楚认知自然最深处的秘密,但他承认世间有一种无法追求到的‘真理’。黑格尔却说‘真理是主观的’,因此他不承认在人类的理性之外有任何‘真理’存在。他说,所有的知识都是人类的知识。” 历史之河“他必须使哲学家们再度脚踏实地,对不对?” “嗯,也许可以这么说。不过,黑格尔的哲学可说是无所不包、丰富多样,因此我们在这里只能重点式地谈一谈他的某些主要理论。事实上,我们究竟是否能说黑格尔有他自己的哲学是很有疑问的。通常所谓的‘黑格尔哲学’主要是指一种理解历史进展的方法。 黑格尔的哲学所教导我们的只有生命的内在本质,不过也可以教我们如何从思考中获取结论。” “这也不算不重要。” “黑格尔之前的哲学体系都有一个共通点,就是试图为人们对世界的知识建立一套永恒的标准。笛卡尔、史宾诺莎、休姆和康德等人都是如此。他们每一个人都曾经试图探索人类认知的基础,但他们都声称人类对于世界的知识是不受时间影响的。” “那不就是哲学家该做的事吗?” “黑格尔认为这是不可能的。他相信人类认知的基础代代不同,因此世间并没有‘永恒的真理’,没有‘永久的理性’。哲学唯一可以确切掌握的一个定点就是历史。” “请你说清楚一些好吗?历史处于不断变化的状态,它怎么会是一个定点呢?” “一条河也是处于不断变化的状态,但这并不表示你无法谈论它。可是你不能说这条河流到河谷里的那一点时才是‘最真’的河。” “没错,因为它流到哪里都是河。” “所以,对黑格尔来说,历史就像一条流动的河。河里任何一处河水的流动都受到上游河水的涨落与漩涡的影响。但上游河水的涨落与漩涡又受到你观察之处的岩石与河湾的影响。” “我大概懂了。” “思想(或理性)的历史就像这条河流。你的思考方式乃是受到宛如河水般向前推进的传统思潮与当时的物质条件的影响。因此你永远无法宣称任何一种思想永远是对的。只不过就你所置身之处而言,这种思想可能是正确的。” “这和宣称每一件事物都对、也都不对是不同的,不是吗?” “当然不同。不过事情的对错要看历史的情况而定。如果今天你还提倡奴隶制度,一定会被人耻笑。但在二五OO年前,这种想法也并不可笑,虽然当时已经有人开始主张废除奴隶制度。不过,我们还是来单一个范围比较小的例子吧。不到一百年前,人们还认为大举焚烧森林以开垦土地的做法没有什么不对,但在我们今天看来,这种做法简直是胡搞。这是因为我们现在有了新的、比较好的依据可以下这种判断。” “我懂了。” “黑格尔指出哲学思维也是如此。我们的理性事实上是动态的,是一种过程。而‘真理’就是这个过程,因为在这个历史的过程之外,没有外在的标准可以判定什么是最真、最合理的。” “请举一些例子吧。” “你不能从古代、中世纪、文艺复兴时期或启蒙运动时期挑出某些思想,然后说它们是对的,或是错的。同样的,你也不能说柏拉图是错的,亚理斯多德是对的,或者说休姆是错的,而康德和谢林是对的。因为这样的思考方式是反历史的。” “嗯,这样做好像是不对。” “事实上,你不能将任何哲学家或任何思想抽离他们的历史背景。不过这里我要讲到另外一点:由于新的事物总是后来才加上去的,因此理性是‘渐进的’。换句话说,人类的知识不断在扩张,在进步。” “这个意思是不是说康德的哲学还是比柏拉图的有道理?” “是的。从柏拉图到康德的时代,世界精神已经有了发展和进步,这也是我的想法。再以刚才说的河流为例,我们可以说现在的河水比从前多,因为它已经流了一千多年了。但话说回来,康德也不能认为他所说的‘真理’会像那些巨大的岩石一样一直留在河岸上。他的想法同样也会再经过后人的加工,他的‘理性’也会成为后世批评的对象。而这些事情确实都发生了。” “可是你说的河……” “怎样?” “它会流到哪里去呢?” “黑格尔宣称‘世界精神’正朝着愈来愈了解自己的方向发展,河流也是一样。它们离海愈近时,河面愈宽。根据黑格尔的说法,历史就是‘世界精神’逐渐实现自己的故事。虽然世界一直都存在,但人类文化与人类的发展已经使得‘世界精神’愈来愈意识到它固有的价值。” “他怎么能这么确定呢?” “他宣称这是历史的事实,不是一个预言。任何研究历史的人都会发现人类正朝向愈来愈‘了解自己’、‘发展自己’的方向前进。 根据黑格尔的说法,各项有关历史的研究都显示:人类正迈向更多的理性与自由。尽管时有震荡起落,但历史的发展仍是不断前进的。所以我们说历史是超越的,或是有目的的。” “这么说历史很明显的不断在发展。” “没错。历史是一长串的思维。黑格尔并指出这一长串思维的规则。他说,任何深入研究历史的人都会发现:每一种新思想通常都是以前人的旧思想为基础,而一旦有一种新思想被提出来,马上就会出现另外一种和它抵触的思想,于是这两种对立的思想之间就会产生一种紧张状态,但这种紧张状态又会因为有人提出另外一种融合了两种思想长处的思想而消除。黑格尔把这个现象称为一种辩证过程。” “你可以举个例子吗?” “你还记得苏格拉底之前的哲学家讨论过原始物质与自然界变化的问题吗?” “多少记得一点。” “后来伊利亚派的哲学家宣称事实上变化不可能发生。虽然他们能透过感官察觉到各种变化的发生,但他们仍然否认任何变化的存在。伊利亚派哲学家所提出的这种观点,就是黑格尔所称的‘正题,。” “然后呢?” “可是根据黑格尔的法则,这样强烈的说法一被提出后,就一定会出现另外一种与它抵触的学说。黑格尔称此为‘反题’或‘否定’。而否定伊利亚派哲学的人就是赫拉克里特斯。他宣称‘万事万物都是流动的’。这样一来,这两种完全相反的思想流派之间就出现了一种紧张状态。但这种紧张状态后来被恩培窦可里斯消除了,因为他指出两种说法都各有正确之处,也各有错误之处。” “对,我现在想起来了。” “恩培窦可里斯认为,伊利亚派哲学家指出没有什么事物会真正发生变化这点是对的,但他们错在认为我们不能依赖感官。赫拉克里特斯说我们可以依赖感官,这是正确的,但他说万事万物都是流动的,这点却是错误的。” “因为世间的物质不只一种。流动的是物质的组合,而不是物质本身。” “没错。恩培窦可里斯的观点折衷了两派的思想,这就是黑格尔所称的‘否定的否定’。” “多可怕的名词!” 辩证法“他也称这三个知识的阶段为‘正’、‘反’、‘合’。举例来说,你可以称笛卡尔的理性主义为‘正’,那么与他正好相反的休姆的经验主义就是‘反’。但这两种思潮之间的矛盾或紧张状态后来被康德的‘合’给消除了。康德同意理性主义者的部分论点,但也同意经验主义者的部分论点。可是故事并非到此为止。康德的‘合’现在成了另外一个三段式发展的起点,因为一个‘合’也会有另外一个新的‘反’与它相抵触。” “这一切都非常理论。” “没错,这当然是很理论的。可是黑格尔并不认为这样的描述是把历史压缩为某种架构。他认为历史本身就展现了这种辩证模式。他并因此宣称他已经发现了理性发展(或‘世界精神’透过历史进展)的若干法则。” “又来了广“不过黑格尔的辩证法不仅适用于历史而已。当我们讨论事情时,我们也是以辩证的方式来思考。我们会试着在别人所说的道理中找出缺失。黑格尔称此为‘否定的思考’。可是当我们在一个道理中找到缺点时,我们也会把它的优点保存下来。” “请你单一个例子。” “当社会主义者和保守派人士一起坐下来讨论如何解决一个社会问题时,由于他们的思想形态互相矛盾,因此彼此间很快就会出现紧张状态。可是这并不表示他们当中有一个绝对正确,而另外一个完全错误。可能他们两个都有一部分对,一部分错。在争辩过程中,双方论点中最佳的部分通常都会显现出来。” “希望如此。” “可是当我们正在讨论问题时,并不容易看出哪一方的说法比较合理。可以说,究竟谁是谁非,必须由历史来决定。可以站得住脚的就是有道理的。” “也就是说能够留存下来的观点就是对的。” “反过来说也就是:对的才能留存下来。” “你可以举一个小小的例子,好让我能确切了解吗?” “一百五十年前有很多人为妇女争取权益,但也有许多人激烈反对。今天我们阅读双方的论点时,并不难看出哪一方的意见比较‘有道理’。但不要忘了我们这是后见之明。‘事实证明’那些争取两性平等的人是对的。如果我们在书上读到自己的祖父在这个问题上的看法,一定有很多人会觉得很难为情。” “一定的。那黑格尔有什么看法呢?” “你是说关于两性平等?” “我们现在说的不就是这个吗?” “我可以引述他在书里写的一段话,你想不想听?” “当然想。” “黑格尔说,男女之不同犹如植物与动物之不同。动物具有较多的男人性格,而植物则较具女人性格,因为女人的发展基本上是属于静态的。在本质上她是一个犹豫不决的感情体系。如果由女人来领导政府,则国家将有覆亡之虞,因为她们并不是依据整体的需求行动,而是随兴之所至而决定的。女人主要是透过生活(而非读书)吸收思想,借此获得某种教育。相反的,男人为了在社会上争取一席之地,则必须勤练技能、苦心研读。” “谢啦,这样就够了。这类的话我可不想再听了。” “不过这正是一个很好的例子,足以证明人们对于事情合理与否的观念一直都随着时间改变。它显示黑格尔也会受到当代观念的影响,我们也是。我们心目中很‘理所当然’的看法也不一定经得起时间的考验。” “什么样的看法?请举个例子。” “我举不出什么例子来。” “为什么?” “因为我所能举的例子都是一些已经开始在改变中的事物。举例来说,我会说开车是很愚笨的行为,因为车辆会污染环境。但许多人已经想到这点了。可是历史将会证明那些被我们认为是理所当然的事物有很多是无法在历史上立足的。” “原来如此。” “还有一件事:黑格尔的时代有许多男人大放厥辞,声称女人不如男人,但事实上他们这种做法正加速了女权运动的发展。” “为什么会这样呢?” “他们提出了一个‘正题’。为什么呢?因为妇女已经开始反抗了。否则如果大家的看法一致,就没有必要再发表意见了。而他们愈是高唱女人不如男人的论调,否定的力量也就变得更强。” “当然哼。” “可以说一种意见如果能受到激烈的反对,那是再好不过的事。因为反对者愈极端,他们所激发的反应也就愈强。有人说这是‘谷子愈多,磨坊就磨得愈起劲’。” “我的磨坊在一分钟以前就开始磨得更起劲了。” “从纯粹逻辑或哲学的观点来看,两个观念之间总是存在有一种辩证式的紧张关系。” “例如?” “如果我思考‘存在’这个概念,我势必需要引进‘不存在’这个相反的概念。你不可能思考自我的存在而不立即体悟自己不会永远存在的事实。然后‘存在’和‘不存在’之间的紧张关系被‘变化’这个观念消除了。因为如果某件事物正在变化的过程中,则它可以算是‘存在’,也可以算是‘不存在’。” “我懂了。” “因此黑格尔的‘理性’有一种动态的逻辑。既然‘事实’的特性就是会有相反的事物,因此要描述事实就必须同样描述与事实相反的事物。我再单一个例子:据说,丹麦核予物理学家波尔(Nie1sBohr)在他的前门上方挂了一个马蹄铁。” “那是为了带来好运气。” “可是这只是个迷信而已,而波尔却是个一点也不迷信的人。 当有人问他是否真的相信这种事情时,他说,不,我不相信,但人家告诉我这样真的有效。” “真奇怪。” “他的回答相当具有辩证意味,几乎可说是自相矛盾。波尔就像我们挪威的诗人文耶(Vinje)一样,是以模棱两可而出名。他有一次说:世间有两种真理。一种是表面的真理,与它相反的说法显然是错误的。但另外一种则是深层的真理,与这样的真理相反的说法却是对的。” “这些是什么样的真理呢?” “例如我说生命是短暂的……” “我同意。” “可是在另外一种场合,我可能会张开双臂说生命是漫长的。” “嗯,从某个角度来看,这也没错。” “最后我要举一个例子显示一种辩证的紧张关系如何能够导致一个自发性的行动,并因此造成突然的改变。” “请说吧。” “假设有一个小女孩总是回答她妈妈说‘是,妈’、‘好的,妈’、‘我听你的,妈’、‘马上,妈’。” “真可怕!” “过了一阵子,她的妈妈对女儿这种过度顺从的态度感到很恼火。于是她大吼:‘请你不要再当这样一个乖宝宝了!’而这女孩仍然回答说:‘好的,妈。” “要是我,就会给她一巴掌。” “我想你一定会的。可是如果那女孩回答说:可是我想当一个乖宝宝呀!那你会怎么做呢?” “这个回答很奇怪。也许我还是会打她一巴掌。” “换句话说,这种情况就是一个僵局。在这里,辩证式的紧张关系已经到了一种一定会发生某件事情的地步。” “比如说打她一个耳光之类的?” “我们还要讲到黑格尔哲学的最后一个层面。” “我在听呀广“我还记得我们说过浪漫主义者是个人主义者吗?” “神秘之路通往内心…...” “这种个人主义在黑格尔的哲学中也遇到了它的否定或相反。 黑格尔强调他所谓的‘客观的’力量,意思就是家庭和国家。你也可以说黑格尔对个人抱持着一种不信任的态度,他认为个人是团体的一个有机的部分。理性(或‘世界精神’)必须透过人与人之间的互动才会彰显。” “请你说得详细一点。” “理性最主要是透过语言而显现,而我们说什么语言是一出生就注定的。即使没有汉生(Hansen)先生这个人,挪威语也一样很好,但汉生先生没有挪威话就不行了。因此并不是个人造就语言,而是语言造就个人。” “应该是这样的吧。” “除了语言之外,我们会有哪一种历史背景也是一生下来就注定了。没有人和这类背景之间能有一种‘自由’的关系。因此,那些无法在国家中找到定位的人就是没有历史的人。你也许还记得这种观念也是雅典哲学家的重点。没有人民,固然就没有国家,但如果没有国家,也就没有人民。” “显然是这样。” “根据黑格尔的说法,国家并不只是由人民形成的一个集合。 因此黑格尔说人不能‘舍弃社会’。因此,如果有人对他们所生长的社会不屑一顾,而一心一意只想‘寻找自己的灵魂’,是会受到耻笑的。” “我不确定我完全同意这点,但这没有关系。” “根据黑格尔的说法,个人不能发现自我,只有世界精神能够发现自我。” “世界精神发现它的自我?” “黑格尔说世界精神回到自我的过程可分为三个阶段,也就是说世界精神在经历三个阶段后才意识到自我。” “你就一次说个清楚吧。” “首先,世界精神意识到自我在个人中的存在。黑格尔称此为主观精神。然后它在家庭、社会与国家之中达到更高的意识。黑格尔称此为客观精神,因为它在人与人之间的互动显现。可是还有第三个阶段……” “那是什么?” “世界精神在‘绝对的精神’中达到最高形式的自我实现。这个‘绝对的精神’就是艺术、宗教和哲学。其中又以哲学为最高形式的知识,因为,在哲学中,世界精神思考它对历史的冲击,因此世界精神是最先在哲学中发现了它的自我。你不妨说哲学是世界精神的镜子。” “这大神秘了,我需要时间好好消化一下。不过我喜欢你说的最后一句。” “你是说‘哲学是世界精神的镜子’这一句吗?” “对,这句话很美。你想这话和那面铜镜有关系吗?” “既然你问到了,我只好说是。” “什么意思?” “我猜那面铜镜一定有某种特别的意义,才会时常被提到。” “你一定知道它有什么意义吧?” “我不知道。我只是说,如果它对席德和她的父亲没有什么特别的意义的话,它不会时常出现。只有席德知道它有什么意义。” “这算是浪漫主义的反讽吗?” “这种问题是不会有答案的,苏菲。” “为什么呢?” “因为运用这些手法的不是我们,我们只是那个反讽中两个倒楣的受害者罢了。假使一个大小孩在一张纸上画了一个东西,你不能问那张纸说他画的那东西是代表什么。” “你这话真可怕。” Kierkegaard Europe is on the road to bankruptcy Hilde looked at her watch. It was already past four o'clock. She laid the ring binder on her desk and ran downstairs to the kitchen. She had to get down to the boathouse before her mother got tired of waiting for her. She glanced at the brass mirror as she passed. She quickly put the kettle on for tea and fixed some sandwiches. She had made up her mind to play a few tricks on her father. Hilde was beginning to feel more and more allied with Sophie and Alberto. Her plan would start when he got to Copenhagen. She went down to the boathouse with a large tray. "Here's our brunch," she said. Her mother was holding a block wrapped in sandpaper. She pushed a stray lock of hair back from her forehead. There was sand in her hair too. "Let's drop dinner, then." They sat down outside on the dock and began to eat. "When's Dad arriving?" asked Hilde after a while. "On Saturday. I thought you knew that." "But what time? Didn't you say he was changing planes in Copenhagen?" "That's right. Her mother took a bite of her sandwich. "He gets to Copenhagen at about five. The plane to Kristiansand leaves at a quarter to eight. He'll probably land at Kjevik at half-past nine." "So he has a few hours at Kastrup ..." "Yes, why?" "Nothing. I was just wondering." When Hilde thought a suitable interval had elapsed, she said casually, "Have you heard from Anne and Ole lately?" "They call from time to time. They are coming home on vacation sometime in July." "Not before?" "No, I don't think so." "So they'll be in Copenhagen this week... ?" "Why all these questions, Hilde?" "No reason. Just small talk." "You mentioned Copenhagen twice." "I did?" "We talked about Dad touching down in ..." "That's probably why I thought of Anne and Ole." As soon as they finished eating, Hilde collected the mugs and plates on the tray. "I have to get on with my reading, Mom." "I guess you must." Was there a touch of reproach in her voice? They had talked about fixing up the boat together before Dad came home. "Dad almost made me promise to finish the book before he got home." "It's a little crazy. When he's away, he doesn't have to order us around back home." "If you only knew how much he orders people around," said Hilde enigmatically, "and you can't imagine how much he enjoys it." She returned to her room and went on reading. Suddenly Sophie heard a knock on the door. Alberto looked at her severely. "We don't wish to be disturbed." The knocking became louder. "I am going to tell you about a Danish philosopher who was infuriated by Hegel's philosophy," said Alberto. The knocking on the door grew so violent that the whole door shook. "It's the major, of course, sending some phantasm to see whether we swallow the bait," said Alberto. "It costs him no effort at all." "But if we don't open the door and see who it is, it won't cost him any effort to tear the whole place down either." "You might have a point there. We'd better open the door then." They went to the door. Since the knocking had been so forceful, Sophie expected to see a very large person. But standing on the front step was a little girl with long fair hair, wearing a blue dress. She had a small bottle in each hand. One bottle was red, the other blue. "Hi," said Sophie. "Who are you?" "My name is Alice," said the girl, curtseying shyly. "I thought so," said Alberto, nodding. "It's Alice in Wonderland." "How did she find her way to us?" Alice explained: "Wonderland is a completely borderless country. That means that Wonderland is everywhere--rather like the UN. It should be an honorary member of the UN. We should have representatives on all committees, because the UN also arose out of people's wonder." "Hm ... that major!" muttered Alberto. "And what brings you here?" asked Sophie. "I am to give Sophie these little philosophy bottles." She handed the bottles to Sophie. There was red liquid in one and blue in the other. The label on the red bottle read DRINK ME, and on the blue one the label read DRINK ME too. The next second a white rabbit came hurrying past the cabin. It walked upright on two legs and was dressed in a waistcoat and jacket. Just in front of the cabin it took a pocket watch out of its waistcoat pocket and said: "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!" Then it ran on. Alice began to run after it. Just before she ran into the woods, she curtsied and said, "Now it's starting again." "Say hello to Dinah and the Queen," Sophie called after her. Alberto and Sophie remained standing on the front step, examining the bottles. "DRINK ME and DRINK ME too," read Sophie. "I don't know if I dare. They might be poisonous." Alberto merely shrugged his shoulders. "They come from the major, and everything that comes from the major is purely in the mind. So it's only pretend-juice." Sophie took the cap off the red bottle and put it cautiously to her lips. The juice had a strangely sweet taste, but that wasn't all. As she drank, something started to happen to her surroundings. It felt as if the lake and the woods and the cabin all merged into one. Soon it seemed that everything she saw was one person, and that person was Sophie herself. She glanced up at Alberto, but he too seemed to be part of Sophie's soul. "Curiouser and curiouser," she said. "Everything looks like it did before, but now it's all one thing. I feel as if everything is one thought." Alberto nodded--but it seemed to Sophie that it was she nodding to herself. "It is Pantheism or Idealism," he said. "It is the Romantics' world spirit. They experienced everything as one big 'ego.' It is also Hegel--who was critical of the individual, and who saw everything as the expression of the one and only world reason." "Should I drink from the other bottle too?" "It says so on the label." Sophie took the cap off the blue bottle and took a large gulp. This juice tasted fresher and sharper than the other. Again everything around her changed suddenly. Instantly the effects of the red bottle disappeared and everything slid back to its normal place. Alberto was Alberto, the trees were back in the woods and the water looked like a lake again. But it only lasted for a second, because things went on sliding away from each other. The woods were no longer woods and every little tree now seemed like a world in itself. The tiniest twig was like a fairy-tale world about which a thousand stories could be told. The little lake suddenly became a boundless ocean-- not in depth or breadth, but in its glittering detail and the intricate patterns of its waves. Sophie felt she might spend a lifetime staring at this water and to her dying day it would still remain an unfathomable mystery. She looked up at the crown of a tree. Three little sparrows were engrossed in a curious game. Was it hide-and-seek? Sophie had known in a way that there were birds in this tree, even after she had drunk from the red bottle, but she had not really seen them properly. The red juice had erased all contrasts and all individual differences. Sophie jumped down from the large flat stone step they were standing on and bent over to look at the grass. There she discovered another new world--like a deep-sea diver opening his eyes under water for the first time. In amongst the twigs and straws of grass, the moss was teeming with tiny details. Sophie watched a spider make its way over the moss, surefooted and purposeful, a red plant louse running up and down a blade of grass, and a whole army of ants laboring in a united effort in the grass. But each tiny ant moved its legs in its own particular manner. The most curious of all was the sight that met her eyes when she stood up again and looked at Alberto, still standing on the front step of the cabin. In Alberto she now saw a wondrous person--he was like a being from another planet, or an enchanted figure out of a fairy tale. At the same time she experienced herself in a completely new way as a unique individual. She was more than just a human being, a fifteen-year-old girl. She was Sophie Amundsen, and only she was that. "What do you see?" asked Alberto. "I see that you're a strange bird." "You think so?" "I don't think I'll ever get to understand what it's like being another person. No two people in the whole world are alike." "And the woods?" "They don't seem the same any more. They're like a whole universe of wondrous tales." "It is as I suspected. The blue bottle is individualism. It is, for example, S0ren Kierkegaard's reaction to the idealism of the Romantics. But it also encompasses another Dane who lived at the same time as Kierkegaard, the famous fairy-tale writer Hans Christian Andersen. He had the same sharp eye for nature's incredible richness of detail. A philosopher who saw the same thing more than a century earlier was the German Leibniz. He reacted against the idealistic philosophy of Spinoza just as Kierkegaard reacted against Hegel." "I hear you, but you sound so funny that I feel like laughing." "That's understandable, just take another sip from the red bottle. Come on, let's sit here on the step. We'll talk a bit about Kierkegaard before we stop for today." Sophie sat on the step beside Alberto. She drank a little from the red bottle and things began to merge together again. They actually merged rather too much; once more she got the feeling that no differences mattered at all. But she only had to touch the blue bottle to her lips again, and the world about her looked more or less as it did when Alice arrived with the two bottles. "But which is true?" she now asked. "Is it the red or the blue bottle that gives the true picture?" "Both the red and the blue, Sophie. We cannot say the Romantics were wrong in holding that there is only one reality. But maybe they were a little bit narrow in their outlook." "What about the blue bottle?" "I think Kierkegaard must have taken a few hefty swigs from that one. He certainly had a sharp eye for the significance of the individual. We are more than 'children of our time.' And moreover, every single one of us is a unique individual who only lives once." "And Hegel had not made much of that?" "No, he was more interested in the broad scope of history. This was just what made Kierkegaard so indignant. He thought that both the idealism of the Romantics and Hegel's 'historicism' had obscured the individual's responsibility for his own life. Therefore to Kierkegaard, Hegel and the Romantics were tarred with the same brush." "I can see why he was so mad." "S0ren Kierkegaard was born in 1813 and was subjected to a very severe upbringing by his father. His religious melancholia was a legacy from this father." "That sounds ominous." "It was because of this melancholia that he felt obliged to break off his engagement, something the Copenhagen bourgeoisie did not look kindly on. So from early on he became an outcast and an object of scorn. However, he gradually learned to give as good as he got, and he became increasingly what Ibsen later on described as 'an enemy of the people.' " "All because of a broken engagement?" "No, not only because of that. Toward the end of his life, especially, he became aggressively critical of society. 'The whole of Europe is on the road to bankruptcy,' he said. He believed he was living in an age utterly devoid of passion and commitment. He was particularly incensed by the vapidness of the established Danish Lutheran Church. He was merciless in his criticism of what you might call 'Sunday Christianity.' " "Nowadays we talk of 'confirmation Christianity.' Most kids only get confirmed because of all the presents they get." "Yes, you've got the point. To Kierkegaard, Christianity was both so overwhelming and so irrational that it had to be an either/or. It was not good being 'rather' or 'to some extent' religious. Because either Jesus rose on Easter Day--or he did not. And if he really did rise from the dead, if he really died for our sake--then this is so overwhelming that it must permeate our entire life." "Yes, I think I understand." "But Kierkegaard saw how both the church and people in general had a noncommittal approach to religious questions. To Kierkegaard, religion and knowledge were like fire and water. It was not enough to believe that Christianity is 'true.' Having a Christian faith meant following a Christian way of life." "What did that have to do with Hegel?" "You're right. Maybe we started at the wrong end." "So I suggest you go into reverse and start again." "Kierkegaard began his study of theology when he was seventeen, but he became increasingly absorbed in philosophical questions. When he was twenty-seven he took his master's degree with the dissertation 'On the Concept of Irony.' In this work he did battle with Romantic irony and the Romantics' uncommitted play with illusion. He posited 'Socratic irony' in contrast. Even though Socrates had made use of irony to great effect, it had the purpose of eliciting the fundamental truths about life. Unlike the Romantics, Socrates was what Kierkegaard called an 'existential' thinker. That is to say, a thinker who draws his entire existence into his philosophical reflection." "So?" "After breaking off his engagement in 1841, Kierkegaard went to Berlin where he attended Schelling's lectures." "Did he meet Hegel?" "No, Hegel had died ten years earlier, but his ideas were predominant in Berlin and in many parts of Europe. His 'system' was being used as a kind of all-purpose explanation for every type of question. Kierkegaard indicated that the sort of 'objective truths' that Hegelianism was concerned with were totally irrelevant to the personal life of the individual." "What kind of truths are relevant, then?" "According to Kierkegaard, rather than searching for the Truth with a capital T, it is more important to find the kind of truths that are meaningful to the individual's life. It is important to find 'the truth for me.' He thus sets the individual, or each and every man, up against the 'system.' Kierkegaard thought Hegel had forgotten that he was a man. This is what he wrote about the Hegelian professor: "While the ponderous Sir Professor explains the entire mystery of life, he has in distraction forgotten his own name; that he is a man, neither more nor less, not a fantastic three-eighths of a paragraph." "And what, according to Kierkegaard, is a man?" "It's not possible to say in general terms. A broad description of human nature or human beings was totally without interest to Kierkegaard. The only important thing was each man's 'own existence.' And you don't experience your own existence behind a desk. It's only when we act--and especially when we make significant choices--that we relate to our own existence. There is a story about Buddha that illustrates what Kierkegaard meant." "About Buddha?" "Yes, since Buddha's philosophy also took man's existence as its starting point. There was once a monk who asked Buddha if he could give clearer answers to fundamental questions on what the world is and what a man is. Buddha answered by likening the monk to a man who gets pierced by a poisoned arrow. The wounded man would have no theoretical interest in what the arrow was made of, what kind of poison it was dipped in, or which direction it came from." "He would most likely want somebody to pull it out and treat the wound." "Yes, he would. That would be existentially important to him. Both Buddha and Kierkegaard had a strong sense of only existing for a brief moment. And as I said, then you don't sit down behind a desk and philosophize about the nature of the world spirit." "No, of course not." "Kierkegaard also said that truth is 'subjective.' By this he did not mean that it doesn't matter what we think or believe. He meant that the really important truths are personal. Only these truths are 'true for me.' " "Could you give an example of a subjective truth?" "An important question is, for example, whether Christianity is true. This is not a question one can relate to theoretically or academically. For a person who 'under-stands himself in life,' it is a question of life and death. It is not something you sit and discuss for discussion's sake. It is something to be approached with the greatest passion and sincerity." "Understandable." "If you fall into the water, you have no theoretical interest in whether or not you will drown. It is neither 'interesting' nor 'uninteresting' whether there are alligators in the water. It is a question of life or death." "I get it, thank you very much." "So we must therefore distinguish between the philosophical question of whether God exists and the individual's relationship to the same question, a situation in which each and every man is utterly alone. Fundamental questions such as these can only be approached through faith. Things we can know through reason, or knowledge, are according to Kierkegaard totally unimportant." "I think you'd better explain that." "Eight plus four is twelve. We can be absolutely certain of this. That's an example of the sort of 'reasoned truth' that every philosopher since Descartes had talked about. But do we include it in our daily prayers? Is it something we will lie pondering over when we are dying? Not at all. Truths like those can be both 'objective' and 'general,' but they are nevertheless totally immaterial to each man's existence." "What about faith?" "You can never know whether a person forgives you when you wrong them. Therefore it is existentially important to you. It is a question you are intensely concerned with. Neither can you know whether a person loves you. It's something you just have to believe or hope. But these things are more important to you than the fact that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees. You don't think about the law of cause and effect or about modes of perception when you are in the middle of your first kiss." "You'd be very odd if you did." "Faith is the most important factor in religious questions. Kierkegaard wrote: 'If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe. If I wish to preserve myself in faith I must constantly be intent upon holding fast the objective uncertainty, so as to remain out upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water, still preserving my faith.' " "That's heavy stuff." "Many had previously tried to prove the existence of God--or at any rate to bring him within the bounds of rationality. But if you content yourself with some such proof or logical argument, you suffer a loss of faith, and with it, a loss of religious passion. Because what matters is not whether Christianity is true, but whether it is true for you. The same thought was expressed in the Middle Ages in the maxim: credo quid absurdum." "You don't say." "It means I believe because it is irrational. If Christianity had appealed to our reason, and not to other sides of us, it would not be a question of faith." "No, I understand that now." "So we have looked at what Kierkegaard meant by 'existential,' what he meant by 'subjective truth,' and what his concept of 'faith' was. These three concepts were formulated as a criticism of philosophical tradition in general, and of Hegel in particular. But they also embodied a trenchant 'social criticism.' The individual in modern urban society had become 'the public,' he said, and the predominant characteristic of the crowd, or the masses, was all their noncommittal 'talk.' Today we would probably use the word 'conformity'; that is when everybody 'thinks' and 'believes in' the same things without having any deeper feeling about it." "I wonder what Kierkegaard would have said to Joanna's parents." "He was not always kind in his judgments. He had a sharp pen and a bitter sense of irony. For example, he could say things like 'the crowd is the untruth,' or 'the truth is always in the minority/ and that most people had a superficial approach to life." "It's one thing to collect Barbie dolls. But it's worse to be one." "That brings us to Kierkegaard's theory of what he called the three stages on life's way." "Pardon me?" "Kierkegaard believed that there were three different forms of life. He himself used the term stages. He calls them the aesthetic stage, the ethical stage, and the religious stage. He used the term 'stage' to emphasize that one can live at one of the two lower stages and then suddenly leap to a higher stage. Many people live at the same stage all their life." "I bet there's an explanation on the way. I'm anxious to know which stage I'm at." "He who lives at the aesthetic stage lives for the moment and grasps every opportunity of enjoyment. Good is whatever is beautiful, satisfying, or pleasant. This person lives wholly in the world of the senses, and is a slave to his own desires and moods. Everything that is boring is bad." "Yes thanks, I think I know that attitude." "The typical Romantic is thus also the typical aesthete, since there is more to it than pure sensory enjoyment. A person who has a reflective approach to reality--or for that matter to his art or the philosophy he or she is engaged in--is living at the aesthetic stage. It is even possible to have an aesthetic, or 'reflective,' attitude to sorrow and suffering. In which case vanity has taken over. Ibsen's Peer Gynt is the portrait of a typical aesthete." "I think I see what you mean." "Do you know anyone like that?" "Not completely. But I think maybe it sounds a little like the major." "Maybe so, maybe so, Sophie ... Although that was another example of his rather sickly Romantic irony. You should wash your mouth out." "What?" "All right, it wasn't your fault." "Keep going, then." "A person who lives at the aesthetic stage can easily experience angst, or a sense of dread, and a feeling of emptiness. If this happens, there is also hope. According to Kierkegaard, angst is almost positive. It is an expression of the fact that the individual is in an 'existential situation,' and can now elect to make the great leap to a higher stage. But it either happens or it doesn't. It doesn't help to be on the verge of making the leap if you don't do it completely. It is a matter of 'either/or.' But nobody can do it for you. It is your own choice." "It's a little like deciding to quit drinking or doing drugs." "Yes, it could be like that. Kierkegaard's description of this 'category of decision' can be somewhat reminiscent of Socrates' view that all true insight comes from within. The choice that leads a person to leap from an aesthetic approach to an ethical or religious approach must come from within. Ibsen depicts this in Peer Gynt. Another masterly description of how existential choice springs from inner need and despair can be found in Dosfoevsfcy's great novel Crime and Punishment." "The best you can do is choose a different form of life." "And so perhaps you will begin to live at the ethical stage. This is characterized by seriousness and consistency of moral choices. This approach is not unlike Kant's ethics of duty. You try to live by the law of morals. Kierkegaard, like Kant, drew attention first and foremost to human temperament. The important thing is not what you may think is precisely right or wrong. What matters is that you choose to have an opinion at all on what is right or wrong. The aesthete's only concern is whether something is fun or boring." "Isn't there a risk of becoming too serious, living like that?" "Decidedly! Kierkegaard never claimed that the ethical stage was satisfactory. Even a dutiful person will eventually get tired of always being dedicated and meticulous. Lots of people experience that sort of fatigue reaction late in life. Some relapse into the reflective life of their aesthetic stage. "But others make a new leap to the religious stage. They take the 'jump into the abyss' of Faith's 'seventy thousand fathoms.' They choose faith in preference to aesthetic pleasure and reason's call of duty. And although it can be 'terrible to jump into the open arms of the living God,' as Kierkegaard put it, it is the only path to redemption." "Christianity, you mean." "Yes, because to Kierkegaard, the religious stage was Christianity. But he also became significant to non-Christian thinkers. Existentialism, inspired by the Danish philosopher, flourished widely in the twentieth century." Sophie glanced at her watch. "It's nearly seven. I have to run. Mom will be frantic." She waved to the philosopher and ran down to the boat. 祁克果    ……欧洲正迈向破产的地步…… 席德看了看时间。已经过了四点了。她把讲义夹放在书桌上,然后便跑到楼下的厨房。她得在妈妈等得不耐烦之前赶快到船屋那儿去。她经过那面铜镜前看了它一眼。 她很快地把茶壶拿出来,准备烧茶,并以加倍的速度做了几个三明治。 她已经决定要跟她爸爸开几个玩笑。她开始觉得自己愈来愈站在苏菲和艾伯特这一边了。等爸爸到达哥本哈根时,那些玩笑就要开始了。 很快地,她已经端着一个大托盘,站在船屋那儿了。 “我们的早午餐来了。”她说。 妈妈正拿着一块用沙纸包着的东西。她把一绺散落的发丝从额前拂开,她的头发上也有沙子。 “那我们就不要吃晚餐好了。” 她们坐在外面的平台上,开始吃起来。 “爸爸什么时候到家?”过了一会儿,席德问。 “星期六。我还以为你知道呢。” “可是几点呢?你不是说他要在哥本哈根换机吗?” “没错……” 妈妈咬了一口肝酱黄瓜三明治。 “他大约五点会抵达哥本哈根,七点四十五分有一班飞机开往基督山。他大概会在九点半时在凯耶维克机场着陆。” “这么说他在卡斯楚普机场会停留几个小时……” “嗯,干嘛?” “没事。我只是想他一路不知道会怎样。” 她们继续吃着。当席德认为时间已经够久时,便假装不经意地说:“你最近有没有安娜和欧雷的消息?” “他们不时打电话来。七月时他们会回家度假。” “他们不会提前来吗?” “我想不会。” “这么说他们这个星期会在哥本哈根……” “到底怎么回事?席德。” “没事,只是聊聊。” “你提到哥本哈根两次了。” “有吗?” “在刚才我们谈到爸爸在……” “我大概是这样才想到安娜和欧雷吧。” 她们一吃完,席德就收拾杯盘,放在托盘上。 “妈,我得回去继续看书了。” “我想也是。” 她的回答里有谴责的意味吗?她们以前曾经说好在爸爸回家前要一起把船整修好。 “爸爸差点没要我答应他在他回家前把那本书念完呢。” “这真是有点太胡闹了。他虽然离家在外,也不需要这样子指挥家里的人呀。” “你才知道,他可是会指挥人呢!”席德高深莫测地说。“而且你无法想象他多喜欢这样呢!” 她回到房里,继续看下去。 突然间苏菲听到有人敲门。艾伯特严肃地看着她。 “我们不想被人打搅。” 敲门声又响了,这回更大声。 “我要和你谈一位丹麦的哲学家。他对黑格尔的哲学非常不满。” 敲门声愈来愈激烈,以至于整扇门都在晃动。 “一定是少校派了什么童话人物来看看我们是不是上钩了。” 艾伯特说。“他这样做根本不费吹灰之力。” “可是如果我们不开门看看是谁,他也可以不费吹灰之力地把这整栋房子拆掉呀!” “你说得可能有道理。我们最好还是开门吧。” 于是他们打开门。由于刚才的敲门声大而有力,苏菲预期这个人一定长得很魁梧。可是站在门前台阶上的却是一位有着一头金色的长发,穿了印花夏装的小女孩。她两手各拿了一个小瓶子。一瓶是红的,一瓶是蓝的。 “嗨!”苏菲说。“你是谁?” “我名叫爱丽丝。”小女孩说,一边害羞地一鞠躬。 “果然不出我所料。”艾伯特点点头。“是爱丽丝梦游仙境里的爱丽丝。” “她是怎么找到我们的?” 爱丽丝解释说:“仙境是一个完全没有疆界的国度。这表示仙境无所不在——当然也在联合国。它应该成为联合国的荣誉会员国。我们应该派代表参加他们所有的委员会,因为联合国当初成立也是一个奇迹。” “哼……又是少校搞的鬼。”艾伯特嘀咕着。 “你来这儿做什么呢?”苏菲问。 “我是来拿这些小哲学瓶子给苏菲的。” 她把瓶子递给苏菲。两个瓶子都是透明玻璃做的,其中一个装了红色的液体,另一个则装了蓝色的。红瓶子上贴了一张标签,写着:请把我喝下去。蓝瓶子上的标签则写着:请把我也喝下去。 这时忽然有一只白兔子从小木屋旁跳过去。它全身挺直,只用两只脚来走路,身上穿了一件背心和外套。来到小木屋前时,它从背心口袋里掏出了一个怀表,并且说:“糟了,我要迟到了!” 然后它就跑走了。爱丽丝开始追它。就在她跑进树林前,她姿态优美地鞠了一个躬,说道:“现在又要开始了。” “请帮我向蒂娜和皇后打招呼好吗?”苏菲在她身后喊。 小女孩消失了。艾伯特和苏菲仍站在台阶上,仔细看着那两个瓶子。 “‘请把我喝下去’和‘请把我也喝下去’,”苏菲念了出来。“我不知道我敢不敢呢。里面可能有毒。” 艾伯特只是耸耸肩。 “他们是少校派来的。而从少校那边来的每一件事物都是纯粹存在心灵中的,所以这并不是真的水。” 苏菲把红瓶子的瓶盖拿掉,小心地把瓶子送到唇边。瓶里的水有一种很奇怪的甜味,还有一些别的味道。当她喝下去时,她周遭的事物开始发生了一些变化。 感觉上仿佛小湖、树林小木屋都融成一体了。很快的,她所见到的一切似乎只是一个人,而这个人就是苏菲她自己。她抬头看了艾伯特一眼,但他似乎也成了苏菲灵魂的一部分。 “奇怪,真奇怪。”她说。“一切事物看起来都和从前没有两样,但现在却都成了一体了。我觉得一切事物好像都变成一个思想了。” 艾伯特点点头.但苏菲的感觉却好像是她自己在向她点头似的。 “这是泛神论或观念论,”他说。“这是浪漫主义者的世界精神。 在他们的体验中,每一件事物都属于一个大的‘自我’,这也是黑格尔的哲学。他批评个人主义,认为每一件事物都是世间唯一的世界理性的表现。” “我应该也喝另外一瓶吗?” “标签上是这么说的。” 苏菲把蓝瓶子的盖子拿掉,喝了一大口。里面的水尝起来比另一瓶新鲜,味道也较重。喝了之后,她周遭的每一件事物又开始改变了。 在那一瞬间,红瓶子所造成的效果消失了,一切事物都回到原来的位置。艾伯特还是艾伯特,树也回到了林子里,湖看起来又是湖了。 可是这种感觉只持续了一秒钟。因为,所有的东西都一直继续移动,愈分愈开。树林已经不再是树林,每一株小树现在看起来似乎本身就是一个世界,连最细小的树枝仿佛都是一个宝库,装着一千年的童话故事。 那小湖突然变成了一座无边无际的汪洋,虽然它没有变深,也没有变广,但湖里却出现了许多晶莹闪烁、细密交织的波纹。苏菲觉得她即使一辈子注视着这里的湖水,直到她死去之日也参不透那里面深不可测的秘密。 她抬起头看着一棵树的顶端。上面有三只小麻雀正全神贯注地玩着一种奇怪的游戏。她过去也知道树上有小鸟(即使在她喝了红瓶子里的水以后),可是她却从来没有好好地看过它们。红瓶子里的水使得所有事物的差异和各自的特色都泯灭了。 苏菲从她所站立的大石阶上跳下来,蹲在草地上。她在那里又发现了一个新世界,就像是一个深海的潜水员第一次在海底睁开眼睛一样。在绿草的茎梗间,青苔显得 纤毫毕露。苏菲看着一只蜘蛛不慌不忙地爬过青苔,向着它的目标走去……一只红色的虱子在草叶上来回奔跑……一群蚂蚁正在草丛间合力工作。可是每一只小蚂蚁 走路的方式都各有特色。 最奇怪的是,当她再度站起来,看着仍然站在木屋前阶梯上的艾伯特时,居然看到了一个奇妙不可思议的人。感觉上他像是从另外一个星球来的生物,又像从童话故 事里走出来的一个被施了魔法的人。同时,现在她也以一种崭新的方式感受到自己是一个独一无二的个体。她不只是一个人而已,也不只是一个十五岁的女孩。 她是苏菲,而世间只有她是苏菲这个人。 “你看见什么了?”艾伯特问。 “你看起来像是一只奇怪的鸟。” “你这么想吗?” “我想我永远也无法理解做另外一个人是什么样子。世间没有两个人是一样的。” “那树林呢?” “感觉起来也不一样了,像是一个充满了神奇故事的宇宙。” 祁克果“果然不出我所料。蓝瓶于是个人主义,打个比方,是祁克果(S&renKierkegaard)对浪漫主义者的理想主义的反动。但它也包括了跟祁克 果同一时期的一个丹麦人的世界观。他就是著名的童话故事作家安徒生。他对大自然种种不可思议的细微事物也有很敏锐的观察力。比他早一百多年的德国哲学家莱 布尼兹也看到相同的事物。莱布尼兹对史宾诺莎的理想主义哲学的反动就像是祁克果对黑格尔的反动一般。” “你说的话听起来好滑稽,使我很想笑。” “这是可以理解的。你再喝一口红瓶子里的水。来吧,我们坐在台阶这里。在今天结束之前我们要谈谈祁克果的哲学。” 苏菲坐在艾伯特的身旁。她从红瓶子里喝了一小口,然后所有的事物又开始重新聚合。事实上它们聚合得太过了,以致她再次感觉一切事物之间没有什么差别,于是她又将蓝瓶子拿到唇边喝了一口。这回她周遭的世界看起来便与爱丽丝拿着这两个瓶子来时没有什么两样了。 “可是哪一种感觉是真实的呢?”她问道,“使我们看到真实画面的是红瓶子还是蓝瓶子?” “两者都是。我们不能说浪漫主义者是错的,或说世间其实只有一个真实世界。可是也许他们的视野都有点大狭窄了。” “那蓝瓶子呢?” “我想祁克果一定从那个瓶子里喝了几大口。不用说,他对个体的意义有很敏锐的观察力。我们不只是‘时代的产物’。我们每一个人都是独一无二的个体,只活一次。” “而黑格尔在这方面看到的并不多?” “嗯。他对广阔的历史比较有兴趣,这正是祁克果对他如此不满的原因。祁克果认为浪漫主义者的理想主义与黑格尔的‘历史观’都抹煞了个人对自己的生命所应负的责任。因此,对祁克果来说,黑格尔和浪漫主义者有同样的缺点。” “我可以了解他为什么会这么生气。” “祁克果生于一八一三年,从小受到父亲的严格管教,并且遗传了父亲的宗教忧郁症。” “听起来好像不大妙。”“由于得了忧郁症,他觉得自己必须解除婚约。但此举不太受到哥本哈根中产阶级的谅解,所以他在很早的时候就成为一个受人唾弃和耻笑的对象。后来他逐渐也厌弃世人、耻笑世人,并因此而逐渐成为后来易卜生所描述的‘人民公敌’。” “这一切都只是因为他解除了婚约吗?” “不只是因为这样。他在晚年时,对于社会更是大肆批评。他说:‘整个欧洲正走向破产的地步。’他认为他生活在一个完全缺乏热情和奉献的时代。他对丹麦路德派教会的了无生气尤其感到不满,并对所谓的‘星期日基督徒’加以无情的抨击。” “这年头还有所谓的‘坚信礼基督徒’。因为,大多数孩子只是为了想得到礼物而接受坚信礼。” “是的,你说到要点了。对于祁克果而言,基督教对人的影响是如此之大,而且是无法用理性解释的。因此一个人要不就是相信基督教,要不就不信,不可以持一种 ‘多少相信一些’或‘相信到某种程度’的态度。耶稣要不就是真的在复活节复活,要不就是没有。如果他真的死而复活,如果他真的为我们而死的话,那么这件事 实在深奥难解,势必会影响我们整个生命。” “嗯。我明白。” “可是祁克果看到教会和一般大众都对宗教问题采取一种暧昧含糊的态度。对于他而言,宗教和知识可说是水火不容。光是相信基督教是‘真理’并不够。相信基督教就要过着基督徒般的生活。” “这和黑格尔有什么关系呢?” “你说得对。我们也许应该另起一个头。” “所以我建议你重新开始。” “十七岁那年,祁克果开始研究神学,但他对哲学问题却日益感到兴趣。他二十七岁时,以《论反讽观念》这篇论文获得了硕士学位。他在这篇论文中批评浪漫主义 的反讽以及浪漫主义者任意玩弄幻象的做法。他并提出‘苏格拉底式的反讽’做为对比。苏格拉底虽然也以反讽技巧得到很大的效果,但他这样做的目的乃是为了要 寻求有关生命的根本真理。祁克果认为,苏格拉底与浪漫主义者不同之处在于他是一位‘存在主义’的思想家,也就是说他是一位完全将他的存在放进他的哲学思考 的思想家。” “然后呢?” “一八四一年解除婚约后,祁克果前往柏林访问,并在那儿听了谢林讲课。” “他有没有遇见黑格尔呢?” “没有,那时黑格尔去世已有十年了。不过他的思想已经在柏林等许多欧洲地区成为主流。他的‘体系’被用来说明每一种问题。 祁克果表示,黑格尔主义所关切的那种‘客观真理’与个人的生命是完全不相关的。” “那么什么样的真理才是相关的呢?” “祁克果认为,与其找寻那唯一的真理,不如去找寻那些对个A生命具有意义的真理。他说,找寻‘我心目中的真理’是很重要的。他借此以个人来对抗‘体系’。 祁克果认为,黑格尔忘记了自己是一个人。他并且如此描述那些教导黑格尔主义的教授:‘当那令A厌烦的教授先生解释生命的玄秘时,他大过专注,以致忘了自己 的姓名,也忘了自己是一个人,而不只是八分之三段精彩的文章。”’“那么祁克果认为人是什么呢?” “这很难做概括性的说明。对他而言,描绘人或人性的面貌是完全没有意义的。他认为,世间唯一重要的事只有每一个人‘自己的存在’。而你无法在书桌后面体验 自己的存在。唯有在我们行动——尤其是做一些重要的选择——时,我们才和自我的存在有关联。有一个关于佛陀的故事可以说明祁克果的意思。” “关于佛陀的故事?” “是的,因为佛教的哲学也是以人的存在为起点。从前有一个和尚问佛陀他如何才能更清楚地回答‘世界是什么’‘人是什么’等根本性的问题。佛陀在回答时,将他比喻为一个被毒箭射伤的人。 他说,这个受伤的人不会对‘这支箭是什么材料做的’、‘它沾了什么样的毒药’或‘它是从哪个方向射来的’这些问题感到兴趣。” “他应该是希望有人能够把箭拔出来,并治疗他的伤口。” “没错。这对于他的存在是很重要的。佛陀和祁克果都强烈感受到人生苦短的现象。而就像我说的,你不能只是坐在书桌后面,构思有关世界精神的本质的哲学。” “当然。” “祁克果并说真理是‘主观的’。他的意思并不是说我们想什么、相信什么都无所谓。他的意思是说,真正重要的真理都是属于个人的。只有这些真理‘对我而言是真的’。” “你能单一个例子说明什么是主观的真理吗?” “举例来说,有一个很重要的问题是基督教是否是真实的。这不是一个理论上的或学术上的问题。对于一个‘了解自我生命’的人而言,这是一个关乎生与死的问题,而不是一个你光是坐下来为了讨论而讨论的问题。这样的问题应该以最热情、最真诚的态度来讨论。” “我可以理解。” “如果你掉到水里,你对你是否会淹死的理论不会感到兴趣。 而水里是否有鳄鱼的问题既不‘有趣’,也不‘无趣’,因为你已经面临生死关头了。” “我懂了。谢谢你。” “所以我们必须区分‘上帝是否存在’这个哲学性的问题与个人与这些问题的关系。每一个人都必须独自回答这些问题。而这类根本性的问题只能经由信仰来找寻答案。但照祁克果的看法,那些我们能经由理性而得知的事情(也就是知识)是完全不重要的。” “你最好说清楚一些。” “八加四等于十二,这是我们绝对可以确定的。这是笛卡尔以来每位哲学家都谈到的那种‘可以推算的真理’。可是我们会把它放在每天的祈祷文中吗?我们躺着时 会去思考这样的问题而不去想我们什么时候会死吗?绝不是的。那样的真理也许‘客观’,也许‘具有普遍性’,但对于每个人的存在却完全无关紧要。” “那么信仰呢?” “你永远不会知道当你对不起一个人的时候,他是否会原谅你,因此这个问题对你的存在而言是很重要的,这是个你会极度关切的问题。同样的,你也不可能知道一 个人是否爱你,你只能相信他爱你或希望他爱你。可是这些事情对你而言,要比‘三角形内各内角的总和等于一八O度’更加重要。你在第一次接吻时绝不会去想什 么因果律啦、知觉模态啦这类的问题。” “会才怪!” “在与宗教有关的问题上,信仰是最重要的因素。祁克果曾写道:‘如果我能客观地抓住上帝,我就不会相信他了。但正因为我无法如此,所以我必须信他。如果我希望保守我的信心,我必须时时紧握住客观的不确定性,以便让我即使在七万叶深的海上,仍能保有我的信心。” “满难懂的。” “许多人曾经试图证明上帝的存在,或至少尝试用理性去解释他。但是如果你满足于这样的证明或理论,你就会失去你的信仰,同时也会失去你的宗教热情。因为重 要的并不是基督教是否真实,而是对你而言,它是否真实。中世纪的一句格言‘我信,因为荒谬’(credoquiaabsurdum)也表达了同样的想 法。” “哦?” “这话的意思是:正因为它是非理性的,所以我才相信。如果基督教所诉求的是我们的理性,而不是我们的另外一面,那它就不叫做信仰了。” “现在我懂了。” “我们已经谈到了祁克果所说的‘存在的’和‘主观真理’的意义,以及他对‘信仰’的观念。他创造这三个观念是为了批评传统的哲学,尤其是黑格尔的哲学。不 过其中也包含尖锐的‘社会批评’在内。他说,现代都市社会中的个人已经成为‘大众’了,而这些大众或群众最主要的特色就是喜欢说一些含糊不确定的话语。他 的意思就是每一个人所‘想’、所‘相信’的都是同样的东西,而没有人真正对这些东西有深刻的感受。” 人生的阶段“我实在很想知道祁克果对乔安的父母会有什么看法。” “他对人的评语有时满严苛的。他的笔锋犀利,讽刺起人来也很尖酸刻薄。比方说,他会说‘群众就是虚伪’、‘真理永远是少数’,以及大多数人对生命的态度都很肤浅之类的话。” “搜集芭比娃娃已经够糟了,但更糟的是自己就是一个芭比娃娃。” “这我们就要谈到祁克果所说的‘人生三阶段’的理论了。” “对不起,我没听清楚。” “祁克果认为生命有三种不同的形式。他本人所用的名词是‘阶段’。他把它们称为‘美感阶段’、‘道德阶段’和‘宗教阶段’。他用‘阶段’这个名词是为了要强调人可能会生活在一个较低的阶段,然后突然跃升到一个较高的阶段。许多人终其一生都活在同样的阶段。” “请你再解释清楚。因为我很想知道自己现在是在哪个阶段。” “活在美感阶段的人只是为了现在而活,因此他会抓住每个享乐的机会。只要是美的、令人满足的、令人愉快的,就是好的。这样的人完全活在感官的世界中,是他自己的欲望与情绪的奴隶。对他而言,凡是令人厌烦的,就是不好的。” “谢啦,我想我对这种态度很熟悉。” “典型的浪漫主义者也就是典型的活在美感阶段的人,因为这个阶段所包含的并不只是纯粹的感官享乐而已。一个从美感的角度来看待现实,或自己的艺术,或他所 信仰的哲学的人,就是活在美感阶段里。他们也可能从美学的角度来看待痛苦或悲伤,但这只是虚荣心作祟罢了。易卜生的《皮尔金》这出戏的男主角就是典型的活 在美感阶段的人。” “我想我懂你的意思了。” “你认识这样的人吗?” “没有很典型的。不过我想少校有点像是那样。” “也许吧,也许吧,苏菲……虽然这是他展现他那病态的浪漫主义反讽的又一个例子。你应该把你的嘴巴洗一洗。” “什么?” “好吧,这不是你的错。” “那就请你继续说下去吧。” “一个活在美感阶段的人很容易有焦虑或恐怖和空虚的感受。 但果真这样,他就有救了。祁克果认为,害怕几乎是有正面意义的。 它表示这个人正处于‘存在的状态中’,可以跃升到更高阶段。可是你要不就晋升到较高的阶段,要不就停留原地。如果你不采取行动,而只是在即将跃升的边缘徘徊是没有用的。这是个两者只能择其一的情况,而且没有人能够帮你做这件事,这是你自己的抉择。” “这很像是决定要不要戒酒或戒毒一样。” “是的,有可能。祁克果所描述的这个‘决定的范畴’(categoryofdecision)可能会使人想起苏格拉底所说的所有真正的智慧都来自内心的话。是否要从美感阶段跃升到道德阶段或宗教阶段,必须是发自个人内心的决定。易卜生在《皮尔金》里面也描绘了这一点。 另外,陀思妥耶夫斯基在他的大作《罪与罚》这本小说中,也生动地描述了存在的抉择如何必须发自内心的需要与绝望的感受。” “那时你最佳的选择就是过一种完全不同的生活。” “如此你也许才可以开始活在道德阶段。这个阶段的特色就是对生命抱持认真的态度,并且始终一贯的做一些符合道德的抉择。 这种态度有点像是康德的责任道德观,就是人应该努力依循道德法则而生活。祁克果和康德一样注重人的性情。他认为,重要的不是你认为何者是、何者非,而是你开始在意事情的是非对错。相反的,活在美感阶段的人则只注重一件事是否有趣。” “像那样活在道德阶段,人难道不会变得太严肃了吗?” “确实可能。祁克果从不认为道德阶段是很圆满的。即使是一个敬业尽责的人,如果一直彻底的过着这种生活,最后也会厌倦的。许多人到了年长之后开始有这种厌 倦的感受。有些人就因此重新回到美感阶段的生活方式。可是也有人进一步跃升到宗教阶段。他们一步就跳进信仰那‘七万吋的深渊里’。他们选择信仰,而不选择 美感的愉悦和理性所要求的责任。而就像祁克果所说的,虽然‘跳进上帝张开的双臂’也许是一件很令人害怕的事,但这却是得到救赎唯一的途径。” “你的意思是信仰基督教。” “是的,因为对祁克果而言,活在‘宗教阶段’就等于是信奉基督。不过对于非基督徒的思想家而言,他也是很重要的一个人物。 盛行于二十世纪的存在主义就是受到这位丹麦哲学家的启发。” 苏菲看看她的手表。 “已经快七点了。我必须冲回家去了。妈妈不急死才怪。” 她向艾伯特挥一挥手,就跑到小船那儿去了。 Marx  a spectre is haunting Europe Hilde got off her bed and went to the window facing the bay. When she had started to read this Saturday, it was still Sophie's fifteenth birthday. The day before had been Hilde's own birthday. If her father had imagined that she would get as far as Sophie's birthday yesterday, he had certainly not been realistic. She had done nothing but read all day long. But he was right that there would only be one more birthday greeting. It was when Alberto and Sophie had sung Happy Birthday to her. Very embarrassing, Hilde thought. And now Sophie had invited people to a philosophical garden party on the very day her father was due back from Lebanon. Hilde was convinced something would happen that day which neither she nor her father were quite sure of. But one thing was certain: before her father got home to Bjerkely he would get a scare. That was the least she could do for Sophie and Alberto, especially after they had appealed for help ... Her mother was still down in the boathouse. Hilde ran downstairs to the telephone. She found Anne and Ole's number in Copenhagen and called them. "Anne Kvamsdal." "Hi, this is Hilde." "Oh, how are you? How are things in Lillesand?" "Fine, with vacation and everything. And Dad gets back from Lebanon in a week." "Won't that be great, Hilde!" "Yes, I'm looking forward to it. That's actually why I'm calling..." "It is?" "I think he's landing at Kastrup around 5 p.m. on Saturday the 23rd. Will you be in Copenhagen then?" "I think so." "I was wondering if you could do something for me." "Why, of course." "It's kind of a special favor. I'm not even sure if it's possible." "Now you're making me curious ..." Hilde began to describe her plan. She told Anne about the ring binder, about Sophie and Alberto and all the rest. She had to backtrack several times because either she or Anne were laughing too hard. But when Hilde hung up, her plan was in operation. She would now have to begin some preparations of her own. But there was still plenty of time. Hilde spent the remainder of the afternoon and the evening with her mother. They ended up driving to Kris-tiansand and going to the movies. They felt they had some catching up to do since they had not done anything special the day before. As they drove past the exit to Kjevik airport, a few more pieces of the big jigsaw puzzle Hilde was constructing fell into place. It was late before she went to bed that night, but she took the ring binder and read on. When Sophie slipped out of the den through the hedge it was almost eight o'clock. Her mother was weeding the flowerbeds by the front door when Sophie appeared. "Where did you spring from?" "I came through the hedge." "Through the hedge?" "Didn't you know there was a path on the other side?" "But where have you been, Sophie? This is the second time you've just disappeared without leaving any message." "I'm sorry, Mom. It was such a lovely day, I went for a long walk." Her mother rose from the pile of weeds and gave her a severe look. "You haven't been with that philosopher again?" "As a matter of fact, I have. I told you he likes going for long walks." "But he is coming to the garden party, isn't he?" "Oh yes, he's looking forward to it." "Me too. I'm counting the days." Was there a touch of sharpness in her voice? To be on the safe side, Sophie said: "I'm glad I invited Joanna's parents too. Otherwise it might be a bit embarrassing." "I don't know ... but whatever happens, I am going to have a talk with this Alberto as one adult to another." "You can borrow my room if you like. I'm sure you'll like him." "And another thing. There's a letter for you." "There is?" "It's stamped UN Battalion." "It must be from Alberto's brother." "It's got to stop, Sophie!" Sophie's brain worked overtime. But in a flash she hit on a plausible answer It was as though she was getting inspiration from some guiding spirit. "I told Alberto I collect rare postmarks. And brothers also have their uses." Her mother seemed to be reassured. "Dinner's in the fridge," she said in a slightly more amicable tone. "Where's the letter?" "On top of the fridge." Sophie rushed inside. The envelope was stamped June 15, 1990. She opened it and took out a little note: What matters our creative endless toil, When at a snatch, oblivion ends the coil? Indeed, Sophie had no answer to that question. Before she ate, she put the note in the closet together with all the other stuff she had collected in the past weeks. She would learn soon enough why the question had been asked. The following morning Joanna came by. After a game of badminton, they got down to planning the philosophical garden party. They needed to have some surprises on hand in case the party flopped at any point. When Sophie's mother got home from work they were still talking about it. Her mother kept saying: "Don't worry about what it costs." And she was not being sarcastic! Perhaps she was thinking that a "philosophical garden party" was just what was needed to bring Sophie down to earth again after her many weeks of intensive philosophical studies. Before the evening was over they had agreed on everything, from paper lanterns to a philosophical quiz with a prize. The prize should preferably be a book about philosophy for young people. If there was such a thing! Sophie was not at all sure. Two days before Midsummer Eve, on Thursday, June 21, Alberto called Sophie again. "Sophie." "And Alberto." "Oh, hi! How are you?" "Very well indeed, thank you. I think I have found an excellent way out." "Way out of what?" "You know what. A way out of the mental captivity we have lived in for much too long." "Oh, that." "But I cannot say a word about the plan before it is set in motion." "Won't it be too late then? I need to know what I am involved in." "Now you're being na'i've. All our conversations are being overheard. The most sensible thing would be to say nothing." "It's as bad as that, huh?" "Naturally, my child. The most important things must happen when we are not talking." "Oh." "We are living our lives in a fictional reality behind the words in a long story. Each single letter is being written on an old portable typewriter by the major. Nothing that is in print can therefore escape his attention." "No, I realize that. But how are we going to hide from him?" "Ssh!" "What?" "There's something going on between the lines as well. That's just where I'm trying to be tricky, with every crafty ruse I know." "I get it." "But we must make the most of the time both today and tomorrow. On Saturday the balloon goes up. Can you come over right now?" "I'm on my way." Sophie fed the birds and the fish and found a large lettuce leaf for Govinda. She opened a can of cat food for Sher-ekan and put it out in a bowl on the step as she left. Then she slipped through the hedge and out to the path on the far side. A little way further on she suddenly caught sight of a spacious desk standing in the midst of the heather. An elderly man was sitting at it, apparently adding up figures. Sophie went over to him and asked his name. "Ebenezer Scrooge," he said, poring over his ledgers again. "My name is Sophie. You are a businessman, I presume?" He nodded. "And immensely rich. Not a penny must go to waste. That's why I have to concentrate on my accounts." "Why bother?" Sophie waved and walked on. But she had not gone many yards before she noticed a little girl sitting quite alone under one of the tall trees. She was dressed in rags, and looked pale and ill. As Sophie walked by, she thrust her hand into a little bag and pulled out a box of matches. "Will you buy some matches?" she asked, holding them out to Sophie. Sophie felt in her pockets to see if she had any money with her. Yes--she found a crown. "How much are they?" "One crown." Sophie gave the girl the coin and stood there, with the box of matches in her hand. "You are the first person to buy anything from me for over a hundred years. Sometimes I starve to death, and other times the frost does away with me." Sophie thought it was perhaps not surprising if the sale of matches was not especially brisk here in the woods. But then she came to think of the businessman she had just passed. There was no reason for the little match girl to die of starvation when he was so wealthy. "Come here," said Sophie. She took the girl's hand and walked with her back to the rich man. "You must see to it that this girl gets a better life," she said. The man glanced up from his paperwork and said: "That kind of thing costs money, and I said not so much as a penny must go to waste." "But it's not fair that you're so rich when this girl is so poor," insisted Sophie. "It's unjust!" "Bah! Humbug! Justice only exists between equals." "What do you mean by that?" "I had to work my way up, and it has paid off. Progress, they call it." "If you don't help me, I'll die," said the poor girl. The businessman looked up again from his ledgers. Then he threw his quill pen onto the table impatiently. "You don't figure in my accounts! So--be off with you--to the poorhouse!" "If you don't help me, I'll set fire to the woods," the girl persisted. That brought the man to his feet, but the girl had already struck one of her matches. She held it to a tuft of dry grass which flared up instantly. The man threw up his arms. "God help me!" he shouted. "The red cock has crowed!" The girl looked up at him with a playful smile. "You didn't know I was a communist, did you?" The next minute, the girl, the businessman, and the desk had disappeared. Sophie was once again standing alone while the flames consumed the dry grass ever more hungrily. It took her a while to put out the fire by stamping on it. Thank goodness! Sophie glanced down at the blackened grass. She was holding a box of matches in her hand. She couldn't have started the fire herself, could she? When she met Alberto outside the cabin she told him what had happened. "Scrooge was the miserly capitalist in A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. You probably remember the little match girl from the tale by Hans Christian Andersen." "I didn't expect to meet them here in the woods." "Why not? These are no ordinary woods, and now we are going to talk about Karl Marx. It is most appropriate that you have witnessed an example of the tremendous class struggles of the mid-nineteenth century. But let's go inside. We are a little more protected from the major's interference there." Once again they sat at the little table by the window facing the lake. Sophie could still feel all over her body how she had experienced the little lake after having drunk from the blue bottle. Today, both bottles were standing on the mantelpiece. There was a miniature model of a Greek temple on the table. "What's that?" asked Sophie. "All in good time, my dear." Alberto began to talk: "When Kierkegaard went to Berlin in 1841, he might have sat next to Karl Marx at Schel-ling's lectures. Kierkegaard had written a master of arts thesis on Socrates. About the same time, Marx had written a doctoral thesis on Democritus and Epicurus--in other words, on the materialism of antiquity. Thus they had both staked out the course of their own philosophies." "Because Kierkegaard became an existentialist and Marx became a materialist?" "Marx became what is known as a historical materialist. But we'll come back to that." "Go on." "Each in his own way, both Kierkegaard and Marx took Hegel's philosophy as their point of departure. Both were influenced by Hegel's mode of thought, but both rejected his 'world spirit,' or his idealism." "It was probably too high-flown for them." "Definitely. In general, we usually say that the era of the great philosophical systems ended with Hegel. After him, philosophy took a new direction. Instead of great speculative systems, we had what we call an existential philosophy or a philosophy of action. This was what Marx meant when he observed that until now, 'philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.' These words mark a significant turning point in the history of philosophy." "After meeting Scrooge and the little match girl, I have no problem understanding what Marx meant." "Marx's thinking had a practical--or political--objective. He was not only a philosopher; he was a historian, a sociologist, and an economist." "And he was a forerunner in all these areas?" "Certainly no other philosopher had greater significance for practical politics. On the other hand, we must be wary of identifying everything that calls itself Marxism with Marx's own thinking. It is said of Marx that he only became a Marxist in the mid-1840s, but even after that he could at times feel it necessary to assert that he was not a Marxist." "Was Jesus a Christian?" "That, too, of course, is debatable." "Carry on." "Right from the start, his friend and colleague Friedrich Engels contributed to what was subsequently known as Marxism. In our own century, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and many others also made their contribution to Marxism, or Marxism-Leninism." "I suggest we try to stick to Marx himself. You said he was a historical materialist?" "He was not a philosophical materialist like the atomists of antiquity nor did he advocate the mechanical materialism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But he thought that, to a great extent, it was the material factors in society which determined the way we think. Material factors of that nature have certainly been decisive for historical development." "That was quite different from Hegel's world spirit." "Hegel had pointed out that historical development is driven by the tension between opposites--which is then resolved by a sudden change. Marx developed this idea further. But according to Marx, Hegel was standing on his head." "Not all the time, I hope." "Hegel called the force that drives history forward world spirit or world reason. This, Marx claimed, is upside down. He wished to show that material changes are the ones that affect history. 'Spiritual relations' do not create material change, it is the other way about. Material change creates new spiritual relations. Marx particularly emphasized that it was the economic forces in society that created change and thus drove history forward." "Do you have an example?" "Antiquity's philosophy and science were purely theoretical in purpose. Nobody was particularly interested in putting new discoveries into practice." "They weren't?" "That was because of the way the economic life of the community was organized. Production was mainly based on slave labor, so the citizens had no need to increase production with practical innovations. This is an example of how material relations help to affect philosophical reflection in society." "Yes, I see." "Marx called these material, economic, and social relations the basis of society. The way a society thinks, what kind of political institutions there are, which laws it has and, not least, what there is of religion, morals, art, philosophy, and science, Marx called society's superstructure." "Basis and superstructure, right." "And now you will perhaps be good enough to pass me the Greek temple." Sophie did so. "This is a model of the Parthenon temple on the Acropolis. You have also seen it in real life." "On the video, you mean." "You can see that the construction has a very elegant and elaborate roof. Probably the roof with its front gable is what strikes one first. This is what we call the superstructure." "But the roof cannot float in thin air." "It is supported by the columns." "The building has very powerful foundations--its bases--supporting the entire construction. In the same way, Marx believed that material relations support, so to speak, everything in the way of thoughts and ideas in society. Society's superstructure is in fact a reflection of the bases of that society." "Are you saying that Plato's theory of ideas is a reflection of vase production and wine growing?" "No, it's not that simple, as Marx expressly points out. It is the interactive effect of society's basis on its superstructure. If Marx had rejected this interaction, he would have been a mechanical materialist. But because Marx realized that there was an interactive or dialectic relation between bases and superstructure, we say that he is a dialectical materialist. By the way, you may care to note that Plato was neither a potter nor a wine grower." "All right. Do you have any more to say about the temple?" "Yes, a little. Could you describe the bases of the temple?" "The columns are standing on a base that consists of three levels--or steps." "In the same manner we will identify three levels in the bases of society. The most basic level is what we may call society's conditions of production. In other words, the natural conditions or resources that are available to society. These are the foundation of any society, and this foundation clearly determines the type of production in the society, and by the same token, the nature of that society and its culture in general." "You can't have a herring trade in the Sahara, or grow dates in northern Norway." "You've got it. And the way people think in a nomadic culture is very different from the way they think in a fishing village in northern Norway The next level is the society's means of production. By this Marx meant the various kinds of equipment, tools, and machinery, as well as the raw materials to be found there." "In the old days people rowed out to the fishing grounds. Nowadays they use huge trawlers to catch the fish." "Yes, and here you are talking about the next level in the base of society, namely, those who own the means of production. The division of labor, or the distribution of work and ownership, was what Marx called society's 'production relations.' " "I see." "So far we can conclude that it is the mode of production in a society which determines which political and ideological conditions are to be found there. It is not by chance that today we think somewhat differently--and have a somewhat different moral codex--from the old feudal society." "So Marx didn't believe in a natural right that was eternally valid." "No, the question of what was morally right, according to Marx, is a product of the base of society. For example, it is not accidental that in the old peasant society, parents would decide whom their children married. It was a question of who was to inherit the farm. In a modern city, social relations are different. Nowadays you can meet your future spouse at a party or a disco, and if you are sufficiently in love, you'll find somewhere to live." "I could never have put up with my parents deciding who I was to marry." "No, that's because you are a child of your time. Marx emphasized moreover that it is mainly society's ruling class that sets the norms for what is right or wrong. Because 'the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.' In other words, history is principally a matter of who is to own the means of production." "Don't people's thoughts and ideas help to change history?" "Yes and no. Marx understood that conditions in society's superstructure could have an interactive effect on the base of society, but he denied that society's superstructure had any independent history of its own. What has driven historical development from the slave society of antiquity to the industrial society of today has primarily been determined by changes in the base of society." "So you said." "Marx believed that in all phases of history there has been a conflict between two dominant classes of society. In antiquity's slave society, the conflict was between free citizen and slave. In the feudal society of the Middle Ages, it was between feudal lord and serf; later on, between aristocrat and citizen. But in Marx's own time, in what he called a bourgeois or capitalist society, the conflict was first and foremost between the capitalists and the workers, or the proletariat. So the conflict stood between those who own the means of production and those who do not. And since the 'upper classes' do not voluntarily relinquish their power, change can only come about through revolution." "What about a communist society?" "Marx was especially interested in the transition from a capitalist to a communist society. He also carried out a detailed analysis of the capitalist mode of production. But before we look at that, we must say something about Marx's view of man's labor." "Go ahead." "Before he became a communist, the young Marx was preoccupied with what happens to man when he works. This was something Hegel had also analyzed. Hegel believed there was an interactive, or dialectic, relationship between man and nature. When man alters nature, he himself is altered. Or, to put it slightly differently, when man works, he interacts with nature and transforms it. But in the process nature also interacts with man and transforms his consciousness." "Tell me what you do and I'll tell you who you are." "That, briefly, was Marx's point. How we work affects our consciousness, but our consciousness also affects the way we work. You could say it is an interactive relationship between hand and consciousness. Thus the way you think is closely connected to the job you do." "So it must be depressing to be unemployed." "Yes. A person who is unemployed is, in a sense, empty. Hegel was aware of this early on. To both Hegel and Marx, work was a positive thing, and was closely connected with the essence of mankind." "So it must also be positive to a worker?" "Yes, originally. But this is precisely where Marx aimed his criticism of the capitalist method of production." "What was that?" "Under the capitalist system, the worker labors for someone else. His labor is thus something external to him--or something that does not belong to him. The worker becomes alien to his work--but at the same time also alien to himself. He loses touch with his own reality. Marx says, with a Hegelian expression, that the worker becomes alienated." "I have an aunt who has worked in a factory, packaging candy for over twenty years, so I can easily understand what you mean. She says she hates going to work, every single morning." "But if she hates her work, Sophie, she must hate herself, in a sense." "She hates candy, that's for sure." "In a capitalist society, labor is organized in such a way that the worker in fact slaves for another social class. Thus the worker transfers his own labor--and with it, the whole of his life--to the bourgeoisie." "Is it really that bad?" "We're talking about Marx, and we must therefore take our point of departure in the social conditions during the middle of the last century. So the answer must be a resounding yes. The worker could have a 12-hour working day in a freezing cold production hall. The pay was often so poor that children and expectant mothers also had to work. This led to unspeakable social conditions. In many places, part of the wages was paid out in the form of cheap liquor, and women were obliged to supplement their earnings by prostitution. Their customers were the respected citizenry of the town. In short, in the precise situation that should have been the honorable hallmark of mankind, namely work, the worker was turned into a beast of burden." "That infuriates me!" "It infuriated Marx too. And while it was happening, the children of the bourgeoisie played the violin in warm, spacious living rooms after a refreshing bath. Or they sat at the piano while waiting for their four-course dinner. The violin and the piano could have served just as well as a diversion after a long horseback ride." "Ugh! How unjust!" "Marx would have agreed. Together with Engels, he published a Communist Manifesto in 1848. The first sentence in this manifesto says: A spectre is haunting Europe--the spectre of Communism." "That sounds frightening." "It frightened the bourgeoisie too. Because now the proletariat was beginning to revolt. Would you like to hear how the Manifesto ends?" "Yes, please." "The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!" "If conditions were as bad as you say, I think I would have signed that Manifesto. But conditions are surely a lot different today?" "In Norway they are, but they aren't everywhere. Many people still live under inhuman conditions while they continue to produce commodities that make capitalists richer and richer. Marx called this exploitation." "Could you explain that word, please?" "If a worker produces a commodity, this commodity has a certain exchange-value." "Yes." "If you now deduct the workers' wages and the other production costs from the exchange-value, there will always be a certain sum left over. This sum was what Marx called profit. In other words, the capitalist pockets a value that was actually created by the worker. That is what is meant by exploitation." "I see." "So now the capitalist invests some of his profit in new capital--for instance, in modernizing the production plant in the hope of producing his commodity even more cheaply, and thereby increasing his profit in the future." "That sounds logical." "Yes, it can seem logical. But both in this and in other areas, in the long term it will not go the way the capitalist has imagined." "How do you mean?" "Marx believed there were a number of inherent contradictions in the capitalist method of production. Capitalism is an economic system which is self-destructive because it lacks rational control." "That's good, isn't it, for the oppressed?" "Yes; it is inherent in the capitalist system that it is marching toward its own destruction. In that sense, capitalism is 'progressive' because it is a stage on the way to communism." "Can you give an example of capitalism being self-destructive?" "We said that the capitalist had a good surplus of money, and he uses part of this surplus to modernize the factory. But he also spends money on violin lessons. Moreover, his wife has become accustomed to a luxurious way of life." "No doubt." "He buys new machinery and so no longer needs so many employees. He does this to increase his competitive power." "I get it." "But he is not the only one thinking in this way, which means that production as a whole is continually being made more effective. Factories become bigger and bigger, and are gradually concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. What happens then, Sophie?" "Er. . ." "Fewer and fewer workers are required, which means there are more and more unemployed. There are therefore increasing social problems, and crises such as these are a signal that capitalism is marching toward its own destruction. But capitalism has a number of other self-destructive elements. Whenever profit has to be tied up in the means of production without leaving a big enough surplus to keep production going at competitive prices . . ." "Yes?" ", . . what does the capitalist do then? Can you tell me?" "No, I'm afraid I can't." "Imagine if you were a factory owner. You cannot make ends meet. You cannot buy the raw materials you need to keep producing. You are facing bankruptcy. So now my question is, what can you do to economize?" "Maybe I could cut down on wages?" "Smart! Yes, that really is the smartest thing you could do. But if all capitalists were as smart as you--and they are--the workers would be so poor that they couldn't afford to buy goods any more. We would say that purchasing power is falling. And now we really are in a vicious circle. The knell has sounded for capitalist private property, Marx would say. We are rapidly approaching a revolutionary situation." "Yes, I see." "To make a long story short, in the end the proletariat rises and takes over the means of production." "And then what?" "For a period, we get a new 'class society' in which the proletarians suppress the bourgeoisie by force. Marx called this the dictatorship of the proletariat. But after a transition period, the dictatorship of the proletariat is replaced by a 'classless society,' in which the means of production are owned 'by all'--that is, by the people themselves. In this kind of society, the policy is 'from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.' Moreover, labor now belongs to the workers themselves and capitalism's alienation ceases." "It all sounds wonderful, but what actually happened? Was there a revolution?" "Yes and no. Today, economists can establish that Marx was mistaken on a number of vital issues, not least his analysis of the crises of capitalism. And he paid insufficient attention to the plundering of the natural environment--the serious consequences of which we are experiencing today. Nevertheless . . ." "Nevertheless?" "Marxism led to great upheavals. There is no doubt that socialism has largely succeeded in combating an inhumane society. In Europe, at any rate, we live in a society with more justice--and more solidarity--than Marx did. This is not least due to Marx himself and the entire socialist movement." "What happened?" "After Marx, the socialist movement split into two main streams, Social Democracy and Leninism. Social Democracy, which has stood for a gradual and peaceful path in the direction of socialism, was Western Europe's way. We might call this the slow revolution. Leninism, which retained Marx's belief that revolution was the only way to combat the old class society, had great influence in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa. Each in their own way, both movements have fought against hardship and oppression." "But didn't it create a new form of oppression? For example in Russia and Eastern Europe?" "No doubt of that, and here again we see that everything man touches becomes a mixture of good and evil. On the other hand, it would be unreasonable to blame Marx for the negative factors in the so-called socialist countries fifty or a hundred years after his death. But maybe he had given too little thought to the people who would be the administrators of communist society. There will probably never be a 'promised land.' Mankind will always create new problems to fight about." "I'm sure it will." "And there we bring down the curtain on Marx, Sophie." "Hey, wait a minute! Didn't you say something about justice only existing among equals?" "No, it was Scrooge who said that." "How do you know what he said?" "Oh well--you and I have the same author. In actual fact we are more closely linked to each other than we would appear to the casual observer." "Your wretched irony again!" "Double, Sophie, that was double irony." "But back to justice. You said that Marx thought capitalism was an unjust form of society. How would you define a just society?" "A moral philosopher called John Rawls attempted to say something about it with the following example: Imagine you were a member of a distinguished council whose task it was to make all the laws for a future society." "I wouldn't mind at all being on that council." "They are obliged to consider absolutely every detail, because as soon as they reach an agreement--and everybody has signed the laws--they will all drop dead." "Oh . . ." "But they will immediately come to life again in the society they have legislated for. The point is that they have no idea which position they will have in society." "Ah, I see." "That society would be a just society. It would have arisen among equals." "Men and women!" "That goes without saying. None of them knew whether they would wake up as men or women. Since the odds are fifty-fifty, society would be just as attractive for women as for men." "It sounds promising." "So tell me, was the Europe of Karl Marx a society like that?" "Absolutely not!" "But do you by any chance know of such a society today?" "Hm ... that's a good question." "Think about it. But for now there will be no more about Marx." "Excuse me?" "Next chapter!" 马克思    ……在欧洲游荡的幽灵…… 席德起床走到面向海湾的窗户。今天是星期六,一早她就开始读有关苏菲十五岁生日的那一段。前一天则是她自己的生日。 如果她爸爸以为她会在昨天读到苏菲生日那一段,他显然不太实际。她今天整天什么事也没做,只有读书。可是有一点他说对了:后来他只再向她说过一次生日快乐而已,就是当艾伯特和苏菲对她唱生日快乐歌的时候。席德心想,这真是太不好意思了。 现在苏菲已经邀请朋友,在席德的爸爸预定从黎巴嫩回来的那一天,到她家参加一场哲学性的花园宴会了。席德相信那天一定会发生什么事,但究竟会如何不只是她,恐怕连她爸爸也不是很确定。 不过有一件事是可以确定的:她爸爸在回到柏客来山庄之前,一定会大吃一惊。这是她能为苏菲和艾伯特所尽的一点心力,尤其是在他们向她求助之后……妈妈仍在船屋那边。席德跑下楼走到电话旁。她查到了安娜和欧雷在哥本哈根的电话号码,并小心地按下那几个数字。 “喂,我是安娜。” “嗨,我是席德。” “哦,太好了。你们在黎乐桑还好吧?” “很好,我们放假了。爸爸再过一个星期也要从黎巴嫩回来了。” “那真是太好了。” “是啊,我好希望他赶快回来。所以我才打电话给你……” “原来如此。” “我想他会在二十三号星期六下午五点左右在卡斯楚普机场着陆。那个时候你会不会在哥本哈根呢?” “我想会吧。” “不知道你能不能为我做一件事情。” “当然可以啦。” “这件事情满特别的,我甚至不确定是不是行得通。” “你可把我的好奇心给勾起来了……” 席德开始把事情的始末——包括那讲义夹、苏菲和艾伯特等所有的事情——告诉安娜。这当中有好几次她和安娜都忍不住大笑,以至于她不得不重新讲过。但是当席德挂上电话时,她的计划也开始实行了。 她自己也得开始准备准备,还好时间仍很充裕。 那天下午和晚上,席德都和妈妈在一起度过,最后她们开车去基督山看电影。由于前一天席德过生日时她们并没有特别庆祝,因此她们觉得应该利用今天补偿补偿。当她们的车子经过通往凯耶维克机场的出口时,席德计划中的神秘行动又向前推进了一步。 当天晚上她上床时,夜已经深了,但是她仍拿起讲义夹,读了几页。 苏菲从树篱钻出密洞时,时间已经快八点了。当她出现时,她的妈妈正在前门旁的花坛那儿除草。“你是从哪里冒出来的?” “从树篱里。” “从树篱里?” “你不知道那边有一条小路吗?” “你到底到哪里去了呢?这是你第二次无消无息就凭空消失了。” “对不起,妈。因为今天天气实在太好了,所以我去散步散了很久。” 妈妈从那堆杂草上抬起身子,严厉地看着她。 “你该不是又跑去跟那个哲学家在一起吧?” “老实说,是的。我告诉过你他喜欢散步。” “他会来参加我们的花园宴会吧?” “会呀,他等不及要参加呢!” “我也是,我正在算日子。” 妈妈的声音里是否有一些恶意呢?为了安全起见,苏菲说:“我很高兴我也邀请了乔安的爸妈。否则我真会有点不好意思!” “我不知道……不过无论发生什么事,我都会和这个艾伯特谈一谈。” “如果你愿意的话,可以用我的房间。我想你一定会喜欢他的。” “还有,今天你有一封信。” “哦?” “上面盖着联合国部队的邮戳。” “一定是艾伯特的弟弟写来的。” “苏菲,事情不能再这样继续下去了。” 苏菲绞尽脑汁。突然间她灵光一闪,想到了一个可行的答案,仿佛有某个精灵指引她。给她灵感似的。 “我告诉艾伯特说我在搜集罕见的邮戳。所以他就叫他的弟弟写信给我。” 妈妈看起来好像放心了。 “晚餐在冰箱里。”现在她说话的声调稍微柔和了一些。 “信在哪里?” “在冰箱上。” 苏菲进屋里。信封上的邮戳日期是一九九O年六月十五日。她将它拆开,拿出了一张小纸条:“一世人劳苦奔忙有何益?到头来终究须把眼儿闭。” 苏菲答不出来。在吃饭前,她把纸条放在柜子里,跟她这几个星期来搜集到的东西放在一起。她很快就会知道他为什么要问这个问题了。 第二天早晨,乔安来找她。在打完羽毛球之后,她们开始计划那场花园宴会。她们必须事先安排几个令人惊喜的节目,以备在宴会进行得不很理想时派上用场。 当天苏菲的妈妈下班回到家时,他们仍然在讨论。妈妈一再地说:“我们要不惜工本。”同时话里并没有讽刺意味!也许她认为举办这个“哲学花园宴会”可以让苏菲在上了这么多星期密集的哲学课之后,重回现实世界来。 还不到晚上她们已经就纸灯笼、哲学有奖猜谜等每一件事情达成了协议。她们认为猜谜活动的奖品最好是一本写给年轻人看的哲学故事。如果有这样一本书就好了!可是苏菲也不确定到底有没有。 距仲夏节还有两天时,也就是六月二十一日星期四那一天,艾伯特再度打电话给苏菲。 “喂,我是苏菲。” “我是艾伯特。” “嗨!你好吗?” “很好,谢谢你。我已经想到一个很好的办法了。” “做什么的办法?” “你知道的呀。挣脱我们长久以来所受的心灵桎梏的办法。” “喔,是那件事呀。” “不过在计划展开之前,我不能透露半点风声。” “那样不会太迟吗?我需要知道才行,因为这件—事我也有分呀!” “你看你又孩子气了!我们所有的对话都会被他听到,所以最明智的办法就是什么都不要说。” “有那么严重吗?” “当然。当我们不说话的时候一定就是那些最重要的事情发生的时候。” “喔。” “我们是活在一个长篇故事当中,一个由文字虚构的现实世界里。每一个字都是少校用一个旧式的手提打字机打出来的,所以只要是印出来的字没有一个能逃得过他的眼睛。” “我明白,可是我们要怎样才能躲开他呢?” “嘘!” “干嘛?” “字里行间也有一些事情发生。这正是我想尽办法要做手脚的地方。” “我懂了。” “不过我们必须尽量利用今天和明天的时间。到了星期六我们的行动就要展开了。你能马上过来吗?” “好,我这就来了。” 苏菲喂了鸟和鱼,并且找出了一片大莴苣叶给葛文达吃。她打开了一罐给雪儿吃的猫食,并在她走时把它放在台阶上的一个碗里。 然后她便钻过树篱,走向远处的小路。走了才几步路,苏菲看到石南树丛间有一张很大的书桌。一个老人正坐在桌前,似乎正在算账。苏菲走向前问他的姓名。 共产主义“我叫史古吉。”他说,一边仔细地盯着他的账本看。 “我叫苏菲。我猜你大概是个生意人吧。” 他点点头。“而且我很有钱。我们不能浪费一分钱,所以我才要这么专心地算账。” “为什么要这么麻烦呢?” 苏菲向他挥挥手,继续向前走。可是她走不到几码路又看到一个小女孩独自一人坐在一棵很高的树下。她的衣衫褴褛,脸色苍白,而且满面病容。当苏菲经过时,小女孩把手伸进一个小袋子里,掏出一盒火柴。 “你要不要买一些火柴呢?”她问,拿着火柴的手伸向苏菲。 苏菲摸摸口袋看看自己还有多少钱。有了。她找到一块钱。 “你要卖多少钱?” “一块钱。” 苏菲把那枚铜板拿给小女孩,并且站在那儿,手里拿着那盒火柴。 “你是一百多年来第一个向我买东西的人。有时我饿得要死,有时我又快被冻死了。” 苏菲心想,在这座树林里卖火柴,难怪生意不好。不过她又想到刚才她遇见的那个生意人。他这么有钱,为什么这个小女孩却得饿死呢?“来。”苏菲说。 她握住小女孩的手,把她拉到有钱人那儿。 “你得想想办法让这个小女孩过好一点的生活。”她说。 有钱人从账本上抬起眼睛说道:“这种事情是要花钱的。我说过了,连一分钱也不能浪费。” “可是这不公平呀!你这么有钱,这个小女孩却这么穷。” 苏菲不死心。“这是不公道的。” “胡说!只有地位相当的人才能谈得上公平。” “这话是什么意思?” “我是靠努力工作才出人头地的。只要工作,就不怕没饭吃。这就叫做进步。” “可是你看看这个小女孩!” “如果你不帮我,我一定会死掉。”这个贫穷的小女孩说。 生意人又把他的视线从账本往上移,然后很不耐烦地把他的羽毛笔扔在桌上。 “你在我的账目里不算数呀!走吧,去做工吧!” “如果你不帮我,我就放火把树林烧了。”小女孩仍不死心。 生意人终于站了起来,可是小女孩已经擦亮了一根火柴。她把它拿到一丛干草边。干草马上就烧了起来。 生意人举起双手。“上帝请帮帮忙呀!”他大喊,“红公鸡已经叫了!” 女孩仰头看着他,一脸恶作剧的笑容。 一转眼,小女孩、生意人和那张大书桌都消失了。苏菲又独自一人站在那儿,一旁的火愈发炽烈地烧着干草。苏菲开始用脚把火踩熄,过了一会儿后,火就完全被扑灭了。 谢天谢地!苏菲看着脚下已经被烧黑的草,手中仍拿着那盒火柴。 这场火该不是她引起的吧?苏菲在小木屋外面见到艾伯特后,便把这些事情告诉他。 “史古吉就是英国作家狄更斯的小说《圣诞颂歌》里面的那个吝啬的资本主义者。至于那个小女孩,你应该还记得安徒生的童话故事《卖火柴的小女孩》。” “我居然在树林里遇见他们。这不是很奇怪吗?” “一点也不奇怪,这片树林可不是普通的树林。既然我们要开始谈马克思,让你见识一下十九世纪中期激烈的阶级斗争,应该是再恰当不过了。不过,我们还是进屋里去吧。我们在那里比较不会受到少校的干扰。” 他们再次坐在面湖的窗子旁的一张小茶几边。苏菲仍然记得她在喝下蓝瓶子的水后看到小湖时的感觉。 今天那两个瓶子都放在壁炉上方的架子上,茶几上则放着一座很小的希腊神庙复制品。 “那是什么?”苏菲问。 “等一下你就知道了。” 艾伯特开始谈马克思。 “一八四一年祁克果到柏林听谢林的讲课时,说不定曾经坐在马克思的旁边。祁克果曾经写过一篇关于苏格拉底的硕士论文。在同一时期,马克思则正在写一篇关于德谟克里特斯和伊比鸠鲁的博士论文,讨论古代的唯物主义。他们两人就是如此创立他们自己的哲学的。” “因为祁克果后来变成了一位存在主义者,而马克思变成了一位唯物主义者?” “马克思后来变成了一位‘历史唯物主义者’。这个我们以后会再谈。” “继续。” “祁克果和马克思各自用自己的方式以黑格尔的哲学作为出发点。两人都受到黑格尔思考模式的影响,但两人都不同意他关于‘世界精神’的说法和他的理想主义。” “那对他们可能太虚无缥缈了。” “确实如此。一般来讲,我们通常说大哲学体系的时代到黑格尔为止。在他之后,哲学走到了一个新的方向,不再有庞大的思考体系,取而代之的是我们所称的‘存在哲学’与‘行动哲学’。马克思曾说,直到现在为止,‘哲学家只诠释了世界,可是重点在于他们应该去改变这个世界。’这些话显示了哲学史上的一大转折点。” “在遇见史古吉和那小女孩之后,我很能够了解马克思为什么会这样想。” “马克思的思想有一个实际的或政治的目标。我们可以说他不只是一个哲学家,同时也是一个历史学家、社会学家和经济学家。” “而他在这些领域中都是先驱吗?” “在实际的政治方面,当然没有一个哲学家比他的影响力更大。但是我们要小心,不要把每一种自称是‘马克思主义’的学说都当成马克思自己的思想。据说马克思本人是到一八四O年代中期才变成一个‘马克思主义者’。” “请继续。” “从一开始,马克思有一个名叫恩格斯(FriedrichEngels)的朋友、同事对被后人称为‘马克思主义’的理论就有很大贡献。除此之外,二十世纪的列宁、斯大林、毛泽东和其他许多人对‘马克思主义’或‘马克思——列宁主义’的形成也有贡献。” “我们还是专门谈马克思好了。你说他是一个历史唯物主义者吗?” 唯物论“他并不像古代的原子论者和十七、十八世纪的机械论唯物主义者一样是一个哲学性的唯物主义者。不过他认为我们的思考方式有一大部分受到社会中的物质因素的影响。此外,这类物质因素无疑也左右了历史的发展。” “这和黑格尔所说的世界精神很不一样。” “黑格尔曾指出,历史的发展是受到两种相反事物之间的紧张关系的驱动,因为这种紧张关系后来一定会被一个突然的改变消除。马克思把这个理论更进一步发扬,但他认为黑格尔的理论有本末倒置之嫌。” “不完全是这样吧?”“ “黑格尔把推动历史前进的力量叫做‘世界精神’或‘世界理性’。马克思认为这种说法正好与事实相反。他想证明物质的变化才是推动历史的力量:‘精神关系’并不会造成物质的改变,而是物质的改变造成了新的‘精神关系’。马克思特别强调,促成改变并因此把历史向前推进的,其实是一个社会的经济力量。” “你可以举个例子吗?” “古代的哲学和科学纯粹是为理论而理论的。没有人有兴趣把新发明派上实际用场。” “哦?” “这是受到当时团体经济结构影响的缘故。古代的生产工作主要是由奴隶来做,所以一般人没有必要去发明一些实用的器物来增进生产力。这个例子显示物质条件如何影响一个社会的哲学思想。” “喔,我明白了。” “马克思将这些物质、经济和社会方面的条件称为社会的基础,并将社会思想、政治制度、法律规章、宗教、道德、艺术、哲学和科学等称为社会的上层构造。” “对,一个是基础,一个是上层构造。” “现在请你把那座希腊神庙拿过来好吗?” 苏菲照他的话做。 “这是高城巴特农神殿的迷你复制品。你见过它的真面貌不是吗?” “你是说在录影带上?” “你可以看到这座建筑有一个非常优雅、精巧的屋顶。当你看到这座神殿时,也许第一眼看到的就是这个屋顶和它前面的山形墙。这就是我们所说的‘上层结构’。” “可是屋顶不会在空中飘浮。” “对,它必须有柱子支撑。” “这座建筑有非常强而有力的基础支撑着整个架构。同样的,马克思相信物质条件‘支持’着一个社会里的每一种思想和看法。 事实上,一个社会的上层结构正好反映那个社会的基础。” “你是说柏拉图的概念理论反映了现实生活中制造花瓶和酿酒等过程?”、“不,马克思认为事情并没有这么简单。他指出社会的基础与它的上层结构之间有一种互动关系。如果他否认了这种互动关系的存在,那他就是一个‘机械论的唯物主义者’。但正因为马克思体认到社会的基础与它的上层结构之间有一种互动的辩证关系存在,我们才说他是一个辩证的唯物主义者。还有,柏拉图既不是个陶工,也不是个酒厂老板。” “好吧。关于这座神殿,你还有什么要说的吗?” “还有一些。你不妨仔细观察这座神殿的基础,然后告诉我它是什么样子。” “那些柱子是立在一个由三层台阶组成的基座上。” “同样的,我们也可以把社会的‘基础’分成三个阶层。最‘根本’的一个阶层就是一个社会的‘生产条件’,也就是这个社会可以利用的自然条件与资源。我所谓条件指的是气候、原料等因素。这些东西是每一个社会的基础,而这个基础明显决定这个社会的生产种类,同样的,也决定这个社会的性质与它的整体文化。” “就像在撒哈拉沙漠不会有买卖鲱鱼的生意,在挪威北部也不可能种枣子一样。” “对了。除此之外,一个游牧民族的思考方式和挪威北部渔村的渔民也有很大的不同。‘生产条件’之外的另一个阶层就是一个社会里的‘生产工具’。在这里马克思指的是设备、工具和机器这些东西。” “在古时候,人们是用划船的方式捕鱼,而今天我们则使用拖网船捕鱼。” “是的,这里我们就要谈到社会基础的下一个阶层,也就是那些拥有生产工具的人。人们分工的方式和财产的分配就是马克思所谓的社会的‘生产关系’。” “喔,原来如此。” “到这里我们可以得出一个结论:一个社会的政治情况与意识形态是由它的生产模式决定的。现代人的思想、道德尺度和古代封建社会之所以有很大的差距并不是偶然的。” “这么说马克思并不认为人一定能够享有自然权利哼。” “没错。根据马克思的理论,是非对错的观念乃是社会基础的产物。举例来说,在古老的农业社会里,父母有权决定子女结婚的对象,这并不是偶然的。因为这牵涉到谁会继承他们的农庄的问题。在现代城市的社会关系就不同了。在今天,你可能会在宴会或迪斯科舞厅里遇到你未来的对象。如果你们爱得够深的话,两个人可能就找个地方同居了。” “我才不能忍受让我的父母决定我要嫁给谁呢!” “没错,那是因为你活在这个时代。马克思更进一步强调说:一个社会的是非标准主要是由那个社会里的统治阶级来决定的,因为‘人类社会的历史就是一部阶级斗争史’。换句话说,历史所牵涉的主要就是一个谁拥有生产工具的问题。” “人们的想法和观念不也会促成历史的改变吗?” “可以说是,也可以说不是。马克思明白社会上层结构与社会基础之间可能有互动的关系,可是他否认社会的上层结构能够有其独立的历史。他认为,使我们的历史能够从古代的奴隶社会发展到今天的工业社会的因素主要是社会基础的改变。” “这点你说过了。” 阶级斗争“马克思认为在历史的各个阶段,社会的两个主要阶级彼此之间都会有冲突存在。在古代的奴隶社会,这种冲突是存在于一般人和奴隶之间。在中世纪的封建社会,则存在于封建贵族和农奴之间,后来则存在于贵族与一般人之间。但在马克思那个时代的中产阶级资本主义社会,这种冲突主要存在于资本主义者和工人(或无产阶级)之间。因此冲突乃是存在于那些拥有生产工具的人和那些没有生产工具的人之间。既然‘上层阶级’不会自愿放弃权力,因此唯有透过革命才能改变社会现况。” “那共产主义的社会又是什么样子呢?” “马克思对资本主义社会转移到共产主义社会的现象特别有兴趣。他并且详细描述了资本主义的生产方式。但在我们讲到这个之前,必须谈谈马克思对人的劳动的看法。” “请说。” “在成为一个共产主义者之前,年轻的马克思专心一意地研究人在工作时所发生的现象。黑格尔也曾经分析过这点。黑格尔认为,人与自然之间有一种互动或‘辩证’的关系。当人改造大自然时他本身也被改造了。换句话说,人在工作时,就是在干涉大自然并影响大自然,可是在这个过程中,大自然同时也干涉人类并影响他们的心灵。” “这么说,从一个人的工作就可以看出他的个性哼。” “简单来说,这正是马克思的观点。我们的工作方式影响我们的心灵,但我们心灵也影响我们的工作方式。可以说这是人手与人心的一种互动关系。因此你的思想与你的工作是有密切的关系的。” “这么说,失业一定是一件很令人沮丧的事。” “是的。从某个角度说,一个失业的人就是一个空虚的人。黑格尔很早就体认到这点了。对于黑格尔和马克思而言,工作是一件具有正面意义的事情,并且与人类的本质有密切的关系的。” “所以说工作对于工人来说也是一件具有正面意义的事情哼?” “最初是这样。可是这也正是马克思严厉批评资本主义生产方式的地方。” “为什么呢?” “在资本主义制度下,工人是为别人工作。因此他的劳动对他而言是外在的事物,是不属于他的。工人与作的工作之间有了隔阂,同时与自我也有了隔阂。他与他自己的现实脱节了。马克思用黑格尔的话来说,就是工人被疏离了。” “我有个姨妈在工厂做包装糖果的工作做了二十几年,所以我很容易了解你的意思。她说她每一天早上都不想去上班。” “而如果她讨厌自己的工作,从某一方面来说,她也一定讨厌她自己。” “我只知道她很不喜欢吃糖果。” “马克思指出,在资本主义社会的工厂制度中,工人实际上是为另外一个社会阶级在做牛做马。在这种制度下,工人把他的劳动成果以及他的整个生命都转移给中产阶级。” “有这么糟糕吗?” “这是马克思的看法。从十九世纪中期的社会情况来看,工人所受的待遇确实很糟糕。当时的工人可能每天必须在冰冷的工厂里工作十二个小时,而且薪资通常都很微薄,以至于孩童和孕妇往往也必须工作,造成了许多惨不忍睹的社会现象。有许多地方的工厂老板甚至用廉价的酒来代替一部分工资。有些妇女不得不靠卖淫来补贴家计,而她们的顾客却是那些‘在镇上有头有脸的人’。简而言之,工作原本应是人类光荣的标记,但在当时工人却变成了牛马。” “真是令人愤怒。” “马克思也对这些现象感到非常愤怒。况且,在工人们受苦受难、不得温饱的同时,那些中产阶级人士的子女却可以洗一个舒服的澡,然后在温暖、宽敞的客厅中拉着小提琴,或坐在钢琴旁边等着吃有四道菜的晚餐,或者一整天骑马打猎,无所事事。” “哼!太不公平了。” “马克思一定会同意你的话。一八四八年时,他和恩格斯共同发表了一篇共产主义者宣言。其中第一句话就是:共产主义的幽灵已经在欧洲出现。” “听起来挺吓人的。” “当时的中产阶级的确被吓到了,因为无产阶级已经开始要反抗了。你想不想听听共产主义者宣言的结尾呢?” “嗯。请念吧!” “共产主义者不屑隐藏他们的看法与目标。他们公开宣称他们的目标只能透过强行推翻现有的社会情况而达成。让统治阶级因共产主义革命而颤抖吧!无产阶级身上只有锁链,因此无惧任何损失,却可借此赢得全世界。各国的劳动工人们,团结起来吧!” “如果情况真像你所说的那么糟,我想我也会签署这份宣言的。不过到了今天,情况应该大大的不同了吧?” “在挪威是如此,但在其他地方则不尽然。许多人仍生活在非人的情况下,继续制造各种商品,让那些资本主义者更加富有。马克思称此为剥削。” “请你解释一下这个名词好吗?” “一个工人所制造的商品一定有若干销售价值。” “是的。” “如果你把工人的工资和其他的生产成本从销售价值里扣除,一定还会有一些剩余价值。这个剩余价值就是马克思所称的利润。 换句话说,资本主义者把事实上是由工人创造的价值放进了自己的口袋。这就叫做剥削。” “我明白了。” “然后资本主义者又把一部分的利润拿来做为资本,将工厂加以现代化,以期生产成本更低廉的商品,并借此增加他将来的利润。” “这很合理呀!” “是的。听起来可能很合理。但就长期来讲,情况却不会如这个资本主义者想象的那样。” “怎么说呢?” “马克思相信资本主义的生产方式本身有若干内在的矛盾。他说,资本主义是一种自我毁灭式的经济制度,因为它缺少理性的控制。” “这对被压迫者来说不是一件好事吗?” “是的。资本主义制度的内在因素会驱使它逐步走向灭亡。就这种意义来说,资本主义是‘前进的’,因为它是迈向共产主义的一个阶段。” “你可不可以单一个资本主义自我毁灭的例子?” “我们刚才说到资本主义者有很多剩余的金钱。他用其中的一部分来使工厂现代化,可是他也会花钱让孩于去学小提琴,同时他的太太也已经习惯了奢侈的生活方式。” “哦?” “他购买新的机器后,就不再需要这么多员工了。他这样做是为了要提高他的竞争力。” “我明白。” “可是他不是唯一这么想的人。这就表示整个社会的生产方式不断变得愈来愈有效率。工厂也愈盖愈大,而且在愈来愈少的人手里集中。那我问你,接下来会发生什么事呢?” “呃……” “工厂所需的工人愈来愈少,表示失业的人愈来愈多,社会问题将因此而增加。出现这些危机,就象征资本主义正迈向毁灭的道路。但是,资本主义的自我毁灭因素还不止于此。当愈来愈多利润必须花在生产工具上,而生产的产品数量又不足以压低价格时……” “怎么样?” “……这时资本主义者会怎么做呢?你能告诉我吗?” “恐怕不能。” “假设你是一个工厂老板,当你的收支无法平衡,正面临破产的命运时,你要怎么做才能省钱?” “我可能会削减工资?” “聪明!是的,在这种情况下,最精明的算盘莫过于此。但是如果所有的资本主义者都像你一样聪明(事实上他们也是),工人们就会变得很贫穷,以至于买不起东西了。这样一来,购买力就降低了,而这种情况会变成一种恶性循环。马克思说:‘资本主义私有财产制的丧钟已经响了。’社会正很快地步向革命。” “嗯,我懂了。” “简而言之,到最后,无产阶级会起来接收生产工具。” “然后呢?” “有一段时期会出现新的‘阶级社会’,由无产阶级以武力镇压中产阶级。马克思称此为无产阶级专政。但在这段过渡期后,无产阶级专政会被一个‘不分阶段的社会’所取代。在这个社会当中,生产工具是由‘众人’,也就是人民所拥有。在这种社会中,国家的政策是‘各尽其才,各取所需’。这时劳动成果属于劳工,资本主义的疏离现象也就到此终止。” “听起来是很棒,但实际的情况是怎样呢?后来真的发生革命了吗?” “马克思主义造成了社会上很大的变动。毫无疑问的,社会主义已经大致上改善了社会上不人道的现象。无论如何,我们所生活的社会已经要比马克思的时代更公平、更团结。这一部分要归功于马克思和整个社会运动。” Darwin a ship sailing through life with a cargo of genes Hilde was awakened on Sunday morning by a loud bump. It was the ring binder falling on the floor. She had been lying in bed reading about Sophie and Alber-to's conversation on Marx and had fallen asleep. The reading lamp by the bed had been on all night. The green glowing digits on her desk alarm clock showed 8:59. She had been dreaming about huge factories and polluted cities; a little girl sitting at a street corner selling matches--well-dressed people in long coats passing by without as much as a glance. When Hilde sat up in bed she remembered the legislators who were to wake up in a society they themselves had created. Hilde was glad she had woken up in Bjer-kely, at any rate. Would she have dared to wake up in Norway without knowing whereabouts in Norway she would wake up? But it was not only a question of where she would wake up. Could she not just as easily have woken up in a different age? In the Middle Ages, for instance--or in the Stone Age ten or twenty thousand years ago? Hilde tried to imagine herself sitting at the entrance to a cave, scraping an animal hide, perhaps. What could it have been like to be a fifteen-year-old girl before there was anything called a culture? How would she have thought? Could she have had thoughts at all? Hilde pulled on a sweater, heaved the ring binder onto the bed and settled down to read the next chapter. Alberto had just said "Next chapter!" when somebody knocked on the door of the major's cabin. "We don't have any choice, do we?" said Sophie. "No, I suppose we don't," said Alberto. On the step outside stood a very old man with long white hair and a beard. He held a staff in one hand, and in the other a board on which was painted a picture of a boat The boat was crowded with all kinds of animals. "And who is this elderly gentleman?" asked Alberto. "My name is Noah." "I guessed as much." "Your oldest ancestor, my son. But it is probably no longer fashionable to recognize one's ancestors." "What is that in your hand?" asked Sophie. "This is a picture of all the animals that were saved from the Flood. Here, my daughter, it is for you." Sophie took the large board. "Well, I'd better go home and tend the grapevines," the old man said, and giving a little jump, he clicked his heels together in the air and skipped merrily away into the woods in the manner peculiar to very old men now and then. Sophie and Alberto went inside and sat down again. Sophie began to look at the picture, but before she had a chance to study it, Alberto took it from her with an authoritative grasp. "We'll concentrate on the broad outlines first." "Okay, okay." "I forgot to mention that Marx lived the last 34 years of his life in London. He moved there in 1849 and died in 1883. All that time Charles Darwin was living just outside London. He died in 1882 and was buried with great pomp and ceremony in Westminster Abbey as one of England's distinguished sons. So Marx and Darwin's paths crossed, but not only in time and space. Marx wanted to dedicate the English edition of his greatest work, Capital, to Darwin, but Darwin declined the honor. When Marx died the year after Darwin, his friend Friedrich En-gels said: As Darwin discovered the theory of organic evolution, so Marx discovered the theory of mankind's historical evolution." "I see." "Another great thinker who was to link his work to Darwin was the psychologist Sigmund Freud. He also lived his last years in London. Freud said that both Darwin's theory of evolution and his own psychoanalysis had resulted in an affront to mankind's naive egoism." "That was a lot of names at one time. Are we talking about Marx, Darwin, or Freud?" "In a broader sense we can talk about a naturalistic current from the middle of the nineteenth century until quite far into our own. By 'naturalistic' we mean a sense of reality that accepts no other reality than nature and the sensory world. A naturalist therefore also considers mankind to be part of nature. A naturalistic scientist will exclusively rely on natural phenomena--not on either rationalistic suppositions or any form of divine revelation." "And that applies to Marx, Darwin, and Freud?" "Absolutely. The key words from the middle of the last century were nature, environment, history, evolution, and growth. Marx had pointed out that human ideologies were a product of the basis of society. Darwin showed that mankind was the result of a slow biological evolution, and Freud's studies of the unconscious revealed that people's actions were often the result of 'animal' urges or instincts." "I think I understand more or less what you mean by naturalistic, but isn't it best we talk about one person at a time?" "We'll talk about Darwin, Sophie. You may recall that the pre-Socratics looked for natural explanations of the processes of nature. In the same way that they had to distance themselves from ancient mythological explanations, Darwin had to distance himself from the church's view of the creation of man and beast." "But was he a real philosopher?" "Darwin was a biologist and a natural scientist. But he was also the scientist of recent times who has most openly challenged the Biblical view of man's place in Creation." "So you'll have to say something about Darwin's theory of evolution." "Let's begin with Darwin the man. He was born in the little town of Shrewsbury in 1809. His father, Dr. Robert Darwin, was a renowned local physician, and very strict about his son's upbringing. When Charles was a pupil at the local grammar school, his headmaster described him as a boy who was always flying around, fooling about with stuff and nonsense, and never doing a stroke of anything that was the slightest bit useful. By 'useful,' the headmaster meant cramming Greek and Latin verbs. By 'flying around,' he was referring among other things to the fact that Charles clambered around collecting beetles of all kinds." "I'll bet he came to regret those words." "When he subsequently studied theology, Charles was far more interested in bird-watching and collecting insects, so he did not get very good grades in theology. But while he was still at college, he gained himself a reputation as a natural scientist, not least due to his interest in geology, which was perhaps the most expansive science of the day. As soon as he had graduated in theology at Cam-bridge in April 1831, he went to North Wales to study rock formations and to search for fossils. In August of the same year, when he was barely twenty-two years old, he received a letter which was to determine the course of his whole life . . ." "What was the letter about?" "It was from his friend and teacher, John Steven Hens-low. He wrote: 'I have been requested to ... recommend a naturalist to go as companion to Captain Fitzroy, who has been commissioned by the government to survey the southern coasts of South America. I have stated that I consider you to be the best qualified person I know of who is likely to undertake such a situation. As far as the financial side of it is concerned, I have no notion. The voyage is to last two years ... ' " "How can you remember all that by heart?" "A bagatelle, Sophie." "And what did he answer?" "He wished ardently to grasp the chance, but in those days young men did nothing without their parents' consent. After much persuasion, his father finally agreed-- and it was he who financed his son's voyage. As far as the 'financial side' went, it was conspicuous by its absence." "Oh." "The ship was the naval vessel HMS Beagle. It sailed from Plymouth on December 27, 1831, bound for South America, and it did not return until October of 1836. The two years became five and the voyage to South America turned into a voyage round the world. And now we come to one of the most important voyages of discovery in recent times." "They sailed all the way round the world?" "Yes, quite literally. From South America they sailed on across the Pacific to New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa. Then they sailed back to South America before setting sail for England. Darwin wrote that the voyage on board the Beagle was without doubt the most significant event in his life." "It couldn't have been easy to be a naturalist at sea." "For the first years, the Beagle sailed up and down the coast of South America. This gave Darwin plenty of opportunity to familiarize himself with the continent, also inland. The expedition's many forays into the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific west of South America were of decisive significance as well. He was able to collect and send to England vast amounts of material. However, he kept his reflections on nature and the evolution of life to himself. When he returned home at the age of twenty-seven, he found himself renowned as a scientist. At that point he had an inwardly clear picture of what was to become his theory of evolution. But he did not publish his main work until many years after his return, for Darwin was a cautious man--as is fitting for a scientist." "What was his main work?" "Well, there were several, actually. But the book-which gave rise to the most heated debate in England was The Origin of Species, published in 1859. Its full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. The long title is actually a complete resume of Darwin's theory." "He certainly packed a lot into one title." "But let's take it piece by piece. In The Origin of Species, Darwin advanced two theories or main theses: first, he proposed that all existing vegetable and animal forms were descended from earlier, more primitive forms by way of a biological evolution. Secondly, that evolution was the result of natural selection." "The survival of the fittest, right?" "That's right, but let us first concentrate on the idea of evolution. This, in itself, was not all that original. The idea of biological evolution began to be widely accepted in some circles as early as 1800. The leading spokesman for this idea was the French zoologist Lamarck. Even before him, Darwin's own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, had suggested that plants and animals had evolved from some few primitive species. But none of them had come up with an acceptable explanation as to how this evolution happened. They were therefore not considered by churchmen to be any great threat." "But Darwin was?" "Yes, indeed, and not without reason. Both in ecclesiastic and scientific circles, the Biblical doctrine of the immutability of all vegetable and animal species was strictly adhered to. Each and every form of animal life had been created separately once and for all. This Christian view was moreover in harmony with the teachings of Plato and Aristotle." "How so?" "Plato's theory of ideas presupposed that all animal species were immutable because they were made after patterns of eternal ideas or forms. The immutability of animal species was also one of the cornerstones of Aristotle's philosophy. But in Darwin's time there were a number of observations and finds which were putting traditional beliefs to the test." "What kind of observations and finds were they?" "Well, to begin with an increasing number of fossils were being dug out. There were also finds of large fossil bones from extinct animals. Darwin himself was puzzled to find traces of sea creatures far inland. In South America he made similar discoveries high up in the mountains of the Andes. What is a sea creature doing in the Andes, Sophie? Can you tell me that?" "No." "Some believed that they had just been thrown away there by humans or animals. Others believed that God had created these fossils and traces of sea creatures to lead the ungodly astray." "But what did scientists believe?" "Most geologists swore to a 'catastrophe theory/ according to which the earth had been subjected to gigantic floods, earthquakes, and other catastrophes that had destroyed all life. We read of one of these in the Bible--the Flood and Noah's Ark. After each catastrophe, God renewed life on earth by creating new--and more perfect-- plants and animals." "So the fossils were imprints of earlier life forms that had been wiped out after these gigantic catastrophes?" "Precisely. For example, it was thought that fossils were imprints of animals that had failed to get into the Ark. But when Darwin set sail on the Beagle, he had with him the first volume of the English biologist Sir Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology. Lyell held that the present geology of the earth, with its mountains and valleys, was the result of an interminably long and gradual evolution. His point was that even quite small changes could cause huge geological upheavals, considering the aeons of time that have elapsed." "What kind of changes was he thinking of?" "He was thinking of the same forces that prevail today: wind and weather, melting ice, earthquakes, and elevations of the ground level. You've heard the saying about a drop of water wearing away a stone--not by brute force, but by continuous dripping. Lyell believed that similar tiny and gradual changes over the ages could alter the face of nature completely. However, this theory alone could not explain why Darwin found the remains of sea creatures high up in the Andes. But Darwin always remembered that tiny gradual changes could result in dramatic alterations if they were given sufficient time." "I suppose he thought the same explanation could be used for the evolution of animals." "Yes, that was his thought. But as I said before, Darwin was a cautious man. He posed questions long before he ventured to answer them. In that sense he used the same method as all true philosophers: it is important to ask but there is no haste to provide the answer." "Yes, I see." "A decisive factor in Lyell's theory was the age of the earth. In Darwin's time, it was widely believed that about 6,000 years had elapsed since God created the earth. That figure had been arrived at by counting the generations since Adam and Eve." "How naive!" "Well, it's easy to be wise after the event. Darwin figured the age of the earth to be 300 million years. Because one thing, at least, was clear: neither Lyell's theory of gradual geological evolution nor Darwin's own theory of evolution had any validity unless one reckoned with tremendously long periods of time." "How old is the earth?" "Today we know that the earth is 4.6 billion years old." "Wow!" "Up to now, we have looked at one of Darwin's arguments for biological evolution, namely, the stratified deposits of fossils in various layers of rock. Another argument was the geographic distribution of living species. This was where Darwin's scientific voyage could contribute new and extremely comprehensive data. He had seen with his own eyes that the individuals of a single species of animal within the same region could differ from each other in only the minutest detail. He made some very interesting observations on the Galapagos Islands, west of Ecuador, in particular." "Tell me about them." "The Galapagos Islands are a compact group of volcanic islands. There were therefore no great differences in the plant and animal life there. But Darwin was interested in the tiny differences. On all the islands, he came across giant tortoises that were slightly different from one island to another. Had God really created a separate race of tortoises for each and every island?" "It's doubtful." "Darwin's observations of bird life on the Galapagos were even more striking. The Galapagos finches were clearly varied from island to island, especially as regards the shape of the beak. Darwin demonstrated that these variations were closely linked to the way the finches found their food on the different islands. The ground finches with steeply profiled beaks lived on pine cone seeds, the little warbler finches lived on insects, and the tree finches lived on termites extracted from bark and branches ... Each and every one of the species had a beak that was perfectly adapted to its own food intake. Could all these finches be descended from one and the same species? And had the finches adapted to their surroundings on the different islands over the ages in such a way that new species of finches evolved?" "That was the conclusion he came to, wasn't it?" "Yes. Maybe that was where Darwin became a 'Darwinist'--on the Galapagos Islands. He also observed that the fauna there bore a strong resemblance to many of the species he had seen in South America. Had God once and for all really created all these animals slightly different from each other--or had an evolution taken place? Increasingly, he began to doubt that all species were immutable. But he still had no viable explanation as to how such an evolution had occurred. But there was one more factor to indicate that all the animals on earth might be related." "And what was that?" "The development of the embryo in mammals. If you compare the embryos of dogs, bats, rabbits, and humans at an early stage, they look so alike that it is hard to tell the difference. You cannot distinguish a human embryo from a rabbit embryo until a very late stage. Shouldn't this indicate that we are distant relatives?" "But he had still no explanation of how evolution happened?" "He pondered constantly on [yell's theory of the minute changes that could have great effect over a long period of time. But he could find no explanation that would apply as a general principle. He was familiar with the theory of the French zoologist Lamarck, who had shown that the different species had developed the characteristics they needed. Giraffes, for example, had developed long necks because for generations they had reached up for leaves in the trees. Lamarck believed that the characteristics each individual acquires through his own efforts are passed on to the next generation. But this theory of the heredity of 'acquired characteristics' was rejected by Darwin because Lamarck had no proof of his bold claims. However, Darwin was beginning to pursue another, much more obvious line of thought. You could almost say that the actual mechanism behind the evolution of species was right in front of his very nose." "So what was it?" "I would rather you worked the mechanism out for yourself. So I ask: If you had three cows, but only enough fodder to keep two of them alive, what would you do?" "I suppose I'd have to slaughter one of them." "All right... which one would you slaughter?" "I suppose I'd slaughter the one that gave the least milk." "Would you?" "Yes, that's logical, isn't it?" "That is exactly what mankind had done for thousands of years. But we haven't finished with your two cows yet. Suppose you wanted one of them to calve. Which one would you choose?" "The one that was the best milker. Then its calf would probably be a good milker too." "You prefer good milkers to bad, then. Now there's one more question. If you were a hunter and you had two gundogs, but had to give up one of them, which one would you keep?" "The one that's best at finding the kind of game I shoot, obviously." "Quite so, you would favor the better gundog. That's exactly how people have bred domestic animals for more than ten thousand years, Sophie. Hens did not always lay five eggs a week, sheep did not always yield as much wool, and horses were not always as strong and swift as they are now. Breeders have made an artificial selection. The same applies to the vegetable kingdom. You don't plant bad potatoes if there are good seed potatoes available, and you don't waste time cutting wheat that yields no grain. Darwin pointed out that no cows, no stalks of wheat, no dogs, and no finches are completely alike. Nature produces an enormous breadth of variation. Even within the same species, no two individuals are exactly alike. You probably experienced that for yourself when you drank the blue liquid." "I'll say." "So now Darwin had to ask himself: could a similar mechanism be at work in nature too? Is it possible that nature makes a 'natural selection' as to which individuals are to survive? And could such a selection over a very long period of time create new species of flora and fauna?" "I would guess the answer is yes." "Darwin could still not quite imagine how such a natural selection could take place. But in October 1838, exactly two years after his return on the Beagle, he chanced to come across a little book by the specialist in population studies, Thomas Malthus. The book was called An Essay on the Principle of Population. Malthus got the idea for this essay from Benjamin Franklin, the American who in-vented the lightning conductor among other things. Franklin had made the point that if there were no limiting factors in nature, one single species of plant or animal would spread over the entire globe. But because there are many species, they keep each other in balance." "I can see that." "Malthus developed this idea and applied it to the world's population. He believed that mankind's ability to procreate is so great that there are always more children born than can survive. Since the production of food can never keep pace with the increase in population, he believed that huge numbers were destined to succumb in the struggle for existence. Those who survived to grow up-- and perpetuate the race--would therefore be those who came out best in the struggle for survival." "That sounds logical." "But this was actually the universal mechanism that Darwin had been searching for. Here was the explanation of how evolution happens. It was due to natural selection in the struggle for life, in which those that were best adapted to their surroundings would survive and perpetuate the race. This was the second theory which he proposed in The Origin of Species. He wrote: The elephant is reck-oned the slowest breeder of all known animals,' but if it had six young and survived to a hundred, 'after a period of from 740 to 750 years there would be nearly nineteen million elephants alive, descended from the first pair.' " "Not to mention all the thousands of cods' eggs from a single cod." "Darwin further proposed that the struggle for survival is frequently hardest among species that resemble each other the most. They have to fight for the same food. There, the slightest advantage--that is to say, the infinitesimal variation--truly comes into its own. The more bitter the struggle for survival, the quicker will be the evolution of new species, so that only the very best adapted will survive and the others will die out." "The less food there is and the bigger the brood, the quicker evolution happens?" "Yes, but it's not only a question of food. It can be just as vital to avoid being eaten by other animals. For example, it can be a matter of survival to have a protective camouflage, the ability to run swiftly, to recognize hostile animals, or, if the worst comes to the worst, to have a repellent taste. A poison that can kill predators is quite useful too. That's why so many cacti are poisonous, Sophie. Practically nothing else can grow in the desert, so this plant is especially vulnerable to plant-eating animals." "Most cacti are prickly as well." "The ability to reproduce is also of fundamental importance, obviously. Darwin studied the ingenuity of plant pollination in great detail. Flowers glow in glorious hues and exude delirious scents to attract the insects which are instrumental in pollination. To perpetuate their kind, birds trill their melodious tones. A placid or melancholy bull with no interest in cows will have no interest for genealogy either, since with characteristics like these, its line will die out at once. The bull's sole purpose in life is to grow to sexual maturity and reproduce in order to propagate the race. It is rather like a relay race. Those that for one reason or another are unable to pass on their genes are continually discarded, and in that way the race is continually refined. Resistance to disease is one of the most important characteristics progressively accumulated and preserved in the variants that survive." "So everything gets better and better?" "The result of this continual selection is that the ones best adapted to a particular environment--or a particular ecological niche--will in the long term perpetuate the race in that environment. But what is an advantage in one environment is not necessarily an advantage in another. For some of the Galapagos finches, the ability to fly was vital. But being good at flying is not so necessary if food is dug from the ground and there are no predators. The reason why so many different animal species have arisen over the ages is precisely because of these many niches in the natural environment." "But even so, there is only one human race." "That's because man has a unique ability to adapt to different conditions of life. One of the things that amazed Darwin most was the way the Indians in Tierra del Fuego managed to live under such terrible climatic conditions. But that doesn't mean that all human beings are alike. Those who live near the equator have darker skins than people in the more northerly climes because their dark skin protects them from the sun. White people who expose themselves to the sun for long periods are more prone to skin cancer." "Is it a similar advantage to have white skin if you live in northern countries?" "Yes, otherwise everyone on earth would be dark-skinned. But white skin more easily forms sun vitamins, and that can be vital in areas with very little sun. Nowa-days that is not so important because we can make sure we have enough sun vitamins in our diet. But nothing in nature is random. Everything is due to infinitesimal changes that have taken effect over countless generations." "Actually, it's quite fantastic to imagine." "It is indeed. So far, then, we can sum up Darwin's theory of evolution in a few sentences." "Go ahead!" "We can say that the 'raw material' behind the evolution of life on earth was the continual variation of individuals within the same species, plus the large number of progeny, which meant that only a fraction of them survived, the actual 'mechanism,' or driving force, behind evolution was thus the natural selection in the struggle for survival. This selection ensured that the strongest, or the 'fittest,' survived." "It seems as logical as a math sum. How was The Origin of Species received?" "It was the cause of bitter controversies. The Church protested vehemently and the scientific world was sharply divided. That was not really so surprising. Darwin had, after all, distanced God a good way from the act of creation, although there were admittedly some who claimed it was surely greater to have created something with its own innate evolutionary potential than simply to create a fixed entity." Suddenly Sophie jumped up from her chair. "Look out there!" she cried. She pointed out of the window. Down by the lake a man and a woman were walking hand in hand. They were completely naked. "That's Adam and Eve," said Alberto. "They were gradually forced to throw in their lot with Little Red Rid-inghood and Alice in Wonderland. That's why they have turned up here." Sophie went to the window to watch them, but they soon disappeared among the trees. "Because Darwin believed that mankind was descended from animals?" "In 1871 Darwin published The Descent of Man, in which he drew attention to the great similarities between humans and animals, advancing the theory that men and anthropoid apes must at one time have evolved from the same progenitor. By this time the first fossil skulls of an extinct type of man had been found, first in the Rock of Gibraltar and some years later in Neanderthal in Germany. Strangely enough, there were fewer protests in T871 than in 1859, when Darwin published The Origin of Species. But man's descent from animals had been implicit in the first book as well. And as I said, when Darwin died in 1882, he was buried with all the ceremony due to a pioneer of science." "So in the end he found honor and dignity?" "Eventually, yes. But not before he had been described as the most dangerous man in England." "Holy Moses!" " 'Let us hope it is not true,' wrote an upper-class lady, 'but if it is, let us hope it will not be generally known.' A distinguished scientist expressed a similar thought: 'An embarrassing discovery, and the less said about it the better.' " "That was almost proof that man is related to the ostrich!" "Good point. But that's easy enough for us to say now. People were suddenly obliged to revise their whole approach to the Book of Genesis. The young writer John Ruskin put it like this: 'If only the geologists would leave me alone. After each Bible verse I hear the blows of their hammers.' " "And the blows of the hammers were his doubts about the word of God?" "That was presumably what he meant. Because it was more than the literal interpretation of the story of creation that toppled. The essence of Darwin's theory was the utterly random variations which had finally produced Man. And what was more, Darwin had turned Marv into a product of something as unsentimental as the struggle for existence." "Did Darwin have anything to say about how such random variations arose?" "You've put your finger on the weakest point in his theory. Darwin had only the vaguest idea of heredity. Something happens in the crossing. A father and mother never get two identical offspring. There is always some slight difference. On the other hand it's difficult to produce anything really new in that way. Moreover, there are plants and animals which reproduce by budding or by simple cell division. On the question of how the variations arise, Darwin's theory has been supplemented by the so-called neo-Darwinism." "What's that?" "All life and all reproduction is basically a matter of cell division. When a cell divides into two, two identical cells are produced with exactly the same hereditary factors. In cell division, then, we say a cell copies itself." "Yes?" "But occasionally, infinitesimal errors occur in the process, so that the copied cell is not exactly the same as the mother cell. In modern biological terms, this is a mutation. Mutations are either totally irrelevant, or they can lead to marked changes in the behavior of the individual. They can be directly harmful, and such 'mutants' will be continually discarded from the large broods. Many diseases are in fact due to mutations. But sometimes a mutation can give an individual just that extra positive characteristic needed to hold its own in the struggle for existence." "Like a longer neck, for instance?" "Lamarck's explanation of why the giraffe has such a long neck was that giraffes have always had to reach upwards. But according to Darwinism, no such inherited characteristic would be passed on. Darwin believed that the giraffe's long neck was the result of a variation. Neo-Darwinism supplemented this by showing a clear cause of just that particular variation." "Mutations?" "Yes. Absolutely random changes in hereditary factors supplied one of the giraffe's ancestors with a slightly longer neck than average. When there was a limited supply of food, this could be vital enough. The giraffe that could reach up highest in the trees managed best. We can also imagine how some such 'primal giraffes' evolved the ability to dig in the ground for food. Over a very long period of time, an animal species, now long extinct, could have divided itself into two species. We can take some more recent examples of the way natural selection can work." "Yes, please." "In Britain there is a certain species of butterfly called the peppered moth, which lives on the trunks of silver birches. Back in the eighteenth century, most peppered moths were silvery gray. Can you guess why, Sophie?" "So they weren't so easy for hungry birds to spot." "But from time to time, due to quite chance mutations, some darker ones were born. How do you think these darker variants fared?" "They were easier to see, so they were more easily snapped up by hungry birds." "Yes, because in that environment--where the birch trunks were silver--the darker hue was an unfavorable characteristic. So it was always the paler peppered moths that increased in number. But then something happened in that environment. In several places, the silvery trunks became blackened by industrial soot. What do you think happened to the peppered moths then?" "the darker ones survived best." "Yes, so now it wasn't long before they increased in number. From 1848 to 1948, the proportion of dark peppered moths increased from 1 to 99 percent in certain places. The environment had changed, and it was no longer an advantage to be light. On the contrary. The white 'losers' were weeded out with the help of the birds as soon as they appeared on the birch trunks. But then something significant happened again. A decrease in the use of coal and better filtering equipment in the factories has recently produced a cleaner environment." "So now the birches are silver again?" "And therefore the peppered moth is in the process of returning to its silvery color. This is what we call adaptation. It's a natural law." "Yes, I see." "But there are numerous examples of how man interferes in the environment." "Like what?" "For example, people have tried to eradicate pests with various pesticides. At first, this can produce excellent results. But when you spray a field or an orchard with pesticides, you actually cause a miniature ecocatastrophe for the pests you are trying to eradicate. Due to continual mutations, a type of pest develops that is resistant to the pesticide being used. Now these 'winners' have free play, so it becomes harder and harder to combat certain kinds of pest simply because of man's attempt to eradicate them. The most resistant variants are the ones that survive, of course." "That's pretty scary." "It certainly is food for thought. We also try to combat parasites in our own bodies in the form of bacteria." "We use penicillin or other kinds of antibiotic." "Yes, and penicillin is also an ecocatastrophe for the little devils. However, as we continue to administer penicillin, we are making certain bacteria resistant, thereby cultivating a group of bacteria that is much harder to combat than it was before. We find we have to use stronger and stronger antibiotics, until . . ." "Until they finally crawl out of our mouths? Maybe we ought to start shooting them?" "That might be a tiny bit exaggerated. But it is clear that modern medicine has created a serious dilemma. The problem is not only that a single bacterium has become more virulent. In the past, there were many children who never survived--they succumbed to various diseases. Sometimes only the minority survived. But in a sense modern medicine has put natural selection out of commission. Something that has helped one individual over a serious illness can in the long run contribute to weakening the resistance of the whole human race to certain diseases. If we pay absolutely no attention to what is called hereditary hygiene, we could find ourselves facing a degeneration of the human race. Mankind's hereditary potential for re-sisting serious disease will be weakened." "What a terrifying prospect!" "But a real philosopher must not refrain from pointing out something 'terrifying' if he otherwise believes it to be true. So let us attempt another summary." "Okay." "You could say that life is one big lottery in which only the winning numbers are visible." "What on earth do you mean?" "Those that have lost in the struggle for existence have disappeared, you see. It takes many millions of years to select the winning numbers for each and every species of vegetable and animal on the earth. And the losing numbers--well, they only make one appearance. So there are no species of animal or vegetable in existence today that are not winning numbers in the great lottery of life." "Because only the best have survived." "Yes, that's another way of saying it. And now, if you will kindly pass me the picture which that fellow--that zookeeper--brought us . . ." Sophie passed the picture over to him. The picture of Noah's Ark covered one side of it. The other was devoted to a tree diagram of all the various species of animals. This was the side Alberto was now showing her. "Our Darwinian Noah also brought us a sketch that shows the distribution of the various vegetable and animal species. You can see how the different species belong in the different groups, classes, and subkingdoms." "Yes." "Together with monkeys, man belongs to the so-called primates. Primates are mammals, and all mammals belong to the vertebrates, which again belong to the multi-cellular animals." "It's almost like Aristotle." "Yes, that's true. But the sketch illustrates not only the distribution of the different species today. It also tells something of the history of evolution. You can see, for example, that birds at some point parted from reptiles, and that reptiles at some point parted from amphibia, and that amphibia parted from fishes." "Yes, it's very clear." "Every time a line divides into two, it's because mutations have resulted in a new species. That is how, over the ages, the different classes and subkingdoms of animals arose. In actual fact there are more than a million animal species in the world today, and this million is only a fraction of the species that have at some time lived on the earth. You can see, for instance, that an animal group such as the Trilobita is totally extinct." "And at the bottom are the monocellular animals." "Some of these may not have changed in two billion years. You can also see that there is a line from these monocellular organisms to the vegetable kingdom. Because in all probability plants come from the same primal cell as animals." "Yes, I see that. But there's something that puzzles me." "Yes?" "Where did this first primal cell come from? Did Darwin have any answer to that?" "I said, did I not, that he was a very cautious man. But as regards that question, he did permit himself to propose what one might call a qualified guess. He wrote: If (and O, what an if!) we could picture some hot little pool in which all manner of ammoniacal and phosphorous salts, light, heat, electricity and so forth were present, and that a protein compound were to be chemically formed in it, ready to undergo even more complicated changes ..." "What then?" "What Darwin was philosophizing on here was how the first living cell might have been formed out of inorganic matter. And again, he hit the nail right on the head. Scientists of today think the first primitive form of life arose in precisely the kind of 'hot little pool' that Darwin pictured." "Go on." "That will have to suffice because we're leaving Darwin now. We're going to jump ahead to the most recent findings about the origins of life on earth." "I'm rather apprehensive. Does anybody really know how life began?" "Maybe not, but more and more pieces of the puzzle have fallen into place to form a picture of how it may have begun." "Well?" "Let us first establish that all life on earth--both animal and vegetable--is constructed of exactly the same substances. The simplest definition of life is that it is a substance which in a nutrient solution has the ability to subdivide itself into two identical parts. This process is governed by a substance we call DNA. By DNA we mean the chromosomes, or hereditary structures, that are found in all living cells. We also use the term DNA molecule, because DNA is in fact a complex molecule--or macro-molecule. The question is, then, how the first molecule arose." "Yes?" "The earth was formed when the solar system came into being 4.6 billion years ago. It began as a glowing mass which gradually cooled. This is where modern science believes life began between three and four billion years ago." "It sounds totally improbable." "Don't say that before you have heard the rest. First of all, our planet was quite different from the way it looks today. Since there was no life, there was no oxygen in the atmosphere. Free oxygen was first formed by the photosynthesis of plants. And the fact that there was no oxygen is important. It is unlikely that life cells--which, again, can form DNA--could have arisen in an atmosphere containing oxygen." "Why?" "Because oxygen is strongly reactive. Long before complex molecules like DNA could be formed, the DNA molecular cells would be oxydized." "Really." "That is how we know for certain that no new life arises today, not even so much as a bacterium or a virus. All life on earth must be exactly the same age. An elephant has just as long a family tree as the smallest bacterium. You could almost say that an elephant--or a human being-- is in reality a single coherent colony of monocellular creatures. Because each cell in our body carries the same hereditary material. The whole recipe of who we are lies hidden in each tiny cell." "That's an odd thought." "One of life's great mysteries is that the cells of a multicellular animal have the ability to specialize their function in spite of the fact that not all the different hereditary characteristics are active in all the cells. Some of these characteristics--or genes--are 'activated' and others are 'deactivated.' A liver cell does not produce the same proteins as a nerve cell or a skin cell. But all three types of cell have the same DMA molecule, which contains the whole recipe for the organism in question. "Since there was no oxygen in the atmosphere, there was no protective ozone layer around the earth. That means there was nothing to stop the radiation from the cosmos. This is also significant because this radiation was probably instrumental in forming the first complex molecule. Cosmic radiation of this nature was the actual energy which caused the various chemical substances on the earth to start combining into a complicated macro-molecule." "Okay." "Let me recapitulate: Before such complex molecules, of which all life consists, can be formed, at least two conditions must be present: there must be no oxygen in the atmosphere, and there must be access for cosmic radiation." "I get it." "In this 'hot little pool'--or primal soup, as it is often called by modern scientists--there was once formed a gigantically complicated macromolecule, which had the wondrous property of being able to subdivide itself into two identical parts. And so the long evolutionary process began, Sophie. If we simplify it a bit, we can say that we are now talking of the first hereditary material, the first DNA or the first living cell. It subdivided itself again and again--but from the very first stage, transmutation was occurring. After aeons of time, one of these monocellular organisms connected with a more complicated multicel-lular organism. Thus the photosynthesis of plants also began, and in that way the atmosphere came to contain oxygen. This had two results: first, the atmosphere permitted the evolution of animals that could breathe with the aid of lungs. Secondly, the atmosphere protected life from the harmful cosmic radiation. Strangely enough, this radiation, which was probably a vital 'spark' in the formation of the first cell, is also harmful to all forms of life." "But the atmosphere can't have been formed overnight. How did the earliest forms of life manage?" "Life began in the primal 'seas'--which are what we mean by primal soup. There it could live protected from the harmful rays. Not until much later, when life in the oceans had formed an atmosphere, did the first amphibians crawl out onto land. The rest is what we have already talked about. And here we are, sitting in a hut in the woods, looking back on a process that has taken three or four billion years. And in us, this long process has finally become aware of itself." "And yet you don't think it all happened quite accidentally?" "I never said that. The picture on this board shows that evolution had a direction. Across the aeons of time animals have evolved with increasingly complicated nerve systems--and an ever bigger brain. Personally, I don't think that can be accidental. What do you think?" "It can't be pure chance that created the human eye. Don't you think there is meaning in our being able to see the world around us?" "Funnily enough, the development of the eye puzzled Darwin too. He couldn't really come to terms with the fact that something as delicate and sensitive as an eye could be exclusively due to natural selection." Sophie sat looking up at Alberto. She was thinking how odd it was that she should be alive now, and that she only lived this one time and would never again return to life. Suddenly she exclaimed: What matters our creative endless toil, When, at a snatch, oblivion ends the coil? Alberto frowned at her. "You must not talk like that, child. Those are the words of the Devil." "The Devil?" "Or Mephistopheles--in Goethe's Faust 'Was soil uns denn das ew'ge Schaffen! Geschaffenes zu nichts hinweg-zuraffenV " "But what do those words mean exactly?" "As Faust dies and looks back on his life's work, he says in triumph: Then to the moment could I say: Linger you now, you are so fair! Now records of my earthly dayNo flights of aeons can impair--Foreknowledge comes, and fills me with such bliss,I take my joy, my highest moment this." "That was very poetic." "But then it's the Devil's turn. As soon as Faust dies, he exclaims: A foolish word, bygone. How so then, gone? Gone, to sheer Nothing, past with null made one! What matters creative endless toil,When, at a snatch, oblivion ends the coil? 'It is bygone'--How shall this riddle run? As good as if things never had begun,Yet circle back, existence to possess: I'd rather have Eternal Emptiness." "That's pessimistic. I liked the first passage best. Even though his life was over, Faust saw some meaning in the traces he would leave behind him." "And is it not also a consequence of Darwin's theory that we are part of something all-encompassing, in which every tiny life form has its significance in the big picture? We are the living planet, Sophie! We are the great vessel sailing around a burning sun in the universe. But each and every one of us is also a ship sailing through life with a cargo of genes. When we have carried this cargo safely to the next harbor--we have not lived in vain. Thomas Hardy expresses the same thought in his poem Transformations': Portion of this yew Is a man my grandsire knew, Bosomed here at its foot: This branch may be his wife, A ruddy human life Now turned to a green shoot. These grasses must be made Of her who often prayed, Last century, for repose; And the fair girl long ago Whom I often tried to know May be entering this rose. So, they are not underground, But as nerves and veins abound In the growths of upper air, And they feel the sun and rain, And the energy again That made them what they were!" "That's very pretty." "But we will talk no more. I simply say next chapter!' "Oh, stop all that irony!" "New chapter, I said! I shall be obeyed!" 达尔文    ……满载基因航行过生命的一艘小船…… 星期天上午,席德被一声响亮的碰撞声惊醒,原来是讲义夹落地的声音。昨晚她一直躺在床上看苏菲与艾伯特有关马克思的对话,后来就仰躺着睡着了,讲义夹放在棉被上,床边的台灯整晚都亮着。 她书桌上的闹钟现在正显示着8:59这几个绿色的发光数字。 昨晚她梦见了巨大的工厂和受到污染的城市,一个小女孩坐在街角卖火柴,而穿着体面、披着长大衣的人们来来去去,连看都不看她一眼。 席德在床上坐起来时,突然想到那些将会在他们自己所创造的社会中醒来的立法委员,她很高兴自己醒来时还在柏客来山庄。 万一她醒来时身在挪威另一个陌生的地方,那她会不会害怕呢?不过,这还不只是在哪里醒来的问题而已。她会不会醒来时发现自己是在另外一个年代呢?譬如说中世纪之类的,或一两万年前的石器时代?席德想象自己坐在山洞口,制作兽皮的模样。 在世上还没有一种叫做文化的东西以前,当一个十五岁的女孩会是什么滋味呢?那时的她会有什么想法呢?席德穿上一件毛衣,使劲把讲义夹拿到床上,然后便安坐床上,开始读下一章。 艾伯特刚说完“下一章”,便有人敲少校小木屋的门。 “我们没有其他选择吧?”苏菲说。 “我想是没有。”艾伯特嘀咕道。 门外的台阶上站着一位年纪很大的老人,有着长长的白发和一脸白胡子。他一手拿了根拐杖,另一手则拿了一块板子,上面画了一艘船,船上载满了各种动物。 “老先生贵姓大名?” “我名叫诺亚。” “我猜也是。” “孩子,我是你的老祖宗。不过现代人大概不流行认识自(J的祖先了。” “你手上拿着什么?”苏菲问。 “这上面画的是所有从大洪水里获救的动物。拿去,孩子,这是给你的。” 苏菲接过那块大板子。老人又说道:“我得回家去照管那些葡萄藤了。”说着他便跳了起来,双脚在空中啪答互敲了一下,然后便以轻快的步伐跳进树林中。只有年纪很大的老人家在一种很不寻常的情绪下才会有那种步法。 苏菲和艾伯特走进屋里再度坐下。苏菲开始看那幅图画。可是在她还没来得及细看之前,艾伯特便很权威地一把将它拿了过去。 “我们首先要谈谈大纲。” “好,好,先生!” “我刚才忘了提到马克思一生的最后三十四年是在伦敦度过的。他在一八四九年迁居到那儿,并在一八八三年去世。这段时间达尔文就住在伦敦近郊,在一八八二年去世,在一场隆重盛大的典礼中下葬于西敏寺,成为英国最杰出的人士之一。就这样,马克思和达尔文在人生的旅途上曾经交错。达尔文死后一年,马克思也去世了。当时他的友人恩格斯说:达尔文创立了有机物进化的理论,而马克思则创立了人类历史进化的理论。” “喔,原来如此。” “另外一个在作品上也与达尔文有关联的大思想家是心理学家佛洛伊德。他最后几年也是在伦敦度过的。佛洛伊德说,达尔文的进化论和他自己的精神分析理论对于人类以自我为中心的天真无知态度构成了挑衅。” “你一下子提太多名字了。我们现在要谈的究竟是马克思、达尔文还是佛洛伊德?” 自然主义“我们可以更广泛地谈到从十九世纪中到我们这个时代所流行的一股自然主义风潮。所谓‘自然主义’指的是一种认为除了大自然和感官世界之外,别无其他真实事物的态度。因此,自然主义者也认为人是大自然的一部分。一个自然主义的科学家只相信自然现象,而不相信任何理性假设或圣灵的启示。” “马克思、达尔文和佛洛伊德都是这样的人吗?” “一点也没错。从上一世纪中期开始,最流行的几个字眼就是自然、环境、历史、进化与成长。当时马克思已经指出人类的意识形态是社会基础的产物,达尔文则证明人类是生物逐渐演化的结果,而佛洛伊德对潜意识的研究则发现人们的行动多半是受到‘动物’本能驱策的结果。” “我想我多少了解你所说的‘自然主义’的意思。可是我们是不是最好一次只谈一个人呢?” “我们要先谈达尔文。苏菲,你可能还记得苏格拉底之前的哲学家曾试图为大自然的变化寻找合乎自然的解释,因为他们不接受那些古老神话中的说法。同样的,达尔文也不接受教会对人与动物如何创造出来的说法。” “不过他算是哲学家吗?” “达尔文是一个生物学家和自然科学家,不过他也是近代唯一一个公开质疑圣经中对人在万物中的地位的说法的科学家。” “那么你得说说达尔文的进化论到底是怎么回事?” 达尔文“我们先来谈谈达尔文这个人吧。他在一八O九年生于休斯柏瑞(Shrewsbury)这个小镇。他的父亲罗伯特•达尔文博士是当地一位很有名望的医生,对儿子的管教非常严格。达尔文在当地的小学上学时,他的校长说他总是到处乱跑,把玩东西,不知所云,从不做些有用的事。这位校长所谓的‘有用的事’是指勤念希腊文和拉丁文的动词。所谓‘到处乱跑’,则是说达尔文到处去搜集各式各样的甲虫。” “我敢打赌他后来一定会后悔自己说过那些话。” “达尔文后来开始研究神学,可是他对赏鸟和搜集昆虫等事更有兴趣,因此他在神学方面的成绩从来不顶好。不过,他在大学时就已经有了自然科学家的名声,一部分是因为他对地质学有兴趣的缘故。地质学也许是当时最大的一门学科。一八三一年他从剑桥大学神学院毕业后,随即前往北威尔斯研究岩石的形成并搜寻化石。同一年八月(当时他还不到二十二岁),他接到了一封从此改变他一生的信……” “那是一封什么样的信呢?” “是他的朋友兼老师韩斯洛(JohnStevenHenslow)写的。他在信里说:有人请我……推荐一位自然科学家陪同受政府委派的费兹罗伊(Fitzroy)船长前往南美洲南部的海岸从事调查研究工作。 我向他们说我认为你是最有资格且很可能会接受这类工作的人。 至于其中牵涉的经费问题,我并不清楚。这次航程将花两年的时间......” “你怎么会记得这么多东西?” “小事一桩。”“那达尔文怎么答复呢?” “他迫不及待要抓住这次机会,可是在那个时代,一个年轻人做任何事都必须得到父母,的许可。经过他一番游说之后,他的父亲终于同意了,并且答应资助旅费。因为在所谓的‘经费问题’上,他显然并没有得到任何补助。” “喔。” “那艘船是海军舰艇小猎犬号。它在一八三一年十二月二十七日从普利茅斯航向南美洲,一直到一八三六年十月才返航。原本只有两年的航程变成五年,而航行的范围也从原定的南美洲扩展到世界各地。这是近代史上最重要的一次调查航行之一。” “他们就一路环绕世界吗?” “是的,差不多就是这样,他们从南美继续航行,经过太平洋到纽西兰、澳洲和南非,然后又开回南美洲,最后才回到英国。达尔文写道,在猎犬号上的这次航行无疑是他生命中最有意义的事件。” “在海上做自然科学研究可不容易呀!” “最初几年,小猎犬号在南美海岸来回行驶。这使得达尔文有很多机会可以熟悉这块大陆,包括内陆地区。他们多次进入南美洲西边大平洋上的加拉帕哥斯(Galapagos)群岛,而这几次探险对他们的发现也有决定性的影响。他在那儿搜集到大量的材料并将它们寄回英国。可是当时他并没有透露他本人对于自然与生命进化的看法。当他回到英国(那时他才二十七岁)时,发现自己成了一位著名的科学家。在那个时候,他内心关于进化论的概念已经很清晰了。可是直到许多午后他才发表他的主要作品,因为他是一个很谨慎的人,而这也是一个科学家应有的态度。” “他的主要作品是什么?” “事实上他写了好几本书。但其中在英国引起了最热烈的辩论的是《物种起源论》。这本书出版于一八五九年。它的全名是《物竞天择,适者生存之物种起源论》。这样长的书名事实上就是达尔文进化论的完整摘要。” “他确实是把好多东西放在一个书名里。” 进化论“我们还是一样一样地谈。达尔文在《物种起源论》一书中提出两个理论。首先他认为,既存的所有动植物样式都是依照生物进化的法则,从较早期、较原始的形式演变而来。其次,他认为生物进化乃是自然淘汰的结果。” “适者生存,对吗?” “对。不过我们还是先来谈进化的概念好了,这个观念其实并不很新鲜。早在一八OO午时,某些领域内的人士就已经开始普遍接受生物进化的观念。最主要的倡导人是法国的动物学家拉马克(Lamarck)。甚至在他之前,达尔文的祖父伊拉斯穆斯•达尔文(ErasmusDarwin)就已经提出动植物是由某些少数原始物种进化而来的观念。可是他们当中没有一个人提出一个合理的解释,说明进化的过程是如何发生的,因此教会也就不认为他们是很大的威胁。” “但达尔文就是了吗?” “是的,而这也不是没有原因的。在当时,无论教会还是科学界都坚决相信圣经中所说的所有动植物种类都不会改变的说法。他们相信上帝一次就造出了所有的生物。而基督教的这种看法也与柏拉图和亚理斯多德的学说一致。” “怎么说呢?” “柏拉图的概念理论主张各种动物都是不可改变的,因为他们是根据永恒的概念或形式造的。这也是亚理斯多德哲学的基础之一。但在达尔文的时代,一些新的发现促使这种传统的观念受到考验。” “什么样的新发现呢?” “首先,愈来愈多的化石被挖掘出来。此外也有人发现一些绝种动物的大型骨头化石。达尔文本人也在一些深入内陆的地方发现海洋生物的遗迹,使他感到很困惑。在南美洲高耸的安第斯山山顶上他也发现了类似的现象。苏菲,你说说看,海洋生物跑到安第斯山做什么呢?” “我不知道。” “有人认为他们是被人类或动物扔在那儿的,也有人相信那些化石和海洋生物的遗迹是上帝故意安排的,目的在让那些不信神的人走入迷途。” “那科学家们怎么说呢?” “大多数地质学家相信一种‘大灾难理论’,认为地球曾经遭遇大洪水、地震等等大灾难,导致所有的生物都被毁灭。我们在圣经诺亚方舟的故事中也读过类似的记载。他们相信,在每次天灾后,上帝会重新再创造更新、更完美的动植物,以延续地球的生命。” “所以他们认为那些化石就是古时的大天灾所毁灭的生物的印记?” “没错。举个例子,他们认为化石里的那些动物就是当年没有登上诺亚方舟的动物。不过,当年达尔文搭乘猎犬号启航时,身边曾带着英国生物学家莱尔(CharlesLyell)所著的《地质学原理》第一册。莱尔认为目前地球的地质——包括山脉和河谷等等——都是长期不断逐渐演化的结果。他的论点是:在这千万年的过程中,即使一些小小的变化也会造成地质上的大变动。” “他所说的变化是指哪一种?” “他指的是那些直到今天仍然在作用的一些力量,如风力、天气、冰层的融解、地震和地平面的隆起。你应该听说过‘滴水穿石’的故事,它凭的不是力量,而是不断的侵蚀。莱尔相信这类微小而逐渐发生的变化,持续千百年后就可以完全改变大自然的形貌。 虽然这种理论并不能够完全解释,为何达尔文会在安第斯山山顶这样高的地方发现海洋生物的遗迹。不过达尔文本人也一直相信,只要时间足够,逐渐发生的微小改变就可以造成巨大的变化。” “我猜他一定想同样的现象也可以用来解释动物的进化。” “是的,他正是这么想。但我曾经说过,达尔文是一个很谨慎的人。他先提出问题,等到过了很久之后才加以回答。从这个角度来看,他用的方法正和所有真正的哲学家一样,也就是说:重要的是提出问题,而毋需急着解答问题。” “嗯,我懂了。” “莱尔的理论中有一个决定性的因素就是地球的年纪。在达尔文那个时代,人们普遍相信上帝创造世界大约已有六千年。这个数字是由计算亚当与夏娃以后的世代得出来的。” “真是大天真了!” “说到这点,后见之明当然是比较容易。达尔文推算地球的年纪大约在三亿年左右。因为很明显的,除非地球存在的时间确实很长很长,否则无论莱尔的地质逐渐演进论或达尔文自己的进化论都无法获得证实。” “那么地球存在到底有多久了?” “据我们今天所知,应该有四十六亿年了。” “哇!” “我们刚才已经谈到达尔文提出的生物进化的证据,就是那些在岩石各层结构中发现的一层层化石矿床。另外一个证据则是各现存物种的地理分布情况。在这方面,达尔文的科学之旅提供了许多完整的新资料。他亲眼看到同一个地区内的同一种动物彼此之间有极细微的差异。此外,他在加拉帕哥斯群岛,尤其是在厄瓜多尔西部,也发现了一些很有趣的现象。” 物竞天择“是什么现象?” “加拉帕哥斯群岛是一小群火山岛,因此那儿的动植物并没有很大的差异。但使达尔文感到兴趣的是它们之间的细微差异。他发现,他在每个岛屿上看到的大海龟都和其他岛屿有些不同。难道上帝为每个岛屿各创造了一种海龟吗?” “嗯,这确实是一个问题。” “达尔文在加拉帕哥斯群岛上观察到的鸟类生态更令人惊讶。 他发现每个岛屿上的雀鸟都各有特色,尤其是在鸟喙的形状上。达尔文指出,这些差异与雀鸟在各个岛屿上觅食的方式有很密切的关系。鸟喙又尖又长的地雀是以松子为食,小鸣雀是以昆虫为食,树雀则以树皮和树枝里的白蚁为食……每一种雀的鸟喙形状都完女迁就它摄取的食物种类。于是他想,这些雀可不可能有共同的祖先呢?它们是不是因为千百年来不断适应各个岛屿不同的环境之后才变成新的品种呢?” “这就是他得到的结论,不是吗?” “是的。达尔文可能就是在加拉帕哥斯群岛上变成一位‘达尔文主义者’的。他还发现当地的动物与他在南美洲见到的许多种类非常相似。于是他问:上帝真的一次就创造了这些各有细微差异的动物吗?还是它们是进化而来的?他开始愈来愈怀疑物种不会改变的说法。不过,对于进化现象发生的过程,他还是提不出合理的解释。不过,后来他又发现了一个现象,显示地球上所有的动物可能是互相关联的。” “什么现象?” “就是哺乳动物胚胎发育的情况。如果你把狗、蝙蝠、兔子和人类早期的胚胎拿来比较,你会发现它们非常相似,几乎难以分辨。 一直要到非常晚期之后,你才能分别人类的胚胎与兔子的胚胎。这不正显示我们和这些动物是远亲吗?” “可是这时他仍然无法解释进化的现象是如何发生的。” “他时常想到莱尔所说的细微的变化经过长时间作用后可以造成很大效果的理论。不过他仍然找不到一个可以解释各种现象的通则。此外,他对法国动物学家拉马克的理论也很熟悉。拉马克指出,各个物种会逐渐发现自己所需的特征。例如长颈鹿之所以长了一个长脖子就是因为它们世世代代都伸长了脖子去吃树上的叶子。拉马克认为每一种动物透过自己的努力获取的特征会遗传给下一代。可是达尔文并不接受这种‘后天特征’遗传论,因为拉马克并没有任何证据证明他这项大胆的说法。不过这时达尔文开始往另外一个较为明显的方向思考。我们几乎可以说物种进化现象后面的实际机转恰恰就在他的眼前。” “是什么呢?” “我宁愿让你自己想出来。所以我要问你:如果你有三只母牛,但你所有的饲料只够养两只,那你会怎样办呢?” “我想我只好把其中一只杀了。” “好……那么你要杀哪一只呢?” “我想我会杀那只产奶最少的。” “是吗?” “是的,这不是很合理吗?” “这正是人类千百年来所做的事,可是我们还没讲完那两只牛的事。假设你希望其中一只能生小牛,你会选哪一只?” “最会产奶的那一只。这样它生的小牛以后可能比较会产奶。” “这么说,你比较喜欢产奶多的母牛。那么现在还有一个问题:如果你去打猎,而你有两条猎狗,可是必须放弃其中一只。那么你会留下哪一只?” “我当然会留下比较能够找到猎物的那只。” “对,你会选择那只比较好的猎狗。这正是一万多年来人们豢养牲,的方式。从前的母鸡不一定每周下五个蛋,羊也不一定会产那么多羊毛,马儿也不一定像现在这么强壮敏捷。在这方面,饲主做了人为的选择。同样的道理也适用于植物。如果有品种比较好的马铃薯,你一定不会种那比较差的,你也不会浪费时间去砍那些不会结穗的玉米。达尔文指出,没有一只母牛、一株玉米、一只狗或一只雀是完全一样的。大自然造成了许多差异。即使是同一品种,也没有两个个体会一模一样。你喝下蓝色瓶子的水时,可能有过这种经验。” “可不是嘛!” “所以达尔文开始问:大自然是否也有同样的机转?大自然是否也可能选择哪些物种可以存活?而这种选择淘汰的过程在历经很长的时间之后是否可能形成新的植物或动物品种?” “我猜答案是肯定的。” “这时达尔文仍然无法确知这种‘天择’的过程是如何发生的。 但在一八三八年十月,也就是他乘猎犬号返航整整两午后,他偶然读到了一本由一位人口研究专家马尔萨斯(ThomasMalthus)所写的一本小书,书名叫《人口论》。马尔萨斯撰写此书的灵感是得自那位发明避雷针等东西的美国人富兰克林。富兰克林曾经指出,如果没有受到大自然的限制,一种植物或动物将会遍布全球。但是由于世上有许多物种,因此这些物种会彼此制衡。” “这点我可以了解。” “马尔萨斯将这个观念加以发展,并应用于全球人口上。他相信人类的生殖力很强,因此世界上出生的儿童人数永远多过能够存活的人数。他认为既然粮食的生产永远无法赶得上人口的增加,因此有一大部分人口注定要在求生存的竞争中落败。那些能够存活、长大并延续种族生命的人一定是那些在生存竞争中表现最好的人。” “听起来很有道理。” “这正是达尔文一直在寻找的普遍性机转。他以此来解释进化发生的过程:进化是生存竞争中自然淘汰的结果。在这个过程中,那些最能够适应环境的人就存活下来,继续繁衍种族。这是他在《物种起源论》一书中所提的第二个理论。他在书中写道:在所有动物中,大象是生育速度最慢的一种。但如果所有的幼象都得以存活,则在七百五十年之后,一对大象将可有一千九百万个后代。” “那么一只可以产下几千个卵的鳕鱼就更不用说了。” “达尔文进一步指出,生存竞争在那些彼此最为相似的物种之间往往也最激烈,因为它们必须争夺同样一些食物。在这种情况下,纵使只比别人多占一点点优势——也就是说与别人有一点点差异——也会使情况大不相同。生存竞争愈激烈,进化到新物种的速度也愈快,到最后只剩下最能适应环境的品种可以生存下来,其他的则会灭绝。” “那么食物愈少,生育数量愈多的种类进化的速度也就愈快哼?” “没错。可是这不只是食物多寡的问题而已。如何避免被其他动物吃掉也是很重要的。举例来说,动物有没有保护色、是否能跑得很快、是否能辨识有敌意的动物或(在最糟的情况下)是否能闻出驱虫剂的味道,都可能攸关它是否能生存。如果能分泌一种毒液杀死敌人也很有用。这也是为什么这么多仙人掌都有毒的原因。由于沙漠中几乎没有其他植物生长,因此仙人掌特别容易受到那些草食类动物的伤害。” “所以它们多半也都有刺。” “除此之外,生物繁衍能力的强弱显然也是很重要的。达尔文非常仔细地研究了植物巧妙的传粉方式。植物借着色彩美丽的花朵和迷人的香味来吸引昆虫为它传粉。鸟儿唱出美妙的歌声也是为了同样的目的。一只安静、忧郁、对母牛没有兴趣的公牛对于传宗接代可是一点用处也没有,因为这样的公牛会立刻绝种。公牛生命中唯一的目的,就是长到发育成熟后与母牛交配以繁衍种族。这就像是一场接力赛一样。那些因为某种原因不能将它们的基因传给下一代的动物会不断被淘汰,整个种族也就因此愈来愈进步。而那些存活下来的品种所不断累积井保存的最重要特征之一就是抵抗疾病的能力。” “所以一切的物种都愈来愈进步哼?” “这种不断淘汰的结果就是那些最能够适应某种环境或某种生态体系的品种就能够在那个环境中长期繁衍种族。可是在这个环境中占优势的特征不见得能在另一个环境中占到便宜。例如,对某些加拉帕哥斯群岛上的雀儿来说,飞翔能力很重要。可是在一个必须从土里挖出食物而且没有敌人的地方,会不会飞就不重要了。 千百年来之所以有这么多不同的动物品种出现,就是因为自然环境中有这么多种不同的情况。” “可是即使这样,人类还是只有一种呀!” “这是因为人有一种独特的能力可以适应生活中不同的情况。 达尔文最感到惊讶的事情之一就是提耶拉德傅耶哥(TierradelFuego)的印第安人居然可以在当地如此恶劣的气候下生活。可是这并不表示所有的人类都是一样的。那些住在赤道附近的人皮肤的颜色就要比住在北方的人要黑,因为黑皮肤可以使他们免于受到日照的伤害。白种人如果长期暴露在阳光下比较容易得皮肤癌。” “住在北方国家的人有白皮肤是否也是一种优点呢?” “是的,要不然地球上的每一个人皮肤都是黑的了。白皮肤在日晒后比较容易制造维他命,这在日照很少的地方是很重要的。当然,到了今天这点就没有那么重要了,因为我们可以透过饮食得到足够的阳光维他命。可是在大自然中没有一件事是偶然的。每一件事都是一些微小的改变在无数个世代的过程中产生作用的结果。” “想起来还真有趣!” “确实如此。说到这里,我们可以用下面这些话来总结达尔文的进化论……” “请说。” “我们可以说地球生物进化的‘原料’就是同一种生物之间不断出现的个体差异,再加上子孙的数量庞大,以致只有一小部分能够存活。而进化的实际‘机转’(或驱动力)则是生存竞争中的自然淘汰作用。这种淘汰过程可以确保最强者或‘最适者’能够生存下泉。” “听起来跟算术题目一样合理。当时人对《物种起源论》这本书的反应如何?” “它引起了激烈的争辩。教会提出强烈抗议,科学界则反应不一。其实这并不令人惊讶。毕竟,达尔文的理论把上帝与世界之间的距离拉远了很多。不过,也有人宣称,创造一些具有进化能力的生物要比创造一些固定不变的生物更伟大。” 突然间,苏菲从椅子上跳起来。 “你看那里1”她喊。 她指着窗外。只见湖边有一对男女手牵着手在走路。两人都是一丝不挂。 “那是亚当和夏娃。”艾伯特说。“他们逐渐被迫与小红帽和梦游奇境的爱丽丝等人为伍了。所以他们才会在这里出现。” 苏菲走到窗前去看他们,可是他们很快就消失在林间。 “这是因为达尔文相信人类也是从动物进化而来的吗?” “一八七一年,达尔文发表了《人的由来》(TheDescentofMan)这本书。他在书中提醒大家注意人与动物之间许多极为相似之处,并提出一个理论,认为人与类人猿必定是在某段时间由同一祖先进化而来的。这时,科学家已经相继在直布罗陀岩(RockofGibraltar)和德国的尼安德(Neanderthal)等地发现了第一批某种绝种人类的头骨化石。奇怪的是,一八七一年这次引起的反对声浪反而比一八五九年达尔文发表《物种起源论》那一次要小。不过,他的第一本书事实上已经隐约指出人是从动物进化而来的。我曾经说过,达尔文在一八八二年去世时,以科学先驱的身份被隆重地葬在西敏寺。” “这么说他最后还是得到了应有的荣耀和地位?” “是的,最后是这样。不过在那之前他曾经被形容成英国最危险的人物。” “天哪!” “当时有一位上流社会的女士曾经写道:让我们希望这不是真的。如果是真的;希望不会有太多人知道。另一位很杰出的科学家也表示了类似的看法,他说:这真是一个令人很难为情的发现,愈少人谈论它愈好。” “这几乎可以证明人和鸵鸟有血缘关系!” “说得好。不过我们现在说这种话当然是比较容易了。达尔文的理论提出后,当时的人们突然不得不重新调整他们对于《创世记》的看法。年轻的作家罗斯金(JohnRuskin)如此形容他的感觉:‘真希望这些地质学家能够放过我。如今在圣经的每一个章节后面,我都可以听到他们的锤子敲打的声音。’” “这些锤子敲打的声音是指他自己对上帝话语的怀疑吗?” “应该是这样,因为当时被推翻的不仅是上帝造人的说法。达尔文理论的重点也在于人是由一些偶然发生的变化所形成的。更糟的是,达尔文使得人变成生存竞争这种冷酷事实下的产物。” 遗传与突变“达尔文有没有解释这种偶然的差异是如何发生的?” “这是他理论中最弱的一环。达尔文对于遗传没有什么概念,他只知道在交配的过程中发生了某些事情。因为一对父母从来不会有两个完全一样的子女,每个子女之间总是会有些微的差异。此外,这种方式很难产生新的特征。更何况有些植物和动物是靠插枝或单细胞分裂等方式来繁衍的。关于那些差异如何发生的问题,达尔文主义如今已经被所谓的‘新达尔丈主义’取代。” “什么是新达尔文主义?” “就是说所有的生命和所有的繁殖过程基本上都与细胞分裂有关。当一个细胞分裂成两个时,就产生了两个一模一样、具有相同遗传因子的细胞。我们说细胞分裂的过程就是一个细胞复制自己的动作。” “然后呢?”“在这个过程当中,偶尔会有一些很小的错误发生,导致那个被复制出来的细胞并不与母细胞完全相同。用现代生物学的术语来说,这就是‘突变’。有些突变是不相干的,但有些突变则可能对个体的行为造成明显的影响。这些突变可能有害,而此类对于物种有害的‘变种’将不断被淘汰。许多疾病事实上就是突变所引起的。 不过有时候,突变的结果可能会使个体拥有一些优势,使它能在生存竞争中立于不败之地。” “譬如说脖子变长等等?” “对于长颈鹿何以有如此长的脖子,拉马克的解释是因为它们总是必须伸长脖子到上面去吃树叶。但根据达尔文的看法,这种特征并不会传给下一代。他认为长颈鹿的长脖子是个体差异的结果。 新达尔文主义则指出这种差异形成的原因,借以补充说明。” “是因为突变吗?” “没错。遗传因素的偶然改变使得长颈鹿的某位祖先有一个比别人稍长的脖子。当食物有限时,这个特征就变得很重要了,能够把脖子伸到树木最高处的那只鹿就可以活得最好。我们也可以想象这些‘原始长颈鹿’在进化的过程中如何发展了掘地觅食的能力。经过很长的一段时期后,某种现在早已绝迹的动物有可能会分化成两个品种。我们还可以举出一些比较近代的例子来说明自然淘汰的过程是如何进行的。” “好啊!” “英国有一种蝴蝶叫做斑蝶。它们住在白桦树的树干上。十八世纪时,大多数斑蝶都是银灰色的。你猜这是什么缘故?” “这样它们才不容易被那些饥饿的鸟发现呀。” “可是,由于某些偶然的突变,时常会出现一些颜色较黑的斑蝶。你想这些比较黑的斑蝶会怎样?” “它们比较容易被看见,因此也比较容易被饥饿的鸟吞吃。” “没错。因为在那个环境里,桦树的树干是银灰色的,所以比较暗的颜色就变成了不利的特征,也因此在数量上有所增加总是那些颜色较白的斑蝶,可是后来那个环境发生了一件事:在许多地方原本银色的桦树树干被工厂的煤烟染黑了。这时候你想那些斑蝶会变成怎样?” “这个嘛,那些颜色较黑的就比较容易存活啦。” “确实如此,所以它们的数量很快就增加了。从一八四八年到一九四八年,若干地方黑色斑蝶的比例从百分之一增加到百分之九十九。这是因为环境改变了,颜色白不再是一个优点。相反的,那些白色的‘输家’一出现在黑色的桦树树干上就马上被鸟儿吃掉了。不过,后来又发生了一件很重要的事:由于工厂减少使用煤炭并改善过滤设备的结果,近来的环境已经变得比较干净了。” “这么说那些桦树又变回银色的哼?” “对。也因此斑蝶又开始恢复原来的银白色,这就是我们所称的适应环境。这是一种自然法则。” “嗯,我明白了。” “不过也有很多人类干涉环境的例子。” “比如说?” “例如,人们不断利用各种杀虫剂来扑杀害虫。最初效果非常好,可是当你在一块地或一座果园里喷洒杀虫剂时,事实上你是为那些害虫制造了一场小小的生态灾难。由于不断突变的结果,一种可以抵抗现有杀虫剂的害虫就产生了。结果这种害虫就变成‘赢家’,可以随心所欲了。因此,人们试图扑灭害虫的结果,反而使得有些害虫愈来愈难对付。当然,这是因为那些存活下来的都是一些抵抗力最强的品种。” “挺可怕的。” “这当然值得我们深思。同样的,我们也一直试图对付那些寄生在我们体内的细菌。” “我们用盘尼西林或其他种抗生素来对付它们。” “没错。对于这些小魔鬼来说,盘尼西林也是一个‘生态灾难’。 可是当我们继续使用盘尼西林时,我们就不断使得某些细菌产生抗药性,因此造成了一个比从前更难对付的细菌群。我们发现我们必须使用愈来愈强的抗生素,直到……” “直到最后它们从我们的嘴巴里爬出来?那时候我们是不是该用枪射杀它们?” “这也许有一点太夸张了。但很明显的,现代医药已经造成一个很严重的进退两难的局面。问题并不仅仅在于某种细菌已经变得更顽强。在过去,有许多小孩因为得了各种疾病而夭折,有时甚至只有少数能够存活。现代医药虽然改善了这个现象,却也使得自然淘汰的作用无法发挥。某种可以帮助一个人克服一种严重疾病的药物,长期下来可能会导致整个人类对于某些疾病的抵抗力减弱。如果我们对所谓的‘遗传卫生’毫不注意,人类的品质可能会逐渐恶化。人类的基因中抵抗严重疾病的能力将会减弱。” “真可怕!” “一个真正的哲学家不能避免指出一些‘可怕的’事实,只要他相信那是真的。现在让我们再来做个总结。” “好。” “我们可以说生命是一个大型的摸彩活动。只有中奖的号码才能被人看见。” “这是什么意思?” “因为那些在生存竞争中失败的人就消失了。在这场摸彩活动中,为地球上每一种动植物逐一抽奖的过程要花上几百万年的时间。至于那些没有中奖的号码则只出现一次,因此现存的各种动植物全部都是这场生命大摸彩活动中的赢家。” “因为只有最好的才能存活。” “是的,可以这么说。现在,麻烦你把那个家伙——那个动物园园长——带来的图画递给我好吗?” 苏菲把图递过去给他。上面有一边是诺亚方舟的画像,另外一边则画着一个各种不同动物的演化树图表。艾伯特把这一边拿给她看。 “这个简图显示各种动植物的分布。你可以看到这些不同的动物各自属于不同的类、纲和门。” “对。”“人和猴子一样属于所谓的灵长类。灵长类属于哺乳类,而所有的哺乳类动物都属于脊椎动物,脊椎动物又属于多细胞动物。” “简直像是亚理斯多德的分类一样。” “没错。但这幅简图不只显示今天各种动物的分布,也多少说明了进化的历史。举个例子,你可以看到鸟类在某个时候从爬虫类分了出来,而爬虫类又在某个时候从两栖类分了出来,两栖类则是从鱼类分出来的。” “嗯,很清楚。” “一类动物之所以会分成两种,就是因为突变的结果造成了新的品种。这是为什么在历经千万年后有这么多不同的门和纲出现的原因。事实上在今天,全世界大约有一百多万种动物,而这一百多万种只是那些曾经活在地球上的物种的一小部分而已。举个例子,你会发现一个名叫‘三叶虫类’的动物现在已经完全绝种了。” “而在最下面的是单细胞动物。” “这些单细胞动物有一些可能在这二十亿年来一直都没有改变。你也可以看到从单细胞生物这里有一条线连接到植物,因为植物也非常可能和动物来自同样的原始细胞。” 生命源起“嗯,我看到了,可是有一件事情我不大懂。” “什么事?” “这个最初的原始细胞又是从哪里来的呢?达尔文有没有说明这点?” “我不是说过他是一个非常谨慎的人吗?但在这个问题上他提出了一个可以说不大缜密的猜测。他写道……如果(啊,这是怎样一种可能性呀㈠我们可以想象有一小摊热热的水,里面有各种氨盐、磷盐、阳光、热、电等等,而且有一个蛋白质化合物正在里面。这个化合物可能会发生一些化学合成的现象,并经历更加复杂的变化......” “然后呢?” “达尔文想说的是最初的活细胞有可能是由无机物形成的,在这方面他又说对了。现代的科学家也认为原始的生命形式正是从达尔丈所描述的那种‘一小摊热热的水’里形成的。” “然后呢?” “到这里已经讲得差不多了。我们现在就不再谈达尔文,我们要谈谈有关地球生命起源的最新发现。” “我很心急,大概没有人知道生命是如何开始的吧?” “也许是这样,但有愈来愈多的资料让我们可以揣测生命可能是如何开始的。我们先确定地球上所有的生命,包括动物与植物在内——是由同样一些物质组成的。生命最简单的定义是:生命是一种物质,这种物质在有养分的液体里能够自行分化成两个完全一样的单位。这个过程是由一种我们称为DNA的物质控制的。所谓DNA就是我们在所有活细胞里面都可以发现的染色体(或称为遗传结构)。我们同时也使用DNA分子这个名词,因为DNA事实上是一个复合的分子(或称为巨分子)。问题在于这世上第一个分于是如何形成的。” “答案呢?” “地球是在四十六亿年前太阳系出现时形成的。它最初是一个发热体,后来逐渐冷却。现代科学家相信生命就是在大约三十亿年到四十亿年之前开始的。” “听起来实在不太可能呀。” “在还没听完前,你不可以这样说。首先你要了解地球当时的面貌和今天大不相同。由于没有生命,因此大气层里也没有氧气,氧气最初是由植物行光合作用所制造的。而没有氧气这件事可说关系重大,因为可能形成DNA的生命细胞是不可能在一个含有氧气的大气层里产生的。”“为什么呢?” “因为氧气会造成强烈的反应。像DNA这样的复合分子在还没来得及形成前,它的分子细胞早就被氧化了。” “喔!” “这是我们为什么可以确定现在地球不可能会再有新的生命(包括细菌和病毒)形成的缘故。地球上所有生物存在的时间一定走相当的;大象的家族史和最小的细菌一样悠久。我们几乎可以说一只大象(或一个人)事实上是一群单细胞生物的集合体,因为我们体内的每一个细胞都有同样的遗传物质。我们会成为什么样的人,完全是由这些隐藏在每一个小小细胞里面的物质决定的。” “想起来真奇怪!” “生命最神秘的地方之一在于;虽然所有不同的遗传特征不见得都活跃在每个细胞内,但多细胞动物的细胞还是能够执行它特殊的功能。有些遗传特征(或称基因)是‘活跃的’,有些是‘不活跃的’。一个肝脏细胞所制造的蛋白质和神经细胞或皮肤细胞不同。 但这三种细胞都有同样的DNA分子,同样含有决定各个有机体形貌的所有遗传物质。在最初的时候,由于大气层里没有氧气,地球的四周也就没有一层可以保护它的臭氧层。这表示没有东西可以挡住来自宇宙的辐射线。这点也是很重要的,因为这种辐射线可能有助于第一个复合分子的形成。这类的宇宙辐射线是真正促使地球上各种化学物质开始结合成为一个复杂的巨分子的能量。” “喔。” “我现在要做个总结:所有生命都赖以组成的复合分子要能够形成,至少要有两个条件:一、大气层里不能有氧气,二、要受到宇宙辐射线的照射。” “我懂了。” “在这‘一小摊热热的水’(现代科学家时常称之为‘原始汤’)里,曾经形成了一个巨大而复杂的巨分子。这个分子有一种很奇妙的特性可以自行分裂成两个一模一样的单位。于是,漫长的进化过程就这样开始了。简单一点说,这个巨分子就是最初的遗传物质,也就是最初的DNA或是第一个活细胞。它不断分裂再分裂,但从一开始,在分裂过程中就不断有变化产生。历经千万年后,这些单细胞的有机体中,有一个突然和一个更复杂的多细胞有机体连结上了。就这样,植物的光合作用开始了,大气层慢慢有了氧气。这个现象造成了两个结果;第一,含氧的大气层使得那些可以用肺呼吸的动物逐渐进化。第二,大气层如今已可以保护各种生命,使他们不致受到宇宙辐射线的伤害。说也奇怪,这种辐射线原本可能是促使第一个细胞形成的重要推动力,但却也会对所有的生物造成伤害。” “可是大气层不可能在一夜之间形成。那最早的一些生物是怎么捱过来的呢?” “生命最初开始于原始‘海’,也就是我们所说的‘原始汤’。那些生物可能生活在其中,因此而得免于辐射线的伤害。一直到很久很久以后,当海洋里的生物已经形成了一个大气层时,最早的一批两栖类动物才开始爬上陆地。至于后来发生的事,我们已经讲过了。于是,我们今天才能坐在这栋林间的小木屋里,回顾这个已经有三四十亿年的过程。透过我们,这个漫长的过程本身终于开始逐渐了解自己了。” “可是你还是不认为所有的事都是在很偶然的情况下发生的?” “我从来没有说过这样的话。无论如何,这块板子上的图表显示进化仍有一个方向。这几千万年来,动物已经发展出一套愈来愈复杂的神经系统,脑子也愈来愈大。我个人认为,这绝不是偶然的。 你说呢?” “我想人类之所以有眼睛绝非偶然。你难道不认为我们能够看到周遭的世界这件事是很有意义的吗?” “说来好笑,达尔文也曾经对眼睛发展的现象感到不解。他不大能够接受像眼睛这样精巧敏锐的东西会是纯粹物竞天择作用之下的产物。” 苏菲坐在那儿,看着艾伯特。她心想,她现在能够活着,而且只能活一次,以后就永远不能复生,这件事是多么奇怪呀J突然间她脱口念道:“一世人劳苦奔忙有何益?” 艾伯特皱着眉头向她说:“你不可以这样说。这是魔鬼说的话。” “魔鬼?” “就是歌德作品《浮士德》里面的曼菲斯多弗里斯(Mephistopheles)。” “但这话究竟是什么意思呢?” “浮士德死时,回顾他一生的成就,他用一种胜利的语气说:‘此时我便可呼喊:停驻吧!美妙的时光!我在人世的日子会留下印记,任万代光阴飞逝也无法抹去,我在这样的预感中欣喜无比,这是我生命中最崇高的瞬际。’” “嗯,很有诗意。” “可是后来轮到魔鬼说话了。浮士德一死,他便说:谈到既往,不过是蠢话一句!过去的已经过去,消失在虚无里,一切又从零开始!一生劳苦奔忙有何益?到头终究须把眼儿闭!‘消逝了!’这个谜可有尽期?正仿佛一切不曾开始,若再回头重新活过一天,我情愿选择永恒的太虚。” “这太悲观了。我比较喜欢第一段。即使生命结束了,浮士德仍旧认为他留下的足迹是有意义的。” “所以,达尔文的理论不是正好让我们体认到我们是大千世界的一部分,在这个世界里,每一个细微的生物都有它存在的价值吗?苏菲,我们就是这个活的星球。地球是航行在宇宙中燃烧的大阳四周的一艘大船。而我们每一个人则是满载基因航行过生命的一条小船。当我们安全地把船上的货品运到下一个港口时,我们就没有白活了。英国诗人兼小说家哈代(ThomasHardy)在《变形》这首诗中表达过同样的想法:这紫杉的一截是我先人的旧识,树干底的枝桠:许是他的发妻,原本鲜活的血肉之躯,如今皆化为嫩绿的新枝。 这片草地必然是百年前那渴求安眠女子的化身,而许久前我无缘相识的那位佳丽,或者已凝为这株蔷薇的魂魄。 所以他们并未长眠于地下,而只是化做花树的血脉经络充斥于天地万物之间,再次领受阳光雨露以及前世造化赋形的活力!” “好美呀!” “我们不能再讲下去了。我只想说:下一章!” “哦,别再说那些反讽的话吧!” “我说:下一章!你得听我的话。” Freud ... the odious egoistic impulse that had emerged in her... Hilde Moller Knag jumped out of bed with the bulky ring binder in her arms. She plonked it down on her writing desk, grabbed her clothes, and dashed into the bathroom. She stood under the shower for two minutes, dressed herself quickly, and ran downstairs. "Breakfast is ready, Hilde!" "I just have to go and row first." "But Hilde... !" She ran out of the house, down the garden, and out onto the little dock. She untied the boat and jumped down into it. She rowed around the bay with short angry strokes until she had calmed down. "We are the living planet, Sophie! We are the great vessel sailing around a burning sun in the universe. But each and every of us is also a ship sailing through life with a cargo of genes. When we have carried this cargo safely to the next harbor--we have not lived in vain..." She knew the passage by heart. It had been written for her. Not for Sophie, for her. Every word in the ring binder was written by Dad to Hilde. She rested the oars in the oarlocks and drew them in. The boat rocked gently on the water, the ripples slapping softly against the prow. And like the little rowboat floating on the surface in the bay at Lillesand, she herself was just a nutshell on the surface of life. Where were Sophie and Alberto in this picture? Yes, where were Alberto and Sophie? She could not fathom that they were no more than "electromagnetic impulses" in her father's brain. She could not fathom, and certainly not accept, that they were only paper and printer's ink from a ribbon in her father's portable typewriter. One might just as well say that she herself was nothing but a conglomeration of protein compounds that had suddenly come to life one day in a "hot little pool." But she was more than that. She was Hilde Moller Knag. She had to admit that the ring binder was a fantastic present, and that her father had touched the core of something eternal in her. But she didn't care for the way he was dealing with Sophie and Alberto. She would certainly teach him a lesson, even before he got home. She felt she owed it to the two of them. Hilde could already imagine her father at Kastrup Airport, in Copenhagen. She could just see him running around like mad. Hilde was now quite herself again. She rowed the boat back to the dock, where she was careful to make it fast. After breakfast she sat at the table for a long time with her mother. It felt good to be able to talk about something as ordinary as whether the egg was a trifle too soft. She did not start to read again until the evening. There were not many pages left now. Once again there was a knocking on the door. "Let's just put our hands over our ears," said Alberto, "and perhaps it'll go away." "No, I want to see who it is." Alberto followed her to the door. On the step stood a naked man. He had adopted a very ceremonial posture, but the only thing he had with him was the crown on his head. "Well?" he said. "What do you good people think of the Emperor's new clothes?" Alberto and Sophie were utterly dumbfounded. This caused the naked man some consternation. "What? You are not bowing!" he cried. "Indeed, that is true," said Alberto, "but the Emperor is stark naked." The naked man maintained his ceremonial posture. Alberto bent over and whispered in Sophie's ear: "He thinks he is respectable." At this, the man scowled. "Is some kind of censorship being exercised on these premises?" he asked. "Regrettably," said Alberto. "In here we are both alert and of sound mind in every way. In the Emperor's shameless condition he can therefore not cross the threshold of this house." Sophie found the naked man's pomposity so absurd that she burst out laughing. As if her laughter had been a prearranged signal, the man with the crown on his head suddenly became aware that he was naked. Covering his private parts with both hands, he bounded toward the nearest clump of trees and disappeared, probably to join company with Adam and Eve, Noah, Little Red Riding-hood, and Winnie-the-Pooh. Alberto and Sophie remained standing on the step, laughing. At last Alberto said, "It might be a good idea if we went inside. I'm going to tell you about Freud and his theory of the unconscious." They seated themselves by the window again. Sophie looked at her watch and said: "It's already half past two and I have a lot to do before the garden party." "So have I. We'll just say a few words about Sigmund Freud." "Was he a philosopher?" "We could describe him as a cultural philosopher, at least. Freud was born in 1 856 and he studied medicine at the University of Vienna. He lived in Vienna for the greater part of his life at a period when the cultural life of the city was flourishing. He specialized early on in neurology. Toward the close of the last century, and far into our own, he developed his 'depth psychology' or psychoanalysis." "You're going to explain this, right?" "Psychoanalysis is a description of the human mind in general as well as a therapy for nervous and mental disorders. I do not intend to give you a complete picture either of Freud or of his work. But his theory of the unconscious is necessary to an understanding of what a human being is." "You intrigue me. Go on." "Freud held that there is a constant tension between man and his surroundings. In particular, a tension--or conflict--between his drives and needs and the demands of society. It is no exaggeration to say that Freud discovered human drives. This makes him an important exponent of the naturalistic currents that were so prominent toward the end of the nineteenth century." "What do you mean by human drives?" "Our actions are not always guided by reason. Man is not really such a rational creature as the eighteenth-century rationalists liked to think. Irrational impulses often determine what we think, what we dream, and what we do. Such irrational impulses can be an expression of basic drives or needs. The human sexual drive, for example, is just as basic as the baby's instinct to suckle." "Yes?" "This in itself was no new discovery. But Freud showed that these basic needs can be disguised or 'sublimated,' thereby steering our actions without our being aware of it. He also showed that infants have some sort of sexuality. The respectable middle-class Viennese reacted with abhorrence to this suggestion of the 'sexuality of the child' and made him very unpopular." "I'm not surprised." "We call it Victorianism, when everything to do with sexuality is taboo. Freud first became aware of children's sexuality during his practice of psychotherapy. So he had an empirical basis for his claims. He had also seen how numerous forms of neurosis or psychological disorders could be traced back to conflicts during childhood. He gradually developed a type of therapy that we could call the archeology of the soul." "What do you mean by that?" "An archeologist searches for traces of the distant past by digging through layers of cultural history. He may find a knife from the eighteenth century. Deeper in the ground he may find a comb from the fourteenth century--and even deeper down perhaps an urn from the fifth centuryB.C." "Yes?" "In a similar way, the psychoanalyst, with the patient's help, can dig deep into the patient's mind and bring to light the experiences that have caused the patient's psychological disorder, since according to Freud, we store the memory of all our experiences deep inside us." "Yes, I see." "The analyst can perhaps discover an unhappy experience that the patient has tried to suppress for many years, but which has nevertheless lain buried, gnawing away at the patient's resources. By bringing a 'traumatic experience' into the conscious mind--and holding it up to the patient, so to speak--he or she can help the patient 'be done with it,' and get well again." "That sounds logical." "But I am jumping too far ahead. Let us first take a look at Freud's description of the human mind. Have you ever seen a newborn baby?" "I have a cousin who is four." "When we come into the world, we live out our physical and mental needs quite directly and unashamedly. If we do not get milk, we cry, or maybe we cry if we have a wet diaper. We also give direct expression to our desire for physical contact and body warmth. Freud called this 'pleasure principle' in us the id. As newborn babies we are hardly anything but id." "Go on." "We carry the id, or pleasure principle, with us into adulthood and throughout life. But gradually we learn to regulate our desires and adjust to our surroundings. We learn to regulate the pleasure principle in relation to the 'reality principle.' In Freud's terms, we develop an ego which has this regulative function. Even though we want or need something, we cannot just lie down and scream until we get what we want or need." "No, obviously." "We may desire something very badly that the outside world will not accept. We may repress our desires. That means we try to push them away and forget about them." "I see." "However, Freud proposed, and worked with, a third element in the human mind. From infancy we are constantly faced with the moral demands of our parents and of society. When we do anything wrong, our parents say 'Don't do that!' or 'Naughty naughty, that's bad!' Even when we are grown up, we retain the echo of such moral demands and judgments. It seems as though the world's moral expectations have become part of us. Freud called this the superego." "Is that another word for conscience?" "Conscience is a component of the superego. But Freud claimed that the superego tells us when our desires themselves are 'bad' or 'improper/ not least in the case of erotic or sexual desire. And as I said, Freud claimed that these 'improper' desires already manifest themselves at an early stage of childhood." "How?" "Nowadays we know that infants like touching their sex organs. We can observe this on any beach. In Freud's time, this behavior could result in a slap over the fingers of the two- or three-year-old, perhaps accompanied by the mother saying, 'Naughty!' or 'Don't do that!' or 'Keep your hands on top of the covers!'" "How sick!" "That's the beginning of guilt feelings about everything connected with the sex organs and sexuality. Because this guilt feeling remains in the superego, many people--according to Freud, most people--feel guilty about sex all their lives. At the same time he showed that sexual desires and needs are natural and vital for human beings. And thus, my dear Sophie, the stage is set for a lifelong conflict between desire and guilt." "Don't you think the conflict has died down a lot since Freud's time?" "Most certainly. But many of Freud's patients experienced the conflict so acutely that they developed what Freud called neuroses. One of his many women patients, for example, was secretly in love with her brother-in-law. When her sister died of an illness, she thought: 'Now he is free to marry me!' This thought was on course for a frontal collision with her superego, and was so monstrous an idea that she immediately repressed it, Freud tells us. In other words, she buried it deep in her unconscious. Freud wrote: 'The young girl was ill and displaying severe hysterical symptoms. When I began treating her it appeared that she had thoroughly forgotten about the scene at her sister's bedside and the odious egoistic impulse that had emerged in her. But during analysis she remembered it, and in a state of great agitation she reproduced the pathogenic moment and through this treatment became cured.' " "Now I better understand what you meant by an archeology of the soul." "So we can give a general description of the human psyche. After many years of experience in treating patients, Freud concluded that the conscious constitutes only a small part of the human mind. The conscious is like the tip of the iceberg above sea level. Below sea level--or below the threshold of the conscious--is the 'subconscious,' or the unconscious." "So the unconscious is everything that's inside us that we have forgotten and don't remember?" "We don't have all our experiences consciously present all the time. But the kinds of things we have thought or experienced, and which we can recall if we 'put our mind to it,' Freud termed the preconscious. He reserved the term 'unconscious' for things we have repressed. That is, the sort of thing we have made an effort to forget because it was either 'unpleasant','improper,' or 'nasty.' If we have desires and urges that are not tolerable to the conscious, the superego shoves them downstairs. Away with them!" "I get it." "This mechanism is at work in all healthy people. But it can be such a tremendous strain for some people to keep the unpleasant or forbidden thoughts away from consciousness that it leads to mental illness. Whatever is repressed in this way will try of its own accord to reenter consciousness. For some people it takes a great effort to keep such impulses under the critical eye of the conscious. When Freud was in America in 1909 lecturing on psychoanalysis, he gave an example of the way this repression mechanism functions." "I'd like to hear that!" "He said: 'Suppose that here in this hall and in this audience, whose exemplary stillness and attention I cannot sufficiently commend, there is an individual who is creating a disturbance, and, by his ill-bred laughing, talking, by scraping his feet, distracts my attention from my task. I explain that I cannot go on with my lecture under these conditions, and thereupon several strong men among you get up and, after a short struggle, eject the disturber of the peace from the hall. He is now repressed, and I can continue my lecture. But in order that the disturbance may not be repeated, in case the man who has just been thrown out attempts to force his way back into the room, the gentlemen who have executed my suggestion take their chairs to the door and establish themselves there as a resistance, to keep up the repression. Now, if you transfer both locations to the psyche, calling this con-sciousness, and the outside the unconscious, you have a tolerably good illustration of the process of repression.' " "I agree." "But the disturber of the peace insists on reentering, Sophie. At least, that's the way it is with repressed thoughts and urges. We live under the constant pressure of repressed thoughts that are trying to fight their way up from the unconscious. That's why we often say or do things without intending to. Unconscious reactions thus prompt our feelings and actions." "Can you give me an example?" "Freud operates with several of these mechanisms. One is what he called parapraxes--slips of the tongue or pen. In other words, we accidentally say or do things that we once tried to repress. Freud gives the example of the shop foreman who was to propose a toast to the boss. The trouble was that this boss was terribly unpopular. In plain words, he was what one might call a swine." "Yes?" "The foreman stood up, raised his glass, and said 'Here's to the swine!' " "I'm speechless!" "So was the foreman. He had actually only said what he really meant. But he didn't mean to say it. Do you want to hear another example?" "Yes, please." "A bishop was coming to tea with the local minister, who had a large family of nice well-behaved little daughters. This bishop happened to have an unusually big nose. The little girls were duly instructed that on no account were they to refer to the bishop's nose, since children often blurt out spontaneous remarks about people because their repressive mechanism is not yet developed. The bishop arrived, and the delightful daughters strained themselves to the utmost not to comment on his nose. They tried to not even look at it and to forget about it. But they were thinking about it the whole time. And then one of them was asked to pass the sugar around. She looked at the distinguished bishop and said, 'Do you take sugar in your nose?' " "How awful!" "Another thing we can do is to rationalize. That means that we do not give the real reason for what we are doing either to ourselves or to other people because the real reason is unacceptable." "Like what?" "I could hypnotize you to open a window. While you are under hypnosis I tell you that when I begin to drum my fingers on the table you will get up and open the window. I drum on the table--and you open the window. Afterward I ask you why you opened the window and you might say you did it because it was too hot. But that is not the real reason. You are reluctant to admit to yourself that you did something under my hypnotic orders. So you rationalize." "Yes, I see." "We all encounter that sort of thing practically every day." "This four-year-old cousin of mine, I don't think he has a lot of playmates, so he's always happy when I visit. One day I told him I had to hurry home to my mom. Do you know what he said?" "What did he say?" "He said, she's stupid!" "Yes, that was definitely a case of rationalizing. The boy didn't mean what he actually said. He meant it was stupid you had to go, but he was too shy to say so. Another thing we do is project." "What's that?" "When we project, we transfer the characteristics we are trying to repress in ourselves onto other people. A person who is very miserly, for example, will characterize others as penny-pinchers. And someone who will not admit to being preoccupied with sex can be the first to be incensed at other people's sex-fixation." "Hmm." "Freud claimed that our everyday life was filled with unconscious mechanisms like these. We forget a particular person's name, we fumble with our clothes while we talk, or we shift what appear to be random objects around in the room. We also stumble over words and make various slips of the tongue or pen that can seem completely innocent. Freud's point was that these slips are neither as accidental nor as innocent as we think. These bungled actions can in fact reveal the most intimate secrets." "From now on I'll watch all my words very carefully." "Even if you do, you won't be able to escape from your unconscious impulses. The art is precisely not to expend too much effort on burying unpleasant things in the unconscious. It's like trying to block up the entrance to a water vole's nest. You can be sure the water vole will pop up in another part of the garden. It is actually quite healthy to leave the door ajar between the conscious and the unconscious." "If you lock that door you can get mentally sick, right?" "Yes. A neurotic is just such a person, who uses too much energy trying to keep the 'unpleasant' out of his consciousness. Frequently there is a particular experience which the person is desperately trying to repress. He can nonetheless be anxious for the doctor to help him to find his way back to the hidden traumas." "How does the doctor do that?" "Freud developed a technique which he called free association. In other words, he let the patient lie in a relaxed position and just talk about whatever came into his or her mind--however irrelevant, random, unpleasant, or embarrassing it might sound. The idea was to break through the 'lid' or 'control' that had grown over the traumas, because it was these traumas that were causing the patient concern. They are active all the time, just not consciously." "The harder you try to forget something, the more you think about it unconsciously?" "Exactly. That is why it is so important to be aware of the signals from the unconscious. According to Freud, the royal road to the unconscious is our dreams. His main work was written on this subject--The Interpretation of Dreams, published in 1900, in which he showed that our dreams are not random. Our unconscious tries to communicate with our conscious through dreams." "Go on." "After many years of experience with patients--and not least after having analyzed his own dreams--Freud determined that all dreams are wish fulfillments. This is clearly observable in children, he said. They dream about ice cream and cherries. But in adults, the wishes that are to be fulfilled in dreams are disguised. That is because even when we sleep, censorship is at work on what we will permit ourselves. And although this censorship, or repression mechanism, is considerably weaker when we are asleep than when we are awake, it is still strong enough to cause our dreams to distort the wishes we cannot acknowledge." "Which is why dreams have to be interpreted " "Freud showed that we must distinguish between the actual dream as we recall it in the morning and the real meaning of the dream. He termed the actual dream image--that is, the 'film' or 'video' we dream--the manifest dream. This 'apparent' dream content always takes its material or scenario from the previous day. But the dream also contains a deeper meaning which is hidden from consciousness. Freud called this the latent dream thoughts, and these hidden thoughts which the dream is really about may stem from the distant past, from earliest childhood, for instance." "So we have to analyze the dream before we can understand it." "Yes, and for the mentally ill, this must be done in conjunction with the therapist. But it is not the doctor who interprets the dream. He can only do it with the help of the patient. In this situation, the doctor simply fulfills the function of a Socratic 'midwife,' assisting during the interpretation." "I see." "The actual process of converting the latent dream thoughts to the manifest dream aspect was termed by Freud the dream work. We might call it 'masking' or 'coding' what the dream is actually about. In interpreting the dream, we must go through the reverse process and unmask or decode the motif to arrive at its theme." "Can you give me an example?" "Freud's book teems with examples. But we can construct a simple and very Freudian example for ourselves. Let us say a young man dreams that he is given two balloons by his female cousin . . ." "Yes?" "Go on, try to interpret the dream yourself." "Hmm ... there is a manifest dream, just like you said: a young man gets two balloons from his female cousin." "Carry on." "You said the scenario is always from the previous day. So he had been to the fair the day before--or maybe he saw a picture of balloons in the newspaper." "It's possible, but he need only have seen the word 'balloon,' or something that reminded him of a balloon." "But what are the latent dream thoughts that the dream is really about?" "You're the interpreter." "Maybe he just wanted a couple of balloons." "No, that won't work. You're right about the dream being a wish fulfillment. But a young man would hardly have an ardent wish for a couple of balloons. And if he had, he wouldn't need to dream about them." "I think I've got it: he really wants his cousin--and the two balloons are her breasts." "Yes, that's a much more likely explanation. And it presupposes that he experienced his wish as an embarrassment." "In a way, our dreams make a lot of detours?" "Yes. Freud believed that the dream was a 'disguised fulfillment of a repressed wish.' But exactly what we have repressed can have changed considerably since Freud was a doctor in Vienna. However, the mechanism of dis-guised dream content can still be intact." "Yes, I see." "Freud's psychoanalysis was extremely important in the 1920s, especially for the treatment of certain psychiatric patients. His theory of the unconscious was also very significant for art and literature." "Artists became interested in people's unconscious mental life?" "Exactly so, although this had already become a predominant aspect of literature in the last decade of the nineteenth century--before Freud's psychoanalysis was known. It merely shows that the appearance of Freud's psychoanalysis at that particular time, the 1890s, was no coincidence." "You mean it was in the spirit of the times?" "Freud himself did not claim to have discovered phenomena such as repression, defense mechanisms, or rationalizing. He was simply the first to apply these human experiences to psychiatry. He was also a master at illustrating his theories with literary examples. But as I mentioned, from the 1920s, Freud's psychoanalysis had a more direct influence on art and literature " "In what sense?" "Poets and painters, especially the surrealists, attempted to exploit the power of the unconscious in their work." "What are surrealists?" "The word surrealism comes from the French, and means 'super realism.' In 1924 Andre Breton published a 'surrealistic manifesto,' claiming that art should come from the unconscious. The artist should thus derive the freest possible inspiration from his dream images and strive toward a 'super realism,' in which the boundaries between dream and reality were dissolved. For an artist too it can be necessary to break the censorship of the conscious and let words and images have free play." "I can see that." "In a sense, Freud demonstrated that there is an artist in everyone. A dream is, after all, a little work of art, and there are new dreams every night. In order to interpret his patients' dreams, Freud often had to work his way through a dense language of symbols--rather in the way we interpret a picture or a literary text." "And we dream every single night?" "Recent research shows that we dream for about twenty percent of our sleeping hours, that is, between one and two hours each- night. If we are disturbed during our dream phases we become nervous and irritable. This means nothing less than that everybody has an innate need to give artistic expression to his or her existential situation. After all, it is ourselves that our dreams are about We are the directors, we set up the scenario and play all the roles. A person who says he doesn't understand art doesn't know himself very well." "I see that." "Freud also delivered impressive evidence of the wonders of the human mind. His work with patients convinced him that we retain everything we have seen and experienced somewhere deep in our consciousness, and all these impressions can be brought to light again. When we experience a memory lapse, and a bit later 'have it on the tip of our tongue' and then later still 'suddenly remember it,' we are talking about something which has lain in the unconscious and suddenly slips through the half-open door to consciousness." "But it takes a while sometimes." "All artists are aware of that. But then suddenly it's as if all doors and all drawers fly open. Everything comes tumbling out by itself, and we can find all the words and images we need. This is when we have 'lifted the lid' of the unconscious. We can call it inspiration, Sophie. It feels as if what we are drawing or writing is coming from some outside source." "It must be a wonderful feeling." "But you must have experienced it yourself. You can frequently observe inspiration at work in children who are overtired. They are sometimes so extremely overtired that they seem to be wide awake. Suddenly they start telling a story--as if they are finding words they haven't yet learned. They have, though; the words and the ideas have lain 'latent' in their consciousness, but now, when all caution and all censorship have let go, they are surfacing. It can also be important for an artist not to let reason and reflection control a more or less unconscious expression. Shall I tell you a little story to illustrate this?" "Sure." "It's a very serious and a very sad story." "Okay." "Once upon a time there was a centipede that was amazingly good at dancing with all hundred legs. All the creatures of the forest gathered to watch every time the centipede danced, and they were all duly impressed by the exquisite dance. But there was one creature that didn't like watching the centipede dance--that was a tortoise." "It was probably just envious." "How can I get the centipede to stop dancing? thought the tortoise. He couldn't just say he didn't like the dance. Neither could he say he danced better himself, that would obviously be untrue. So he devised a fiendish plan." "Let's hear it." "He sat down and wrote a letter to the centipede. 'O incomparable centipede,' he wrote, 'I am a devoted admirer of your exquisite dancing. I must know how you go about it when you dance. Is it that you lift your left leg number 28 and then your right leg number 39? Or do you begin by lifting your right leg number 17 before you lift your left leg number 44? I await your answer in breathless anticipation. Yours truly, Tortoise." "How mean!" "When the centipede read the letter, she immediately began to think about what she actually did when she danced. Which leg did she lift first? And which leg next? What do you think happened in the end?" "The centipede never danced again?" "That's exactly what happened. And that's the way it goes when imagination gets strangled by reasoned deliberation." "That was a sad story." "It is important for an artist to be able to 'let go.' The surrealists tried to exploit this by putting themselves into a state where things just happened by themselves. They had a sheet of white paper in front of them and they began to write without thinking about what they wrote. They called it automatic writing. The expression originally comes from spiritualism, where a medium believed that a departed spirit was guiding the pen. But I thought we would talk more about that kind of thing tomorrow." "I'd like that." "In one sense, the surrealist artist is also a medium, that is to say, a means or a link. He is a medium of his own unconscious. But perhaps there is an element of the unconscious in every creative process, for what do we actually mean by creativity?" "I've no idea. Isn't it when you create something?" "Fair enough, and that happens in a delicate interplay between imagination and reason. But all too frequently, reason throttles the imagination, and that's serious because without imagination, nothing really new will ever be created. I believe imagination is like a Darwinian system." "I'm sorry, but that I didn't get." "Well, Darwinism holds that nature's mutants arise one after the other, but only a few of them can be used. Only some of them get the right to live." "So?" "That's how it is when we have an inspiration and get masses of new ideas. Thought-mutants occur in the consciousness one after the other, at least if we refrain from censoring ourselves too much. But only some of these thoughts can be used. Here, reason comes into its own. It, too, has a vital function. When the day's catch is laid on the table we must not forget to be selective." "That's not a bad comparison." "Imagine if everything that 'strikes us' were allowed to pass our lips! Not to speak of jumping off our notepads out of our desk drawers! The world would sink under the weight of casual impulses and no selection would have taken place." "So it's reason that chooses between all these ideas?" "Yes, don't you think so? Maybe the imagination creates what is new, but the imagination does not make the actual selection. The imagination does not 'compose.' A composition--and every work of art is one--is created in a wondrous interplay between imagination and reason, or between mind and reflection. For there will always be an element of chance in the creative process. You have to turn the sheep loose before you can start to herd them." Alberto sat quite still, staring out of the window. While he sat there, Sophie suddenly noticed a crowd of brightly colored Disney figures down by the lake. "There's Goofy," she exclaimed, "and Donald Duck and his nephews ... Look, Alberto. There's Mickey Mouse and . . ." He turned toward her: "Yes, it's very sad, child." "What do you mean?" "Here we are being made the helpless victims of the major's flock of sheep. But it's my own fault, of course. I was the one who started talking about free association of ideas." "You certainly don't have to blame yourself..." "I was going to say something about the importance of imagination to us philosophers. In order to think new thoughts, we must be bold enough to let ourselves go. But right now, he's going a bit far." "Don't worry about it." "I was about to mention the importance of reflection, and here we are, presented with this lurid imbecility. He should be ashamed of himself!" "Are you being ironic now?" "It's he who is ironic, not me. But I have one comfort--and that is the whole cornerstone of my plan." "Now I'm really confused." "We have talked about dreams. There's a touch of irony about that too. For what are we but the major's dream images?" "Ah!" "But there is still one thing he hasn't counted on." "What's that?" "Maybe he is embarrassingly aware of his own dream. He is aware of everything we say and do--just as the dreamer remembers the dream's manifest dream aspect. It is he who wields it with his pen. But even if he remembers everything we say to each other, he is still not quite awake." "What do you mean?" "He does not know the latent dream thoughts, Sophie. He forgets that this too is a disguised dream." "You are talking so strangely." "The major thinks so too. That is because he does not understand his own dream language. Let us be thankful for that. That gives us a tiny bit of elbow room, you see. And with this elbow room we shall soon fight our way out of his muddy consciousness like water voles frisking about in the sun on a summer's day." "Do you think we'll make it?" "We must. Within a couple of days I shall give you a new horizon. Then the major will no longer know where the water voles are or where they will pop up next time." "But even if we are only dream images, I am still my mother's daughter. And it's five o'clock. I have to go home to Captain's Bend and prepare for the garden party." "Hmm ... can you do me a small favor on the way home?" "What?" "Try to attract a little extra attention. Try to get the major to keep his eye on you all the way home. Try and think about him when you get home--and he'll think about you too." "What good will that do?" "Then I can carry on undisturbed with my work on the secret plan. I'm going to dive down into the major's unconscious. That's where I'll be until we meet again." 佛洛伊德    ……他内心出现那股令人讨厌的自大的冲动…… 席德夹着那本厚重的讲义夹从床上跳起来。她“砰”一声把它扔到书桌上,抓起衣服,冲进浴室,在莲蓬头下站了两分钟,然后就火速穿好衣服,跑到楼下。 “席德,早餐已经好了。” “我得先去划船。” “可是,席德……!” 她出了门,穿过花园,跑到小小的平台那儿。她把系船的绳索解开,跳进船里,在海湾里愤怒而快速地划着,直到她平静下来为止。 苏菲,我们就是这个活的星球。地球是航行在宇宙中燃烧的大阳四周的一艘大船。而我们每一个人则是满载基因航行过生命的一条小船。当我们安全地把船上的货品运到下一个港口时,我们就没有白活了……她记得这段话的每一个字。这是为她而写的,不是为了苏菲,而是为她。讲义夹里的每一个字都是爸爸为她而写的。 她把桨靠在桨架上,把它们收进来。这时船微微的在水面上摇晃,激起的涟漪轻轻拍击着船头。 她就像浮在黎乐桑海湾水面上的这条小船一样,也只不过是生命表面一个微不足道的东西。 但在这里面,苏菲和艾伯特又在哪里呢?是呀,他们会在哪里呢?她不太能够了解他们怎么可能只是她父亲脑子里的一些“电磁波”。她不能了解——当然也不愿接受——他们为何只是由一些白纸和她父亲的手提式打字机色带上的油墨所形成的东西。果真如此,那也可以说她自己只不过是一个由某一天在‘那一小摊热热的水’里突然有了生命的蛋白质复合物的集合体。可是她不止于是这样而已。她是席德。她不得不承认那个讲义夹是一份很棒的礼物,也不得不承认爸爸的确碰触到了她内心某种永恒事物的核心。 可是她不喜欢他对苏菲和艾伯特的强硬姿态。 她一定要给他一个教训,在他还没回到家之前。她觉得这是她应该为他们两人做的事。席德已经可以想象父亲在卡斯楚普机场的模样,他会像发疯似的跑来跑去。 席德现在又恢复正常了。她把船划回平台那儿,然后把它系紧。吃完早餐后她陪妈妈坐了很久,能够和别人聊聊诸如蛋是否有点太软这类平常的话题的感觉真好。 一直到那天晚上她才开始继续读下去。现在剩下已经没有几页了。 现在,又有人敲门了。 “我们把耳朵掩起来吧,”艾伯特说,“说不定敲门声就停了。” “不,我想看看是谁。” 艾伯特跟着她走到门口。 门前的台阶上站着一个光着身子的男人。他的姿态一本正经,但除了头上戴着一顶王冠以外,全身上下什么也没穿。 “如何?”他说,“你们这些人觉得朕的新衣好看吗?” 艾伯特和苏菲都惊讶得目瞪口呆,这使得那个光着身子的男人有点着急。 “怎么回事?你们居然都不向我鞠躬!”他喊道。 艾伯特鼓起勇气向他说:“确实如此。可是陛下您什么都没穿呀!” 那男人仍旧是一本正经的模样。艾伯特弯下身子在苏菲的耳朵旁悄悄说:“他以为自己很体面。” 听到这话,那男人气得吹胡子瞪眼睛。 “这里难道没有什么言论管制吗?” “很抱歉,”艾伯特说,“我们这里的人脑筋都很清醒,神智也很健全。国王陛下的穿着如此有失体面,恕我们无法让你进门。” 苏菲觉得这个光着身子的男人那副正经八百的神气模样实在荒谬,便忍不住笑了出来。她的笑声仿佛是一种事先安排好的信号一般,这时,那个头上戴着王冠的男人突然意识到自己一丝不挂,便赶紧用双手把他的重要部位遮起来,大步跑向离他最近的树丛,然后就消失无踪了,也许已经加入亚当、夏娃、诺亚、小红帽和波波熊的行列。 艾伯特和苏菲仍然站在台阶上,笑弯了腰。 最后艾伯特说:“我们还是进屋里,坐在刚才的位子上好了。我要和你谈佛洛伊德和他的潜意识理论。” 他们在窗户旁坐下来。苏菲看了看她的腕表说:“已经两点半了。在举行花园宴会前我还有很多事要做呢。” “我也是。我们再大略谈一下佛洛伊德(SigmundFreud)就好了。” “他是一个哲学家吗?” 佛洛伊德“至少我们可以说他是一个文化哲学家。佛洛伊德出生于一八五六年,在维也纳大学攻读医学。他一生中大部分时间都住在维也纳,当时那里的文化气息非常浓厚。他很早就决定专攻神经学。在十九世纪末、二十世纪初,他发展了所谓的‘深度心理学’,或称‘精神分析’。” “请你说明这些名词好吗?” “精神分析是描述一般人的内心,并治疗神经和心理失调现象的一门学问。我不想细谈佛洛伊德本人或他的著作,不过他的潜意识理论可以使我们了解人是什么。” “你把我的兴趣勾起来了。说下去。” “佛洛伊德主张人和他的环境之间不断有一种紧张关系存在。 这种紧张关系(也就是冲突)尤其存在于他的驱策力、需要和社会的要求之间。我们可以说佛洛伊德发现了人类的驱策力。这使得他成为十九世纪末明显的自然主义潮流中一个很重要的代表性人物。” “所谓人类的驱策力是什么意思?” “我们的行动并不一定是根据理性的。人其实并不像十八世纪的理性主义者所想的那么理性。非理性的冲动经常左右我们的思想、梦境和行动。这种不理性的冲动可能是反映我们的基本需求。 例如,人类的性冲动就像婴儿吸奶的本能一样是一种基本的驱策力。” “然后呢?” “这并不是什么新发现,但佛洛伊德指出这些基本需求可能会被‘伪装’或‘升华’,并在我们无从察觉的情况下主宰我们的行动。 他并且指出,婴儿也会有某种性反应。但维也纳那些高尚的中产阶级人士极为排斥这个‘婴儿性反应’的说法,佛洛伊德也因此成为一个很不受欢迎的人。” “我一点也不惊讶。” “我们称这种反应为‘维多利亚心态’,就是把每一件与性有关的事视为禁忌的一种态度。佛洛伊德在从事心理治疗时发现婴儿也会有性反应,因此他的说法是有实验根据的。他也发现有许多形式的精神失调或心理失调可以追溯到童年时期的冲突。后来他逐渐发展出一种我们称之为‘灵魂溯源学’的治疗方式。” “什么叫灵魂溯源学?” “考古学家借着挖掘古老的历史文物以找寻远古时代的遗迹。 首先他可能会找到一把十八世纪的刀子。再往地下更深处挖掘时,他可能会发现一把十四世纪的梳子,再向下挖时,可能又会找到一个第五世纪的瓮。” “然后呢?” “同样的,精神分析学家在病人的配合下,可以在病人的心灵深处挖掘,并找出那些造成病人心理失调的经验。因为根据佛洛伊德的说法,我们都会把所有经验的记忆储藏在内心深处。” “喔,我懂了。” “精神分析医师也许可以追溯病人以往的一个不幸经验。这个经验虽然被病人压抑多年,但仍然埋藏在他的内心,咬啮着他的身心。医师可以使病人再度意识到这个‘伤痛经验’,让他或她可以‘解决它’,心病自然就可以痊愈。” “听起来很有道理。” “可是我讲得大快了。我们还是先看看佛洛伊德如何形容人的心灵吧。你有没有看过刚出生的婴儿?” “我有一个呀岁大的表弟。”“当我们刚来到这世界时,我们会用一种直接而毫不感到羞耻的方式来满足我们身体与心灵的需求。如果我们没有奶喝或尿布湿了,我们就会大哭。我们也会直接表达我们对身体上的接触或温暖拥抱的需求。佛洛伊德称我们这种‘快乐原则’为‘本我’。我们在还是婴儿时,几乎就只有一个‘本我’。” “然后呢?” “我们带着我们内心的这个‘本我’或‘快乐原则’长大成人,度过一生。但逐渐地我们学会如何调整自己的需求以适应环境;我们学到如何调整这个‘快乐原则’以迁就‘现实原则’。用佛洛伊德的术语来说,我们发展出了一个具有这种调节功能的‘自我’。这时,即使我们想要或需要某个东西,我们也不能躺下来一直哭到我们得到那件东西为止。” “当然哼。” “我们可能会很想要某样外界无法接受的东西,因此我们会压抑我们的欲望。这表示我们努力要赶走这个欲望,并且将它忘记。” “喔。” “然而,佛洛伊德还提出人类心灵中的第三因素。从婴儿时期起,我们就不断面对我们的父母和社会的道德要求。当我们做错事时,我们的父母会说:‘不要那样!’或‘别调皮了,这样不好’!即使长大成人以后,我们在脑海中仍可以听到这类道德要求和价值判断的回声。似乎这世界的道德规范已经进入我们的内心,成为我们’的一部分。佛洛伊德称这部分为‘超我’。” “是否就是良心呢?” “良心是‘超我’的一部分。但佛洛伊德指出,当我们有一些‘坏的’或‘不恰当’的欲望,如色情或性的念头时,这个‘超我’会告诉我们。而就像我说过的,佛洛伊德宣称这些‘不恰当’的欲望已经在我们童年的初期就出现过了。” “怎么会呢?” “我们现在知道婴儿喜欢抚摸他们的性器官。我们在沙滩上经常可以看到这个现象。在佛洛伊德那个时代,两三岁的婴儿如果这样做,马上就会被父母打一下手,这时也许妈妈还会说:‘调皮!’或‘不要这样’!或‘把你的手放在床单上’!” “多病态呀j” “我们因此对每一件与性和性器官有关的事情有了一种罪恶感。由于这种罪恶感一直停留在超我之中,因此许多人——佛洛伊德甚至认为是大多数人——终其一生都对性有一种罪恶感。而根据佛洛伊德的说法,性的欲望和需求事实上是人类天性中很自然而且很重要的一部分。就这样,人的一生都充满了欲望与罪恶感之间的冲突。” “你难道不认为自从佛洛伊德的时代以来,这种冲突已经减少了很多?” 潜意识“确实如此。但许多佛洛伊德的病人面临非常强烈的冲突,以至于得到了佛洛伊德所谓的‘精神官能症’。举例来说,他有一个女病人偷偷爱上她的姊夫,当她的姊姊因病而死时,她心想:‘他终于可以娶我了!’可是这种想法与她的超我有了正面冲突。于是她立刻压抑这种可怕的念头。换句话说,她将这个念头埋藏在她的潜意识深处。佛洛伊德写道:‘这个年轻的女孩于是生病了,并有严重的歇斯底里的症状。当我开始治疗她时,她似乎完全忘记了她姊姊临终的情景以及她心里出现过的那个可恨的自私欲望。但经过我的分析治疗后,她记起来了,并在一种非常激动不安的状态下将那个使她致病的时刻重新演练一次。经过这种治疗,后来她就痊愈了。’” “现在我比较了解你为何说它是‘灵魂溯源学’了。” “所以我们可以了解人类一般的心理状态。在有了多年治疗病人的经验后,佛洛伊德得出一个结论:人类的意识只是他的心灵中的一小部分而已。意识就像是露在海面上的冰山顶端,在海面下,也就是在人意识之外,还有‘潜意识’的存在。” “这么说潜意识就是存在于我们的内心,但已经被我们遗忘,想不起来的事物哼?” “我们并不一定能够意识到我们曾经有过的各种经验。但那些只要我们‘用心想’便可以记起来的想法或经验,佛洛伊德称之为‘潜意识’。他所说的‘潜意识’指的是那些被我们‘压抑’的经验或想法,也就是那些我们努力要忘掉的‘不愉快’、‘不恰当’或‘丑陋’的经验。如果我们有一些不为我们的意识(或超我)所容忍的欲望或冲动,我们便会将它们埋藏起来,去掉它们。” “我懂了。” “这样的作用在所有健康的人身上都会发生。但有些人因为过度努力要把这些不愉快或禁忌的想法从意识中排除,以至于罹患了心理方面的疾病。被我们压抑的想法或经验会试图重新进入我们的意识。对于某些人来说,要把这类冲动排除在敏锐的意识之外,需要费很大的力气。一九O九年佛洛伊德在美国发表有关精神分析的演讲时,举了一个例子说明这种压抑的机转是如何作用的。” “我倒是很想听一听。” “他提到:假设在这个演讲厅这么多安安静静、专心听讲的观众里面,有一个人很不安分。他毫无礼貌地大笑,又喋喋不休,并把脚动来动去,使我无法专心演讲。后来我只好宣布我讲不下去了。 这时,你们当中有三四个大汉站起来,在一阵扭打后,把那个搅局的人架了出去。于是这个搅局者就被‘压抑’了,我因此可以继续讲下去。可是为了避免那个被赶走的人再度进来捣乱,那几位执行我的意志的先生便把他们的椅子搬到门口并坐在那儿‘防御’,以继续压抑的动作。现在,如果你们将这个场景转移到心理,把这个大厅称为‘意识’,而把大厅外面称为‘潜意识’,那么你们就可以明白‘压抑’作用的过程了。” “我同意。” “可是这个捣乱者坚持要再进来。至少那些被我们压抑的想法和冲动是这样的。这些想法不断从我们的潜意识浮现,使我们经常处于一种压力之下。这是我们为什么常常会说一些本来不想说的话或做一些本来不想做的事的缘故。因为我们的感觉和行动会受到潜意识的鼓动。” “你能不能单一个例子呢?” “佛洛伊德指出这类机转有好几种。一个是他所谓的‘说溜了嘴’,也就是我们无意中说出或做出一些我们原本想要压抑的事情。佛洛伊德举了一个例子。有一个工厂的工头有一次在宴会中要向他的老板敬酒。问题是这个老板很不受人欢迎,简直就是人家所说的‘一只猪’。” “然后呢。” “这个工头站起来,举起他的酒杯说:让我们来敬这只猪吧!” “真是不可思议。” “这个工头也吓呆了。其实他说的只是他内心的真话,但他原本没打算把它说出来的。你想不想听听另外一个例子?” “请讲。” “一位主教应邀到当地牧师家里喝茶。这位牧师有好几个乖巧有礼貌的女儿,年纪都很小。而这位主教刚好有一个超乎寻常的大鼻子。于是牧师就事先告诫他的女儿无论如何不能提到主教的鼻子,因为孩童的压抑机转还没有发展出来,因此往往会脱口而出,说一些不该说的话。后来,主教到了,这些可爱的小女孩极力克制自己不要提到他的鼻子。她们甚至不敢看它,想要忘掉它的存在。 可是她们从头到尾都想着那个鼻子。后来主教请其中一个女孩把糖递过去,于是她看着这位可敬的主教,并说:你的鼻子里放糖吗?” “真是太糟糕了!” “另外一件我们可能会做的事就是‘合理化’。意思就是说,我们自己不愿意承认,也不愿意告诉别人我们做某一件事的真正动机,因为这个动机是让人无法接受的。” “譬如说什么?” “我可以为你催眠,叫你去把窗户打开。当你被我催眠时,我告诉你当我用手指敲桌子时,你就要起来把窗户打开。接着,我开始敲打桌面,你也就跑去开窗子。事后,我问你为何要开窗户,你也许会说因为房间里大热了。可是这并不是真正的理由,只是你不愿意承认自己是因为受到了我催眠时的指令而去做那件事。这就是所谓的‘合理化’。” “嗯,我明白了。” “我们几乎每天都有这种‘两面式沟通’的经验。” “我那个四岁的表弟可能没有什么人陪他玩,所以每次我去,他总是很高兴。有一天我告诉他我得赶快回家去找我妈。你知道他说什么吗?” “他说什么?” “他说,她是笨蛋。” “嗯,这确实是一个合理化的例子。你的表弟所说的话并不是他真正的意思。他真正想说的是要你不要走,可是他太害羞了,不敢这样说。除了‘说溜嘴’和‘合理化’之外,还有一种现象叫做‘投射,。” “这是什么意思。” “就是把我们内心试图压抑的特点转移到别人身上。譬如说一个很吝啬的人会说别人斤斤计较,而一个不愿承认自己满脑子想着性的人可能愈容易对别人成天想着性的样子感到愤怒。” “嗯。” “佛洛伊德宣称,我们每天的生活里面都充满了这类潜意识的机转。我们时常会忘记某个人的名字,在说话时摸弄自己的衣服,或移动房间里随意放置的物品。我们也时常结结巴巴或看似无辜地说错话,写错字。但佛洛伊德指出,这些举动事实上并不像我们所想的那样是意外的或无心的。这些错误事实上可能正泄漏我们内心最深处的秘密。” “从现在起,我可要很小心地注意自己说的话。” “就算你真的这样做,你也无法逃避你潜意识的冲动。我们应该做的其实是不要太过努力把不愉快的记忆埋藏在潜意识中。因为那就像是试图把水鼠巢穴的入口堵住一样。水鼠一定会从其他的洞口进入花园。因此,让意识与潜意识之间的门半遮半掩事实上是一件很健康的事。” “如果你把门锁住了,可能就会得精神病,是不是这样?” “没错。精神病患就是一种大努力把‘不愉快’的记忆排除在意识之外的人。这种人往往拚命要压抑某种经验。不过他也可能很希望医生能够帮助他回到那些伤痛的记忆。” “那医生会怎么做呢?” “佛洛伊德发展出一个他称为‘自由联想’的技巧。他让病人用一种很放松的姿势躺着,并说出他脑海里想到的任何事情,无论这些事情听起来有多么不相干、漫无目的、不愉快或令人难为情。他的用意是要突破病人在伤痛记忆上所加的管制,因为这些伤痛记忆正是让病人焦虑的因素。它们一直都活跃在病人的心中,只不过不在意识当中罢了。” “是不是你愈努力去忘掉一件事情,你在潜意识里就愈容易想起这件事?” 解梦“正是如此。所以我们必须能察觉潜意识所发出的信号。根据佛洛伊德的说法,洞悉我们的潜意识的最佳途径就是透过我们的梦境。他的主要作品所讨论的就是这个题目,书名叫《梦的解析》,出版于一九OO年。他在书中指出,我们做的梦并不是偶然的。我们的潜意识试图透过梦和我们的意识沟通。” “真的呀?” “在治疗病患多年,并且多次分析他自己的梦境之后,佛洛伊德断言所有的梦都反映我们本身的愿望。他说,这在孩童身上非常明显。他们会梦见冰淇淋和樱桃。可是在大人身上,这些想要在梦中实现的愿望都会经过伪装。这是因为即使在睡梦中,我们仍然会管制自己的想法。虽然这种管制(就是压抑的机转)在我们睡着时会减弱很多,但仍然足以使我们不愿承认的愿望在梦中受到扭曲。” “所以梦才有必要加以解析。” “佛洛伊德指出,我们必须了解我们梦中的情节并不代表梦的真正意义。他把实际的梦境——也就是我们所梦见的‘影片’或‘录影带’——称为‘显梦’(manifestdream)。梦中的情景总是与前一天发生的事有关。但这个梦也有一个更深层的意义是我们的意识无法察觉的。佛洛伊德称之为潜梦意念。这些真正表现于梦境的隐藏意念可能来自很久很久以前,也许是从童年最早的时期。” “所以我们要先分析梦,才能了解梦。” “没错。若是精神病患,则必须和治疗师一起做这件工作。不过,医师并不负责解析病患的梦,他只能在病人的配合之下做这件事。在这种情况下,医师扮演的角色正像苏格拉底所说的‘助产士’一般,协助病人解析自己的梦。” “我明白了。” “把潜梦意念转换成显梦的面向的工作,佛洛伊德称之为‘梦的运作’(dreamwork)。我们可以说显梦‘遮掩’或‘密隐’了做梦人真正的意念。在解释梦境时,我们必须经由相反的程序来‘揭开’或‘解密’梦的‘主题’,以便找出它的要旨。” “你可以举个例子吗?” “佛洛伊德在书中举了许多例子。不过我们可以自己单一个简单的、非常佛洛伊德式的例子。假设有一个年轻人梦见他的表妹给他两个气球……” “然后呢?” “该你啦,你试试看能不能解这个梦。” “唔……就像你说的,这里的显梦是:一个年轻人的表妹给他两个气球。” “然后呢?” “你说梦中的情境总是与前一天所发生的事有关。因此他前一天可能去参加了一个展览会,或者他可能在报纸上看了一张有关气球的照片。” “有可能是这样,不过他也可能只是看了‘气球’这个字,或一件使他想起气球的事物。” “可是这个梦的‘潜梦意念’到底是什么?” “你是解梦人呀]” “也许他只是想要两三个气球。” “不,不是这样。当然在梦中人往往可以实现自己的愿望,这点你说对了。可是一个年轻人很少会热切的想要几个气球。就算他想要,他也不需要靠做梦的方式。” “我想我懂了:他真正想要的是他的表妹,而那两个气球就是她的胸部。” “对了,这样的解释比较有可能。而且这一定是在他对自己的愿望觉得很难为情的情况下才会做这种梦。” “所以说我们的梦经常是迂回曲折的?” “对。佛洛伊德相信梦境乃是‘以伪装的方式满足人被压抑的愿望’。不过佛洛伊德只是当年维也纳的一个医生,因此到了现在我们实际压抑的事情可能已经改变了很多。不过他所说的梦中情节会经过伪装的机转可能仍然成立。” “嗯,我懂了。” “佛洛伊德的精神分析在一九二O年极为重要,尤其是在精神病患的治疗方面。他的潜意识理论对于艺术与文学也有很大的影响。” “艺术家是不是开始对人们潜意识的精神生活有兴趣了?” “没错,虽然在十九世纪最后十年,佛洛伊德还没有发表他的精神分析理论时,所谓的意识流就已经成为主要的文学潮流。这显示佛洛伊德在一八九O午开始使用精神分析方法并不是偶然的。” “你的意思是那是当时的时代风气吗?” “佛洛伊德本人并未宣称‘压抑’、‘防卫机转’和‘合理化’这些现象是他‘发明’的。他只是第一个把人类的这些经验应用在精神病学上的人罢了。他也是一个擅用文学的例子来说明他的理论的大师。不过我说过了,从一九二O年开始,佛洛伊德的精神分析对艺术和文学产生了更直接的影响。” “怎么说呢?” “诗人与画家,尤其是那些超现实主义者,开始试图将潜意识的力量用在他们的作品中。” “什么是超现实主义者?” “超现实主义这个名词是从法文而来,意思是‘超越现实’。一九二四年时,布烈顿(AndreBreton)发表了一篇《超现实主义者宣言》,主张艺术应该来自潜意识,艺术家应该从他的梦境中自由撷取灵感,并努力迈向‘超越现实’的境界,以跨越梦与现实之间的界限。同时艺术家也有必要挣脱意识的管制,尽情挥洒文字和意象。” “嗯。” “就某方面来说,佛洛伊德已经告诉我们其实每一个人都是艺术家。毕竟,梦也可以算是艺术作品,而每天晚上我们都会做新的梦。为了要解释病人的梦,佛洛伊德经常必须解释许多象征符号的意义,就像我们诠释一幅画或一篇文学作品一样。” “我们每天晚上都会做梦吗?” “最近的研究显示,我们睡着后,有百分之二十的时间都在做梦,也就是说每晚做梦两到三个小时。如果我们在睡眠的各个阶段受到打扰,我们就会变得烦躁易怒。这正表示每一个人内心都需要以艺术的形式来表达他或她存在的情况。毕竟我们的梦是与自己有关的。我们既是导演,也是编剧和演员。一个说他不了解艺术的人显然并不十分了解自己。” “我懂了。” “佛洛伊德并且提出了令人印象深刻的证据,说明人心的奥妙。他治疗病人的经验使他相信,我们将我们所见、所经验的一切事物都贮存在我们意识深处的某个地方,而这些印象可能会再度浮现。有时我们会突然‘脑中一片空白’,然后过了一会,‘差点就想起来了’,然后再度‘猛然想起’。这就是原本存在于潜意识的东西突然经由那扇半开半掩的门溜进我们意识的例子。” “可是有时需要花好久的时间。” 灵感“所有的艺术家都有这种经验。可是后来突然间好像所有的门、所有的抽屉都打开了,每个东西都自己滚了出来,这时我们就可以发现所有我们原本苦思不得的字句和意象。这就是潜意识的‘盖子’被揭开了。我们也可以称之为灵感。感觉上好像我们所画的、所写的东西是来自于某种外在的泉源似的。” “这种感觉一定很美妙。” “可是你一定也有过这样的经验。这种现象经常出现于那些过度疲累的儿童身上。他们有时玩得太累了,因此在睡觉时似平是完全清醒的。突然间他们开始说故事,而且所说的话仿佛是他们还没有学过的。事实上,他们已经学过了。只是这些字眼和意念‘潜藏’在他们的潜意识中,而当所有的防备和管制都放松时,它们就浮现出来了。对于艺术家而言,不要让理性或思维压制潜意识的表达是很重要的。有一个小故事可以说明这点,你要不要听?” “当然要啦。” “这是一个非常严肃、非常哀伤的故事。” “说吧。” “从前有一只蜈蚣,可以用它那一百只脚跳出非常美妙的舞蹈。每次它跳舞,森林中所有的动物都会跑来观赏。大家对它那美妙的舞姿都印象深刻。可是有一只动物并不喜欢看蜈蚣跳舞,那就是乌龟。” “它大概是嫉妒吧。” “乌龟心想,我要怎样才能阻止蜈蚣跳舞呢?它不能明说它不喜欢看蜈蚣跳舞,也不能说自己跳得比较好,因为那是不可能的。 因此它想了一个很恶毒的计划。” “什么计划?” “它坐下来写了一封信给蜈蚣,说:‘喔,伟大的蜈蚣呀,我对你精湛的舞艺真是佩服极了。我很想知道你是怎么跳的。你是不是先举起你的第二十八号左脚再举起你的第三十号右脚?还是你先举起你的第十七号右脚,再举起你的第四十四号右脚?我热切地期待你的回信。崇拜你的乌龟敬上。,” “真是鬼话!” “蜈蚣读了信以后,马上开始思索自己是怎么跳的。它到底先举起哪一只脚?然后又举起哪一只脚?你猜后来发生了什么事?” “蜈蚣从此不再跳舞了?” “正是如此。这就是理性的思考扼杀想象力的例子。” “这真是一个悲哀的故事。” “所以一个艺术家一定要能够‘放得开’。超现实主义者就利用这点,而让事情自己发生。他们在自己的前面放了一张白纸,然后开始不假思索地写下一些东西。他们称之为‘自动写作’。这个名词源自招魂术,因为实施招魂术的灵媒相信已逝者的灵魂会指引她手上的笔。不过这些事情我们还是等到明天再说好了。” “好吧。” “从某个角度来说,超现实主义者也是一个灵媒,也就是说他是一个媒介。我们可以说他是他自己的潜意识的灵媒。事实上也许每一种创作都带有潜意识的成分。因为,我们所谓的创作究竟是什么意思?” “我不知道。创作不就是你创造出某个东西吗?” “差不多。创作的过程就是想象与理性的细密交织的时刻,只是人的理性常常阻塞了想象力。这可不是一件小事,因为如果没有想象力,我们就永远不可能创造出什么新的事物。我认为想象力就像是一个达尔文的系统。” “很抱歉,我实在不懂你的意思。” “达尔文主义主张,大自然的突变物相继出现,但其中只有一些能用。只有一些能够活下去。” “然后呢?” “我们透过灵感所得到的许许多多新想法也是一样。如果我们不过分管制自己,这些‘思想的突变物’就会在我们的意识中接二连三地发生。但其中只有一些想法是可行的。这时,理智就派上用场了。因为它有一个重要的功能。打个比方,当我们把一天的收获摊在桌上时,我们必须加以挑选。” “这个比喻挺不赖的。” “你可以想象如果我们任由自己说出或写出那些我们所想到(进入我们的脑波)的事,情况会变得怎么样呢?这世界会因为这许多偶然的冲动而毁灭,因为所有的想法都没有经过拣选。” “那么我们是靠理智来加以拣选啰?” “对。你不认为是这样吗?想象力也许可以创造新的事物,但却不能加以拣选。想象力是不会‘创作’的。一个创作(每一个艺术作品都是创作)乃是想象力和理智或心灵与思想)之间互相奇妙作用的结果。因为,创造的过程总是会有一些偶然的成分。你必须要先‘放羊’,然后才能‘牧羊’。” 艾伯特静静地坐在那儿,凝视着窗外。这时苏菲看到湖边有一群人正在互相推挤。那是迪斯尼乐园里各种五颜六色的卡通人物。 “那是高飞狗,”她大喊,“还有唐老鸭和它的侄子们……嘿,艾伯特,你有没有在听我说话呀?还有米老鼠……” 艾伯特转向她:“是的,孩子,这是很可悲的。” “你是什么意思?” “我们已经变成少校的羊群中两个无助的受害者。当然,这是我自己的错。是我自己开始谈论自由联想的概念的。” “你一点都不需要责怪自己呀……” “我刚才正要说想象力对于我们哲学家的重要性。为了产生新的思想,我们必须大胆地放开自己。可是现在,情况已经有点过火了。” “别担心。” “我刚才也正要提到思维的重要性,但他却在这里玩这些愚蠢之至的把戏。他真应该觉得惭愧。” “你又在反讽了吗?” “反讽的是他,不是我。可是有一点使我感到安慰,而这一点正是我的计划的基础。” “你真的把我弄糊涂了。” “我们已经谈过了梦,梦也有一些反讽的意味。因为,我们除了是少校的梦里的意象之外,什么也不是了呀。” “啊!” “可是有一件事是他没有想到的。” “什么事?” “也许他已经很难为情地意识到了自己的梦。他知道我们所说、所做的每一件事,就像做梦的人记得梦里的情节一样,因为舞动笔杆的人是他。但就算他记得我们之间所说的每一句话,他也不是完全清醒的。” “这话怎么说呢?” “他并不知道他的潜梦意念,他忘记了这也是一个经过伪装的梦。” “你说的话好奇怪呀。” “少校也是这么想,这是因为他不明白自己梦的语言。我们应该感到庆幸,因为这样我们才能有一些发挥的空间。有了这样的空间以后,我们不久就能够冲出他那混乱的意识,就像水鼠在夏日的阳光下欢快地跳跃一样。” “你认为我们会成功吗?” “我们非这样做不可。过两三天会让你大开眼界。到时候少校就不会知道那些水鼠在哪里,或者他们下次什么时候会冒出来了。” “可是就算我们只是梦中的人物,我还是我妈的女儿。现在已经五点了,我得回家去筹备花园宴会了。” “嗯……你在回家的路上可不可以帮我一个小忙?” “什么忙?” “请你试着吸引别人的注意力,让少校的眼睛一路盯着你回家。当你到家时,请你努力想着他,这样他也会想着你。” “这有什么好处呢?” “这样我就可以不受干扰地进行我的秘密计划。我要潜进少校的潜意识,一直到下次我们再见面以前,我都会在那儿。” Our Own Time ... man is condemned to be free The alarm clock showed 11:55 p.m. Hilde lay staring at the ceiling. She tried to let her associations flow freely. Each time she finished a chain of thoughts, she tried to ask herself why. Could there be something she was trying to repress? If only she could have set aside all censorship, she might have slid into a waking dream. A bit scary, she thought. The more she relaxed and opened herself to random thoughts and images, the more she felt as if she was in the major's cabin by the little lake in the woods. What could Alberto be planning? Of course, it was Hilde's father planning that Alberto was planning something. Did he already know what Alberto would do? Perhaps he was trying to give himself free rein, so that whatever happened in the end would come as a surprise to him too. There were not many pages left now. Should she take a peek at the last page? No, that would be cheating. And besides, Hilde was convinced that it was far from decided what was to happen on the last page. Wasn't that a curious thought? The ring binder was right here and her father could not possibly get back in time to add anything to it. Not unless Alberto did something on his own. A surprise ... Hilde had a few surprises up her own sleeve, in any case. Her father did not control her. But was she in full control of herself? What was consciousness? Wasn't it one of the greatest riddles of the universe? What was memory? What made us "remember" everything we had seen and experienced? What kind of mechanism made us create fabulous dreams night after night? She closed her eyes from time to time. Then she opened them and stared at the ceiling again. At last she forgot to open them. She was asleep. When the raucous scream of a seagull woke her, Hilde got out of bed. As usual, she crossed the room to the window and stood looking out across the bay. It had gotten to be a habit, summer and winter. As she stood there, she suddenly felt a myriad of colors exploding in her head. She remembered what she had dreamt. But it felt like more than an ordinary dream, with its vivid colors and shapes ... She had dreamt that her father came home from Lebanon, and the whole dream was an extension of Sophie's dream when she found the gold crucifix on the dock. Hilde was sitting on the edge of the dock--exactly as in Sophie's dream. Then she heard a very soft voice whispering, "My name is Sophie!" Hilde had stayed where she was, sitting very still, trying to hear where the voice was coming from. It continued, an almost inaudible rustling, as if an insect were speaking to her: "You must be both deaf and blind!" Just then her father had come into the garden in his UN uniform. "Hilde!" he shouted. Hilde ran up to him and threw her arms around his neck. That's where the dream ended. She remembered some lines of a poem by Arnulf 0verland: Wakened one night by a curious dreamand a voice that seemed to be speaking to melike a far-off subterranean stream,I rose and asked: What do you want of me? She was still standing at the window when her mother came in. "Hi there! Are you already awake?" "I'm not sure..." "I'll be home around four, as usual." "Okay, Mom." "Have a nice vacation day, Hilde!" "You have a good day too." When she heard her mother slam the front door, she slipped back into bed with the ring binder. "I'm going to dive down into the major's unconscious. That's where I'll be until we meet again." There, yes. Hilde started reading again. She could feel under her right index finger that there were only a few pages left. When Sophie left the major's cabin, she could still see some of the Disney figures at the water's edge, but they seemed to dissolve as she approached them. By the time she reached the boat they had all disappeared. While she was rowing she made faces, and after she had pulled the boat up into the reeds on the other side she waved her arms about. She was working desperately to hold the major's attention so that Alberto could sit undisturbed in the cabin. She danced along the path, hopping and skipping. Then she tried walking like a mechanical doll. To keep the major interested she began to sing as well. At one point she stood still, pondering what Alberta's plan could be. Catching herself, she got such a bad conscience that she started to climb a tree. Sophie climbed as high as she could. When she was nearly at the top, she realized she could not get down. She decided to wait a little before trying again. But meanwhile she could not just stay quietly where she was. Then the major would get tired of watching her and would begin to interest himself in what Alberto was doing. Sophie waved her arms, tried to crow like a rooster a couple of times, and finally began to yodel. It was the first time in her fifteen-year-old life that Sophie had yodeled. All things considered, she was quite pleased with the result. She tried once more to climb down but she was truly stuck. Suddenly a huge goose landed on one of the branches Sophie was clinging to. Having recently seen a whole swarm of Disney figures, Sophie was not in the least surprised when the goose began to speak. "My name is Morten," said the goose. "Actually, I'm a tame goose, but on this special occasion I have flown up from Lebanon with the wild geese. You look as if you could use some help getting down from this tree." "You are much too small to help me," said Sophie. "You are jumping to conclusions, young lady. It is you who are too big." "It's the same thing, isn't it?" "I would have you know I carried a peasant boy exactly your age all over Sweden. His name was Nils Hol-gersson." "I am fifteen." "And Nils was fourteen. A year one way or the other makes no difference to the freight." "How did you manage to lift him?" "I gave him a little slap and he passed out. When he woke up, he was no bigger than a thumb." "Perhaps you could give me a little slap too, because I can't sit up here forever. And I'm giving a philosophical garden party on Saturday." "That's interesting. I presume this is a philosophy book, then. When I was flying over Sweden with Nils Holgers-son, we touched down on Marbacka in Varmland, where Nils met an old woman who was planning to write a book about Sweden for schoolchildren. It was to be both instructive and true, she said. When she heard about Nils's adventures, she decided to write a book about all the things he had seen on gooseback." "That was very strange." "To tell you the truth it was rather ironic, because we were already in that book." Suddenly Sophie felt something slap her cheek and the next minute she had become no bigger than a thumb. The tree was like a whole forest and the goose was as big as a horse. "Come on, then," said the goose. Sophie walked along the branch and climbed up on the goose's back. Its feathers were soft, but now that she was so small, they pricked her more than they tickled. As soon as she had settled comfortably the goose took off. They flew high above the treetops. Sophie looked down at the lake and the major's cabin. Inside sat Al-berto, laying his devious plans. "A short sightseeing tour will have to be sufficient today," said the goose, flapping its wings again and again. With that, it flew in to land at the foot of the tree which Sophie had so recently begun to climb. As the goose touched down Sophie tumbled onto the ground. After rolling around in the heather a few times, she sat up. She realized with amazement that she was her full size again. The goose waddled around her a few times. "Thanks a lot for your help," said Sophie. "It was a mere bagatelle. Did you say this was a philosophy book?" "No, that's what you said." "Oh well, it's all the same. If it had been up to me, I would have liked to fly you through the whole history of philosophy just as I flew Nils Holgersson through Sweden. We could have circled over Miletus and Athens, Jerusalem and Alexandria, Rome and Florence, London and Paris, Jena and Heidelberg, Berlin and Copenhagen . . ." "Thanks, that's enough." "But flying across the centuries would have been a hefty job even for a very ironic goose. Crossing the Swedish provinces is far easier." So saying, the goose ran a few steps and flapped itself into the air. Sophie was exhausted, but when she crawled out of the den into the garden a little later she thought Alberto would have been well pleased with her diversionary maneuvers. The major could not have thought much about Alberto during the past hour. If he did, he had to have a severe case of split personality. Sophie had just walked in the front door when her mother came home from work. That saved her having to describe her rescue from a tall tree by a tame goose. After dinner they began to get everything ready for the garden party. They brought a four-meter-long table top and trestles from the attic and carried it into the garden. They had planned to set out the long table under the fruit trees. The last time they had used the trestle table had been on Sophie's parents' tenth anniversary. Sophie was only eight years old at the time, but she clearly remembered the big outdoor party with all their friends and relatives. The weather report was as good as it could be. There had not been as much as a drop of rain since that horrid thunderstorm the day before Sophie's birthday. Nevertheless they decided to leave the actual table setting and decorating until Saturday morning. Later that evening they baked two different kinds of bread. They were going to serve chicken and salad. And sodas. Sophie was worried that some of the boys in her class would bring beer. If there was one thing she was afraid of it was trouble. As Sophie was going to bed, her mother asked her once again if Alberto was coming to the party. "Of course he's coming. He has even promised to do a philosophical trick." "A philosophical trick? What kind of trick is that?" "No idea ... if he were a magician, he would have done a magic trick. He would probably have pulled a white rabbit out of a hat. . ." "What, again?" "But since he's a philosopher, he's going to do a philosophical trick instead. After all, it is a philosophical garden party. Are you planning to do something too?" "Actually, I am." "A speech?" "I'm not telling. Good night, Sophie!" Early the next morning Sophie was woken up by her mother, who came in to say goodbye before she went to work. She gave Sophie a list of last-minute things to buy in town for the garden party. The minute her mother had left the house, the telephone rang. It was Alberto. He had obviously found out exactly when Sophie was home alone. "How is your secret coming along?" "Ssh! Not a word. Don't even give him the chance to think about it." "I think I held his attention yesterday " "Good." "Is the philosophy course finished?" "That's why I'm calling. We're already in our own century. From now on you should be able to orient yourself on your own. The foundations were the most important. But we must nevertheless meet for a short talk about our own time " "But I have to go to town . . " "That's excellent. I said it was our own time we had to talk about." "Really?" "So it would be most practical to meet in town, I mean." "Shall I come to your place?" "No, no, not here Everything's a mess. I've been hunting for hidden microphones." "Ah!" "There's a cafe that's just opened at the Main Square. Cafe Pierre. Do you know it?" "Yes. When shall I be there?" "Can we meet at twelve?" "Okay. Bye!" At a couple of minutes past twelve Sophie walked into Cafe Pierre. It was one of those new fashionable places with little round tables and black chairs, upturned vermouth bottles in dispensers, baguettes, and sandwiches. The room was small, and the first thing Sophie noticed was that Alberto was not there. A lot of other people were sitting at the round tables, but Sophie saw only that Alberto was not among them. She was not in the habit of going into cafes on her own. Should she just turn around and leave, and come back later to see if he had arrived? She ordered a cup of lemon tea at the marble bar and sat down at one of the vacant tables. She stared at the door. People came and went all the time, but there was still no Alberto. If only she had a newspaper! As time passed, she started to look around. She got a couple of glances in return. For a moment Sophie felt like a young woman. She was only fifteen, but she could certainly have passed for seventeen--or at least, sixteen and a half. She wondered what all these people thought about being alive. They looked as though they had simply dropped in, as though they had just sat down here by chance. They were all talking away, gesticulating vehemently, but it didn't look as though they were talking about anything that mattered. She suddenly came to think of Kierkegaard, who had said that what characterized the crowd most was their idle chatter. Were all these people living at the aesthetic stage? Or was there something that was existentially important to them? In one of his early letters to her Alberto had talked about the similarity between children and philosophers. She realized again that she was afraid of becoming an adult. Suppose she too ended up crawling deep down into the fur of the white rabbit that was pulled out of the universe's top hat! She kept her eyes on the door. Suddenly Alberto walked in. Although it was midsummer, he was wearing a black beret and a gray hip-length coat of herringbone tweed. He hurried over to her. It felt very strange to meet him in public. "It's quarter past twelve!" "It's what is known as the academic quarter of an hour. Would you like a snack?" He sat down and looked into her eyes. Sophie shrugged. "Sure. A sandwich, maybe." Alberto went up to the counter. He soon returned with a cup of coffee and two baguette sandwiches with cheese and ham. "Was it expensive?" "A bagatelle, Sophie." "Do you have any excuse at all for being late?" "No. I did it on purpose. I'll explain why presently." He took a few large bites of his sandwich. Then he said: "Let's talk about our own century." "Has anything of philosophical interest happened?" "Lots ... movements are going off in all directions We'll start with one very important direction, and that is existentialism. This is a collective term for several philosophical currents that take man's existential situation as their point of departure. We generally talk of twentieth-century existential philosophy. Several of these existential philosophers, or existentialists, based their ideas not only on Kierkegaard, but on Hegel and Marx as well." "Uh-huh." "Another important philosopher who had a great influence on the twentieth century was the German Friedrich Nietzsche, who lived from 1844 to 1900. He, too, reacted against Hegel's philosophy and the German 'historicism.' He proposed life itself as a counterweight to the anemic interest in history and what he called the Christian 'slave morality.' He sought to effect a 'revaluation of all values,' so that the life force of the strongest should not be hampered by the weak. According to Nietzsche, both Christianity and traditional philosophy had turned away from the real world and pointed toward 'heaven' or 'the world of ideas.' But what had hitherto been considered the 'real' world was in fact a pseudo world. 'Be true to the world,' he said. 'Do not listen to those who offer you supernatural expectations.' " "So ... ?" "A man who was influenced by both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche was the German existential philosopher Martin Heidegger. But we are going to concentrate on the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, who lived from 1905 to 1980. He was the leading light among the existentialists--at least, to the broader public. His existentialism became especially popular in the forties, just after the war. Later on he allied himself with the Marxist movement in France, but he never became a member of any party." "Is that why we are meeting in a French cafe?" "It was not quite accidental, I confess. Sartre himself spent a lot of time in cafes. He met his life-long companion Simone de Beauvoir in a cafe. She was also an existential philosopher." "A woman philosopher?" "That's right." "What a relief that humanity is finally becoming civilized." "Nevertheless, many new problems have arisen in our own time." "You were going to talk about existentialism." "Sartre said that 'existentialism is humanism.' By that he meant that the existentialists start from nothing but humanity itself. I might add that the humanism he was referring to took a far bleaker view of the human situation than the humanism we met in the Renaissance." "Why was that?" "Both Kierkegaard and some of this century's existential philosophers were Christian. But Sartre's allegiance was to what we might call an atheistic existentialism. His philosophy can be seen as a merciless analysis of the human situation when 'God is dead.' The expression 'God is dead' came from Nietzsche." "Go on." "The key word in Sartre's philosophy, as in Kierkegaard's, is 'existence.' But existence did not mean the same as being alive. Plants and animals are also alive, they exist, but they do not have to think about what it implies. Man is the only living creature that is conscious of its own existence. Sartre said that a material thing is simply 'in itself,' but mankind is 'for itself.' The being of man is therefore not the same as the being of things." "I can't disagree with that." "Sartre said that man's existence takes priority over whatever he might otherwise be. The fact that I exist takes priority over what I am. 'Existence takes priority over essence.' " "That was a very complicated statement." "By essence we mean that which something consists of--the nature, or being, of something. But according to Sartre, man has no such innate 'nature.' Man must therefore create himself. He must create his own nature or 'essence,' because it is not fixed in advance." "I think I see what you mean." "Throughout the entire history of philosophy, philosophers have sought to discover what man is--or what human nature is. But Sartre believed that man has no such eternal 'nature' to fall back on. It is therefore useless to search for the meaning of life in general. We are condemned to improvise. We are like actors dragged onto the stage without having learned our lines, with no script and no prompter to whisper stage directions to us. We must decide for ourselves how to live." "That's true, actually. If one could just look in the Bible--or in a philosophy book--to find out how to live, it would be very practical." "You've got the point. When people realize they are alive and will one day die--and there is no meaning to cling to--they experience angst, said Sartre. You may recall that angst, a sense of dread, was also characteristic of Kierkegaard's description of a person in an existential situation." "Yes." "Sartre says that man feels a//en in a world without meaning. When he describes man's 'alienation,' he is echoing the central ideas of Hegel and Marx. Man's feeling of alienation in the world creates a sense of despair, boredom, nausea, and absurdity." "It is quite normal to feel depressed, or to feel that everything is just too boring." "Yes, indeed. Sartre was describing the twentieth-century city dweller. You remember that the Renaissance humanists had drawn attention, almost triumphantly, to man's freedom and independence? Sartre experienced man's freedom as a curse. 'Man is condemned to be free,' he said. 'Condemned because he has not created himself--and is nevertheless free. Because having once been hurled into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.' " "But we haven't asked to be created as free individuals." "That was precisely Sartre's point. Nevertheless we are free individuals, and this freedom condemns us to make choices throughout our lives. There are no eternal values or norms we can adhere to, which makes our choices even more significant. Because we are totally responsible for everything we do. Sartre emphasized that man must never disclaim the responsibility for his actions. Nor can we avoid the responsibility of making our own choices on the grounds that we 'must' go to work, or we 'must' live up to certain middle-class expectations regarding how we should live. Those who thus slip into the anonymous masses will never be other than members of the impersonal flock, having fled from themselves into self-deception. On the other hand our freedom obliges us to make something of ourselves, to live 'authentically' or 'truly.' " "Yes, I see." "This is not least the case as regards our ethical choices. We can never lay the blame on 'human nature,' or 'human frailty' or anything like that. Now and then it happens that grown men behave like pigs and then blame it on 'the old Adam.' But there is no 'old Adam.' He is merely a figure we clutch at to avoid taking responsibility for our own actions." "There ought to be a limit to what man can be blamed for." "Although Sartre claimed there was no innate meaning to life, he did not mean that nothing mattered. He was not what we call a nihilist." "What is that?" "That is a person who thinks nothing means anything and everything is permissible. Sartre believed that life must have meaning. It is an imperative. But it is we ourselves who must create this meaning in our own lives. To exist is to create your own life." "Could you elaborate on that?" /"Sartre tried to prove that consciousness in itself is nothing until it has perceived something. Because consciousness is always conscious of something. And this 'something' is provided just as much by ourselves as by our surroundings. We are partly instrumental in deciding what we perceive by selecting what is significant for us." "Could you give me an example?" "Two people can be present in the same room and yet experience it quite differently. This is because we contribute our own meaning--or our own interests--when we perceive our surroundings. A woman who is pregnant might think she sees other pregnant women everywhere she looks. That is not because there were no pregnant women before, but because now that she is pregnant she sees the world through different eyes. An escaped convict may see policemen everywhere ..." "Mm, I see." "Our own lives influence the way we perceive things in the room. If something is of no interest to me, I don't see it. So now I can perhaps explain why I was late to-day." "It was on purpose, right?" "Tell me first of all what you saw when you came in here." "The first thing I saw was that you weren't here." "Isn't it strange that the first thing you noticed was something that was absent?" "Maybe, but it was you I was supposed to meet." "Sartre uses just such a cafe visit to demonstrate the way we 'annihilate' whatever is irrelevant for us." "You got here late just to demonstrate that?" "To enable you to understand this central point in Sartre's philosophy, yes. Call it an exercise." "Get out of here!" "If you were in love, and were waiting for your loved one to call you, you might 'hear' him not calling you all evening. You arrange to meet him at the train; crowds of people are milling about on the platform and you can't see him anywhere. They are all in the way, they are unimportant to you. You might find them aggravating, un-pleasant even. They are taking up far too much room. The only thing you register is that he is not there." "How sad." "Simone de Beauvoir attempted to apply existentialism to feminism. Sartre had already said that man has no basic 'nature' to fall back on. We create ourselves." "Really?" "This is also true of the way we perceive the sexes. Simone de Beauvoir denied the existence of a basic 'female nature' or 'male nature.' For instance, it has been generally claimed that man has a 'transcending,' or achieving, nature. He will therefore seek meaning and direction outside the home. Woman has been said to have the opposite life philosophy. She is 'immanent,' which means she wishes to be where she is. She will therefore nurture her family, care for the environment and more homely things. Nowadays we might say that women are more concerned with 'feminine values' than men." "Did she really believe that?" "You weren't listening to me. Simone de Beauvoir in fact did not believe in the existence of any such 'female nature' or 'male nature.' On the contrary, she believed that women and men must liberate themselves from such ingrown prejudices or ideals." "I agree." "Her main work, published in 1949, was called The Second Sex." "What did she mean by that?" "She was talking about women. In our culture women are treated as the second sex. Men behave as if they are the subjects, treating women like their objects, thus depriving them of the responsibility for their own life." "She meant we women are exactly as free and independent as we choose to be?" "Yes, you could put it like that. Existentialism also had a great influence on literature, from the forties to the present day, especially on drama. Sartre himself wrote plays as well as novels. Other important writers were the Frenchman Albert Camus, the Irishman Samuel Beckett, Eugene lonesco, who was from Romania, and Witold Gombro-wicz from Poland. Their characteristic style, and that of many other modern writers, was what we call absurdism. The term is especially used about the 'theater of the absurd.' " "Ah." "Do you know what we mean by the 'absurd'?" "Isn't it something that is meaningless or irrational?" "Precisely. The theater of the absurd represented a contrast to realistic theater. Its aim was to show the lack of meaning in life in order to get the audience to disagree. The idea was not to cultivate the meaningless. On the contrary. But by showing and exposing the absurd in ordinary everyday situations, the onlookers are forced to seek a truer and more essential life for themselves." "It sounds interesting." "The theater of the absurd often portrays situations that are absolutely trivial. It can therefore also be called a kind of 'hyperrealism.' People are portrayed precisely as they are. But if you reproduce on stage exactly what goes on in the bathroom on a perfectly ordinary morning in a perfectly ordinary home, the audience would laugh. Their laughter could be interpreted as a defense mechanism against seeing themselves lampooned on stage." "Yes, exactly." "The absurd theater can also have certain surrealistic features. Its characters often find themselves in highly unrealistic and dreamlike situations. When they accept this without surprise, the audience is compelled to react in surprise at the characters' lack of surprise. This was how Charlie Chaplin worked in his silent movies. The comic effect in these silent movies was often Chaplin's laconic acceptance of all the absurd things that happen to him. That compelled the audience to look into themselves for something more genuine and true." "It's certainly surprising to see what people put up with without protesting." "At times it can be right to feel: This is something I must get away from--even though I don't have any idea where to go." "If the house catches fire you just have to get out, even if you don't have any other place to live." "That's true. Would you like another cup of tea? Or a Coke maybe?" "Okay. But I still think you were silly to be late." "I can live with that." Alberto came back with a cup of espresso and a Coke. Meanwhile Sophie had begun to like the cafe ambience. She was also beginning to think that the conversations at the other tables might not be as trivial as she had supposed them to be. Alberto banged the Coke bottle down on the table with a thud. Several people at the other tables looked up. "And that brings us to the end of the road," he said. "You mean the history of philosophy stops with Sartre and existentialism?" "No, that would be an exaggeration. Existentialist philosophy has had radical significance for many people all over the world. As we saw, its roots reach far back in history through Kierkegaard and way back to Socrates. The twentieth century has also witnessed a blossoming and a renewal of the other philosophical currents we have discussed." "Like what?" "Well, one such current is Neo-Thomism, that is to say ideas which belong to the tradition of Thomas Aquinas. Another is the so-called analytical philosophy or logical empiricism, with roots reaching back to Hume and British empiricism, and even to the logic of Aristotle. Apart from these, the twentieth century has naturally also been influenced by what we might call Neo-Marxism in a myriad of various trends. We have already talked about Neo-Darwinism and the significance of psychoanalysis." "Yes." "We should just mention a final current, materialism, which also has historical roots. A lot of current science can be traced back to the efforts of the pre-Socratics. For example, the search for the indivisible 'elemental particle' of which all matter is composed. No one has yet been able to give a satisfactory explanation of what 'matter' is. Modern sciences such as nuclear physics and biochemistry are so fascinated by the problem that for many people it constitutes a vital part of their life's philosophy." "The new and the old all jumbled together . . ." "Yes. Because the very questions we started our course with are still unanswered. Sartre made an important observation when he said that existential questions cannot be answered once and for all. A philosophical question is by definition something that each generation, each individual even, must ask over and over again." "A bleak thought." "I'm not sure I agree. Surely it is by asking such questions that we know we are alive. And moreover, it has always been the case that while people were seeking answers to the ultimate questions, they have discovered clear and final solutions to many other problems. Science, research, and technology are all by-products of our philosophical reflection. Was it not our wonder about life that finally brought men to the moon?" "Yes, that's true." "When Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, he said 'One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.' With these words he summed up how it felt to be the first man to set foot on the moon, drawing with him all the people who had lived before him. It was not his merit alone, obviously. "In our own time we also have completely new problems to face. The most serious are those of the environment. A central philosophical direction in the twentieth century is therefore ecophilosophy or ecosophy, as one of its founders the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess has called if. Many ecophilosophers in the western world have warned that western civilization as a whole is on a fundamentally wrong track, racing toward a head-on collision with the limits of what our planet can tolerate. They have tried to take soundings that go deeper than the concrete effects of pollution and environmental destruction. There is something basically wrong with western thought, they claim." "I think they are right." "For example, ecophilosophy has questioned the very idea of evolution in its assumption that man is 'at the top'--as if we are masters of nature. This way of thinking could prove to be fatal for the whole living planet." "It makes me mad when I think about it." "In criticizing this assumption, many ecophilosophers have looked to the thinking and ideas in other cultures such as those of India. They have also studied the thoughts and customs of so-called primitive peoples--or 'native-peoples' such as the Native Americans--in order to rediscover what we have lost. "In scientific circles in recent years it has been said that our whole mode of scientific thought is facing a 'paradigm shift.' That is to say, a fundamental shift in the way scientists think. This has already borne fruit in several fields. We have witnessed numerous examples of so-called 'alternative movements' advocating holism and a new lifestyle." "Great." "However, when there are many people involved, one must always distinguish between good and bad. Some proclaim that we are entering a new age. But everything new is not necessarily good, and not all the old should be thrown out. That is one of the reasons why I have given you this course in philosophy. Now you have the historical background, you can orient yourself in life." "Thank you." "I think you will find that much of what marches under the New Age banner is humbug. Even the so-called New Religion, New Occultism, and modern superstitions of all kinds have influenced the western world in recent decades. It has become an industry. Alternative offers on the philosophical market have mushroomed in the wake of the dwindling support for Christianity." "What sort of offers?" "The list is so long I wouldn't dare to begin. And anyway it's not easy to describe one's own age. But why don't we take a stroll through town? There's something I'd like you to see." "I haven't got much time. I hope you haven't forgotten the garden party tomorrow?" "Of course not. That's when something wonderful is going to happen. We just have to round off Hilde's philosophy course first. The major hasn't thought beyond that, you see. So he loses some of his mastery over us." Once again he lifted the Coke bottle, which was now empty, and banged it down on the table. They walked out into the street where people were hurrying by like energetic moles in a molehill. Sophie wondered what Alberto wanted to show her. They walked past a big store that sold everything in communication technology, from televisions, VCRs, and satellite dishes to mobile phones, computers, and fax machines. Alberto pointed to the window display and said: "There you have the twentieth century, Sophie. In the Renaissance the world began to explode, so to speak. Beginning with the great voyages of discovery, Europeans started to travel all over the world. Today it's the opposite. We could call it an explosion in reverse." "In what sense?" "In the sense that the world is becoming drawn together into one great communications network. Not so long ago philosophers had to travel for days by horse and carriage in order to investigate the world around them and meet other philosophers. Today we can sit anywhere at all on this planet and access the whole of human experience on a computer screen." "It's a fantastic thought. And a little scary." "The question is whether history is coming to an end-- or whether on the contrary we are on the threshold of a completely new age. We are no longer simply citizens of a city--or of a particular country. We live in a planetary civilization." "That's true." "Technological developments, especially in the field of communications, have possibly been more dramatic in the last thirty to forty years than in the whole of history put together. And still we have probably only witnessed the beginning . . ." "Was this what you wanted me to see?" "No, it's on the other side of the church over there." As they were turning to leave, a picture of some UN soldiers flashed onto a TV screen. "Look!" said Sophie. The camera zoomed in on one of the UN soldiers. He had a black beard almost identical to Alberto's. Suddenly he held up a piece of card on which was written: "Back soon, Hilde!" He waved and was gone. "Charlatan!" exclaimed Alberto. "Was that the major?" "I'm not even going to answer that." They walked across the park in front of the church and came out onto another main street. Alberto seemed slightly irritable. They stopped in front of LIBRIS, the biggest bookstore in town. "Let's go in," said Alberto. Inside the -store he pointed to the longest wall. It had three sections: NEW AGE, ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLES, and MYSTICISM. The books had intriguing titles such as Life after Death?, The Secrets of Spiritism, Tarot, The UFO Phenomenon, Healing, The Return of the Gods, You Have Been Here Before, and What Is Astrology? There were hundreds of books. Under the shelves even more books were stacked up. "This is also the twentieth century, Sophie. This is the temple of our age." "You don't believe in any of this stuff?" "Much of it is humbug. But it sells as well as pornography. A lot of it is a kind of pornography. Young people can come here and purchase the ideas that fascinate them most. But the difference between real philosophy and these books is more or less the same as the difference between real love and pornography." "Aren't you being rather crass?" "Let's go and sit in the park." They marched out of the store and found a vacant bench in front of the church. Pigeons were strutting around under the trees, the odd overeager sparrow hopping about amongst them. "It's called ESP or parapsychology," said Alberto. "Or it's called telepathy, clairvoyance, and psychokinetics. It's called spiritism, astrology, and urology." "But quite honestly, do you really think it's all hum-bug?" "Obviously it would not be very appropriate for a real philosopher to say they are all equally bad. But I don't mind saying that all these subjects together possibly chart a fairly detailed map of a landscape that does not exist. And there are many 'figments of the imagination' here that Hume would have committed to the flames. Many of those books do not contain so much as one iota of genuine experience." "Why are there such incredible numbers of books on such subjects?" "Publishing such books is a big commercial enterprise. It's what most people want." "Why, do you think?" "They obviously desire something mystical, something different to break the dreary monotony of everyday life. But it is like carrying coals to Newcastle." "How do you mean?" "Here we are, wandering around in a wonderful adventure. A work of creation is emerging in front of our very eyes. In broad daylight, Sophie! Isn't it marvelous!" "I guess so." "Why should we enter the fortune-teller's tent or the backyards of academe in search of something exciting or transcendental?" "Are you saying that the people who write these books are just phonies and liars?" "No, that's not what I'm saying. But here, too, we are talking about a Darwinian system." "You'll have to explain that." "Think of all the different things that can happen in a single day. You can even take a day in your own life. Think of all the things you see and experience." "Yes?" "Now and then you experience a strange coincidence. You might go into a store and buy something for 28 crowns. Later on that day Joanna comes along and gives you the 28 crowns she owes you. You both decide to go to the movies--and you get seat number 28." "Yes, that would be a mysterious coincidence." "It would be a coincidence, anyway. The point is, people collect coincidences like these. They collect strange-- or inexplicable--experiences When such experiences-- taken from the lives of billions of people--are assembled into books, it begins to look like genuine data. And the amount of it increases all the time. But once again we are looking at a lottery in which only the winning numbers are visible." "But there are clairvoyants and mediums, aren't there, who are constantly experiencing things like that?" "Indeed there are, and if we exclude the phonies, we find another explanation for these so-called mysterious experiences." "And that is?" "You remember we talked about Freud's theory of the unconscious . . ." "Of course." "Freud showed that we can often serve as 'mediums' for our own unconscious. We might suddenly find ourselves thinking or doing something without really knowing why. The reason is that we have a whole lot of experiences, thoughts, and memories inside us that we are not aware of." "So?" "People sometimes talk or walk in their sleep. We could call this a sort of 'mental automatism.' Also under hypnosis, people can say and do things 'not of their own volition.' And remember the surrealists trying to produce so-called automatic writing. They were just trying to serve as mediums for their own unconscious." "I remember." "From time to time during this century there have been what are called 'spiritualist revivals,' the idea being that a medium could get into contact with a deceased person. Either by speaking in the voice of the deceased, or by using automatic writing, the medium would receive a message from someone who had lived five or fifty or many hundreds of years ago. This has been taken as evidence either that there is life after death or that we live many lives." "Yes, I know." "I'm not saying that all mediums have been fakes. Some have clearly been in good faith. They really have been mediums, but they have only been mediums for their own unconscious. There have been several cases of mediums being closely studied while in a trance, and revealing knowledge and abilities that neither they nor others understand how they can have acquired. In one case, a woman who had no knowledge of Hebrew passed on messages in that language. So she must have either lived before or been in contact with a deceased spirit." "Which do you think?" "It turned out that she had had a Jewish nanny when she was little." "Ah." "Does that disappoint you? It just shows what an incredible capacity some people have to store experience in their unconscious." "I see what you mean." "A lot of curious everyday happenings can be explained by Freud's theory of the unconscious. I might suddenly get a call from a friend I haven't heard from for many years just as I had begun to look for his telephone number " "It gives me goose bumps." "But the explanation could be that we both heard the same old song on the radio, a song we heard the last time we were together. The point is, we are not aware of the underlying connection." "So it's either humbug, or the winning number effect, or else it's the unconscious. Right?" "Well, in any case, it's healthier to approach such books with a decent portion of skepticism. Not least if one is a philosopher. There is an association in England for skeptics. Many years ago they offered a large reward to the first person who could provide even the slightest proof of something supernatural. It didn't need to be a great miracle, a tiny example of telepathy would do. So far, nobody has come forward " "Hmm." "On the other hand, there is a lot we humans don't understand. Maybe we don't understand the laws of nature either. During the last century there were a lot of peo-ple who thought that phenomena such as magnetism and electricity were a kind of magic. I'll bet my own great-grandmother would have been wide-eyed with amaze-ment if I told her about TV or computers." "So you don't believe in anything supernatural then." "We've already talked about that. Even the term 'supernatural' is a curious one. No, I suppose I believe that there is only one nature. But that, on the other hand, is absolutely astonishing." "But the sort of mysterious things in those books you just showed me?" "All true philosophers should keep their eyes open. Even if we have never seen a white crow, we should never stop looking for it. And one day, even a skeptic like me could be obliged to accept a phenomenon I did not believe in before. If I did not keep this possibility open I would be dogmatic, and not a true philosopher." Alberto and Sophie remained seated on the bench without saying anything. The pigeons craned their necks and cooed, now and then being startled by a bicycle or a sudden movement. "I have to go home and prepare for the party," said Sophie at last. "But before we part, I'll show you a white crow. It is nearer than we think, you see." Alberto got up and led the way back into the bookstore. This time they walked past all the books on supernatural phenomena and stopped by a flimsy shelf at the very back of the store. Above the shelf hung a very small card. PHILOSOPHY, it read. Alberto pointed down at a particular book, and Sophie gasped as she read the title: Sophie's World. "Would you like me to buy it for you?" "I don't know if I dare." Shortly afterward, however, she was on her way home with the book in one hand and a little bag of things for the garden party in the other. 我们这个时代    ……人是注定要受自由之苦的…… 闹钟显示时间已经是二十三点五十五分了。席德躺在床上,瞪着天花板,试着做一些自由联想。 每次她想完了一串事情之后,就问自己为什么会想这些?她可不可能正试图压抑什么事情?她要是能够解除所有的管制就好了,这样也许她就会在醒着时做梦。不过这种想法还真有点吓人,她想。 她愈放松,让自己胡思乱想,就愈觉得自己好像在林间小湖边的小木屋中。 艾伯特的计划会是什么呢?当然,艾伯特拟定计划这件事也是爸爸计划的。他是否已经知道艾伯特会用什么方式反击?也许他也一样试图放任自己的思想,以便制造一个连自己也料想不到的结局吧。 剩下的页数已经不多了。她该不该偷看最后一页呢?不,这样等于是作弊了。更何况,席德相信,到目前为止,最后一页会发生什么事都还不确定呢。 这不是一种很奇怪的想法吗?讲义夹就在这里,而爸爸毕竟不可能及时赶回来再增添任何东西,除非艾伯特做了什么事。一件令人惊奇的事……无论如何,席德自己也会想办法让爸爸吓一大跳。他管不到她,可是她又能完全管得住自己吗?意识是什么?它难道不是宇宙的一个大谜题吗?记忆又是什么?是什么东西使我们“记得”我们所看到、所经验到的每一件事情?是什么样的机转使我们日复一日地做一些奇妙的梦?她躺在那儿想着这些问题,并不时闭上眼睛,然后又睁开眼睛凝视着天花板。最后她就忘了睁开了。 她睡着了。 后来,她被海鸥尖锐的叫声吵醒。她起床走到房间的另一头,像往常一样站在窗前,俯瞰着窗外的海湾。这已经成了她的一个习惯,不管夏天冬天都是如此。 当她站在那儿时,她突然感觉到无数种颜色在她的脑海里爆炸。她想起了自己的梦境,可是感觉上那不只是一个普通的梦,因为梦中的颜色和形状都如此生动逼真……她梦见爸爸从黎巴嫩回到家,而这整个梦是苏菲所做的那个梦的延伸,也就是苏菲在平台上捡到金十字架的那个梦。 席德梦见自己正坐在平台的边缘,就像在苏菲梦中那样。然后她听到一个很轻柔的声音说:“我的名字叫苏菲尸席德仍旧动也不动地坐在那儿,试着分辨声音的来处。然后那轻得几乎听不见、宛如虫鸣的声音又说了:“你一定是既聋又盲!”就在那个时候,爸爸穿着联合国的制服进入花园。“席德!”他喊。席德冲向他,用双臂围着他的脖子。到这里,梦就结束了。 她记得几行欧佛兰(Arnulf&verland)所写的诗:深宵夜里因奇梦而惊醒,恍惚听见一低语的声音,宛如远处那地底的溪流,我起身相询:汝意有何求?当妈妈进来时,她仍旧站在窗前。 “嘿!你已经醒了吗?” “我不确定……” “我大约四点钟会回到家,像平常一样。” “好。” “那就祝你假日愉快啦!” “你也是!” 一听到妈妈把前门关上的声音,她马上拿着讲义夹溜回床上。 “……我要潜进少校的潜意识,一直到下次我们再见面以前,我都会在那儿。” 是的,昨天她就看到这里。她用右手的食指摸摸,讲义夹只剩下几页了。 苏菲离开少校的小木屋时,仍然可以看到有些迪斯尼的卡通人物还在湖边。可是当她走近时,它们似乎就溶解了。等到她走到小船边时,它们已经完全消失了。 她划船到对岸,并把小船拉上岸,放在芦苇丛间。这一路上她一直努力扮鬼脸并挥舞着手臂,拚命地吸引少校的注意力,好让坐在小木屋里的艾伯特能够不受干扰。 她一路上不停地又蹦又跳,后来又学机器人走路。为了维持少校对她的兴趣,她甚至开始唱歌。有一次她停了下来,心想艾伯特的计划究竟是什么。可是不一会,她马上制止自己。在罪恶感的驱使下,她开始爬树。 她尽可能爬到最高的地方。当她快爬到树顶时,突然发现自己下不来。待会儿她会再试一下,但现在她不能就这样坐在树上不动。少校会感到厌烦,然后又会开始好奇艾伯特正在做什么。 于是苏菲挥舞着手臂,并学公鸡叫了两三次,最后开始用假嗓子唱歌,这是她活到十五岁以来第一次用假嗓子唱歌。大致上来说,她对自己的表现相当满意。 她再次试着爬下来,可是她真的是被卡住了。这时,突然有一只大雁飞来,停在苏菲攀住的一根树枝上。苏菲已经看了这么多的迪斯尼人物,因此当那只雁开口跟她说话时,她一点也不惊讶。 “我叫莫通,•”大雁说。“事实上我是一只家雁,可是由于情况特殊,我便和别的野雁一起从黎巴嫩飞到这里来。看起来你好像需要帮忙才能爬下来。” “你太小了,帮不上忙。”苏菲说。 “小姐,你的结论下得大早了。应该说你自己太大才对。” “这不是一样吗?” “告诉你,我曾经载着一个年纪跟你一样大的乡下小男孩飞过全瑞典。他的名字叫尼尔•侯格森(NilsHo1gersson)。” “我今年十五岁了。” “尼尔十四岁。加减个一岁对体重不会有影响。” “你怎么把他载起来的?” “我打他一巴掌,他就昏过去了。当他醒来时,身体就跟一根拇指一样大。” “也许你也可以轻轻地打我一巴掌,因为我不能一直坐在这里。星期六我就要办一场哲学花园宴会了。” “这倒挺有意思的。那我猜这大概是一本有关哲学的书。当我载着尼尔飞在瑞典上空时,我们在法姆兰区(Varmland)的马贝卡(Marbacka)着陆。尼尔在那儿遇见一位老妇人。她正计划为学童写一本有关瑞典的书。她说,这本书既要真实又要有教育价值。当她听到尼尔的奇遇时,便决定写一本有关他在雁背上所见到的事物的书。” “这很奇怪。” “老实告诉你吧,这是很反讽的,因为我们已经在那本书里面了。” 突然间苏菲觉得某个东西在她的脸颊上掴了一下,她立刻变成像拇指一样小。那棵树变得像一座森林,而那只雁也变得像马一样大了。 “来吧广大雁说。 苏菲沿着树枝向前走,然后爬到大雁的背上。它的羽毛很柔软,可是由于她现在实在太小了,那些羽毛不时戳着她。 她一坐好,大雁就起飞了。他们飞到树林上方,苏菲向下看着小湖和少校的小木屋。艾伯特正坐在里面,拟定着他那秘密计划。 “今天我们小小地观光一下就好了。”大雁边说边拍着翅膀。 之后,它便向下飞,停在苏菲刚才爬的那棵树下。大雁着陆时,苏菲便滚到了地上。在石南丛里滚了几下后,她便坐起来,很惊讶地发现自己又回复原来的身高了。 大雁摇摇摆摆地在她的四周走了几圈。 “谢谢你帮我的忙。”苏菲说。 “小事一桩。你是不是说过这是一本有关哲学的书?” “不,那是你说的。” “好吧,反正都一样。如果我能作主的话,我会载着你飞过整部哲学史,就像我载尼尔飞过瑞典一样。我们可以在米雷特斯和雅典、耶路撒冷和亚力山卓、罗马和佛罗伦萨、伦敦和巴黎、耶纳和海德堡、柏林和哥本哈根这些城市的上空盘旋。” “谢谢你,这样就够了。” “可是飞越这么多世纪,即使对一只非常反讽的雁来说,也是很辛苦的。所以飞越瑞典各省要容易多了。” 说完后,大雁跑了几步,就拍拍翅膀飞到空中去了。 苏菲已经很累了。不久后当她爬出密洞时,心想艾伯特对她这些调虎离-山的计策必然很满意。在过去这个小时内,少校一定不可能花太多心思在艾伯特身上,否则他一定得了严重的人格分裂症。 苏菲刚从前门进屋,妈妈就下班回家了。还好是这样,否则她怎么解释她被一只家雁从一棵大树上救下来的事呢?吃过晚餐后,她们开始准备花园宴会的事情。她们从阁楼里拿出了一张四公尺长的桌面,并把它抬到花园里。然后她们又回到阁楼去拿桌脚。她们已经计划好要把那张长桌子放在果树下。上一次他们用到那张长桌是在苏菲的爸妈结婚十周年庆的时候。那时苏菲只有八岁,但她仍然很清楚地记得那次各方亲朋好友云集的盛大露天宴会。 气象报告说星期六将会是个好天气。自从苏菲生日前一天的可怕暴风雨后,她们那儿连一滴雨也没下。不过,她们还是决定等到时期六上午再来布置和装饰餐桌。可是妈妈认为目前至少可以先把桌子搬到花园里。 那天晚上她们烤了一些小圆面包和几条由两种面团做成的乡村面包。请客的菜是鸡和沙拉,还有汽水。苏菲很担心她班上的一些男孩子可能会带啤酒来。她天不怕地不怕,就是怕惹麻烦。 苏菲正要上床睡觉时,妈妈又问了一次艾伯特是否一定会来。 “他当然会来。他甚至答应我要玩一个哲学的小把戏。” “一个哲学的小把戏?那是什么样的把戏?” “我不知道……如果他是一个魔术师,他可能就会表演魔术。 也许他会从帽子里变出一只白兔来……” “什么?又玩这一套呀?” “……可是他是个哲学家,他要耍的是一个哲学的把戏,因为这毕竞是个哲学的花园宴会呀。” “你这个顽皮鬼。” “你有没有想过你自己要做什么呢?” “老实说,我有。我想做点事。” “发表一篇演讲吗?” “我不告诉你。晚安!” 第二天一大早苏菲就被妈妈叫起床了。妈妈是来跟她说再见的,因为她要上班去了。她给了苏菲一张单子,上面列着所有花园宴会要用的物品,要她到镇上采买。 妈妈刚出门,电话就响了。是艾伯特打来的。他显然知道苏菲什么时候会一个人在家。 “你的秘密计划进行得如何了?” “嘘]不要提。别让他有机会去想它。” “我想我昨天已经很成功地让他一直注意我了。” “很好。” “我们还有哲学课要上吗?” “我就是为了这个才打电话来的。我们已经讲到现代了,从现在起,你应该可以不需要老师了,因为打基础是最重要的。可是我们还得见个面,稍微谈一下我们这个时代的哲学。” “可是我得到镇上去……” “那好极了,我说过我们要谈的是我们这个时代。” “真的吗?” “所以我们在镇上见面是很恰当的。” “你要我到你那儿去吗?” “不,不要到这里来。我这里乱七八糟的,因为我到处搜寻,看有没有什么窃听装置。” “啊尸“大广场上有一家新开的咖啡厅,叫做皮尔咖啡厅。你知道吗?” “我知道。我要什么时候到呢?” “十二点好吗?” “那就十二点在咖啡厅碰面。” “就这么说定了。” “再见!” 十二点过两三分时,苏菲走进了皮尔咖啡厅。这是一家很时髦的咖啡厅,有小小的圆桌和黑色的椅子。贩卖机里摆着倒过来放的一瓶瓶艾酒,还有法国长条面包和三明治。 咖啡厅并不大。苏菲首先注意到的就是艾伯特并不在里面。老实说,这是她唯一注意到的地方。有许多人围着几张餐桌坐,可是苏菲只看到艾伯特不在这些人里面。 她并不习惯一个人上咖啡厅。她该不该转身走出去,稍后再回来看看他到了没有呢?她走到大理石吧台那儿,要了一杯柠檬茶。她端了茶杯走到一张空桌子坐下来,并注视着门口。这里不断有人来来去去,可是苏菲只注意到艾伯特还没有来。 她要是有一份报纸就好了!随着时间一分分过去,她忍不住看看四周的人,也有几个人回看她。有一段时间苏菲觉得自己像一个年轻的女郎。她今年只有十五岁,可是她自认看起来应该有十七岁,要不然至少也有十六岁半。 她心想,这些人对活着这件事不知道怎么想。他们看起来仿佛只是顺道经过,偶然进来坐坐似的。他们一个个都在比手画脚的谈话,可是看起来他们说得好像也不是什么重要的事。 她突然想到祁克果,他曾经说过群众最大的特色就是喜欢言不及义地闲扯。这些人是不是还活在美感阶段呢?有没有一件事是对他们的存在有意义的呢?艾伯特在初期写给她的一封信中曾经谈到儿童与哲学家之间的相似性。她又再一次有不想长大的念头。搞不好她也会变成一只爬到兔予毛皮深处的虱子!她一边想,一边注意看着门口。突然间艾伯特从外面的街上缓缓走进来了。虽然已经是仲夏天,但他还是戴着一顶黑扁帽,穿着一件灰色有人字形花纹的苏格兰呢短外套。他立刻看到苏菲,便急忙走过来。苏菲心想,他们以前好像从来没有在公开场合见过面。 “现在已经十二点十五分了,你这个烂人。” “这十五分是有教育意义。我可以请你这位年轻的小姐吃些点心吗?” 他坐下来,看着她的眼睛。苏菲耸耸肩。 “随便,一个三明治好了。” 艾伯特走到吧台那儿。不久他便端着一杯咖啡和两个乳酪火腿三明治回来。 “贵不贵呢?” “小事一桩。” “你为什么迟到呢?” “我是故意的。我很快就会告诉你为什么。” 他咬了一大口三明治。然后他说道:“我们今天要谈我们这个时代的哲学。” “有什么重要的哲学事件发生吗?” 存在哲学“很多……各种潮流都有。我们要先讲一个非常重要的潮流,就是存在主义。这是一个集合名词,代表几股以人存在的情况为出发点的哲学潮流。我们通常谈的是二十世纪的存在哲学。这些存在主义哲学家中有几个是以祁克果,乃至黑格尔等人的学说为基础的。” “嗯。” “另外一个对二十世纪有很大影响的哲学家是德国的尼采(FriedrichNietzsche),生于一八四四到一九OO年间。他同样反对黑格尔的哲学以及德国的‘历史主义’,他认为我们应该重视生命本身,而不必对历史和他所谓的基督教的‘奴隶式道德’过于注意。 他希望能够造成‘对所有价值的重新评价’,使强者的生命力不会受到弱者的拖累。根据尼采的说法,基督教和传统哲学已经脱离了真实世界,朝向‘天堂’或‘观念世界’发展,而人们过去认为的‘真实’世界事实上是一个‘伪世界’。他说:‘要忠于这个世界。不要听信那些让你有超自然期望的人。”’“然后呢?”。 “祁克果和尼采两人同时又影响了德国的存在主义哲学家海德格(MartinHeidegger)。可是我们现在要专门来谈法国存在主义哲学家萨特(Jean—PaulSartre)。他生于一九O五到一九八O年间,是存在主义者(至少是信奉存在主义的一般大众)的领袖。他的存在主义在第二次世界大战后的一九四O年左右尤其风行。后来他与法国的马克思主义运动结盟,但他本人从来没有加入任何党派。” “是因为这样我们才在一家法国咖啡厅见面吗?” “我承认这是有目的的。萨特本人经常出入咖啡厅。他就是在这样的咖啡厅里遇见他终身的伴侣西蒙波娃(SimonedeBeauvoir)的。她也是一位存在主义的哲学家。” “一位女哲学家?” “对。” “大好了,人类终于变得比较文明了。” “可是我们这个时代也有很多新的问题。” “你要讲的是存在主义。” “萨特说:‘存在主义就是人文主义。’他的意思是存在主义者乃是以人类为出发点。必须说明的是:他的人文土义对于人类处境的观点要比文艺复兴时代的人丈主义者悲观得多。” “为什么呢?” “祁克果和本世纪的若干存在主义哲学家都是基督徒,但萨特所信仰的却是所谓的‘无神论的存在主义’。他的哲学可以说是在‘上帝已死’的情况下对人类处境所做的无情分析。‘上帝已死’这句话是尼采说的。” “说下去。” “萨特和祁克果的哲学中最主要的一个字眼就是‘存在’。但存在不等于活着。植物和动物也活着,它们虽然存在,但并不需要思考存在的意义。人是唯一意识到自己存在的生物。萨特表示,一个东西只是在己(initself)而人类却是为已(foritself)。因此人的存在并不等于东西的存在。” “我同意。” “萨特进一步宣称,人的存在比任何其他事情都重要。我存在的这个事实比我是谁要更加重要。他说:‘存在先于本质。,” “这句话很复杂。” “所谓的本质是指组成某些事物的东西,也就是说某些事物的本性。但根据萨特的说法,人并没有这种天生的‘本性’,因此人必须创造自我。他必须创造自己的本性或‘本质’,因为他的本性并非是一生下来就固定的。” “我明白了。” “在整部哲学史中,哲学家们一直想要探索人的本性。但萨特相信,人并没有一种不变的‘本性’。因此,追求广泛的生命的‘意识’是没有用的。换句话说,我们是注定要自己创造这种意义。我们就像是还没背好台词就被拉上舞台的演员,没有剧本,也没有提词人低声告诉我们应该怎么做。我们必须自己决定该怎么活。” “事实上,真的是这样。如果我们能在圣经或哲学教科书中学到该怎么活,就很有用了。” “你讲到要点了。但萨特说,当人领悟到他们活在世上,总有一天会死,而且没有什么意义可以攀附时,他们就会愈加恐惧。你可能还记得祁克果在形容人存在的处境时,也用过这个字眼。” “嗯。” “萨特又说,人在一个没有意义的世界中会感到疏离。当他描述人的‘疏离’时,乃是重复黑格尔的中心思想。人的这种疏离感会造成绝望、烦闷、厌恶和荒谬等感觉。” “感觉沮丧或觉得一切都很无聊是很正常的。” “的确如此。萨特所描述的乃是二十世纪的城市人。你也许还记得文艺复兴时期的人文主义者曾经兴高采烈地强调人的自由与独立。萨特则觉得人的自由是一种诅咒。他说:‘人是注定要受自由之苦的。因为他并没有创造自己,但却是自由的。因为一旦被扔进这个世界里来,他就必须为他所做的每一件事负责。”’“可是我们并没有要求被创造成自由的个体。” “这正是萨特所要说的。可是我们仍然是自由的个体,而这种自由使我们注定一生中要不断地做选择。世上没有我们必须遵守的永恒价值或规范,这使得我们的选择更加有意义。因为我们要为自己所做的事负全责。萨特强调,人绝对不能放弃他对自己行动的责任,也不能以我们‘必须’上班、‘必须’符合中产阶级对我们生活方式的期望为理由。逃避为自己做选择的责任。如果我们逃避这项责任,就会沦为无名大众的一分子,将永远只是一个没有个性的群体之一,逃避自我并自我欺骗。从另外一方面来说,我们的自由迫使我们要成为某种人物,要‘真实’地活着。” “嗯,我明白了。” “在道德的抉择上也是如此。我们永远不能把错误归咎于‘人性’或‘人的软弱’等等。我们可以发现时常有成年男子做出种种令人厌恶的行为,却把这样的行为归咎于‘男人天生的坏毛病’。可是世上没有‘男人天生的坏毛病’这种东西,那只是我们用来避免为自己的行为负责的借口罢了。” “总不能把样样事情都怪在它头上。” “虽然萨特宣称生命并没有固有的意义,但他的意思并不是说什么事情都不重要。他不是我们所谓的‘虚无主义者’。” “什么是虚无主义者?” “就是那些认为没有一件事情有意义,怎样都可以的人。萨特认为生命应该有意义,这是一个命令。但我们生命中的意义必须由我们自己来创造,存在的意义就是要创造自己的生命。” “你可以说得详细一点吗?” “萨特想要证明意识本身在感知某件事物之前是不存在的。因为意识总是会意识到某件事物。这个‘事物’固然是由我们的环境提供的,但也是由我们自己提供的。我们可以选择对我们有意义的事物,借以决定我们所要感知的事物。” “你可以举个例子吗?” “例如同一个房间内的两个人对于这个房间的感受可能大不相同,这是因为当我们感知我们的环境时,会赋予它我们本身的意义(或我们的利益)。一个怀孕的女人也许会认为她走到哪里都可以看见别的孕妇,这并不是因为从前没有孕妇,而是因为她自己怀孕这件事使得每一件事在她眼中都有了新的意义。一个生病的人也许会认为到处都看得见救护车……” “嗯,我明白了。” “我们本身的生活会影响我们对这房间内事物的看法。如果某件事情与我无关,我就看不见它。所以我现在也许可以告诉你我今天为什么迟到了。” “你是有目的的,对吧?” “你先告诉我你进来时看到什么。” “我注意到的第一件事就是你不在这里。”“你看到的第一件事物却是一件不在这里的事物,这不是很奇怪吗?” “也许吧。可是我要见的人是你呀。” “萨特就曾经用过一次这样的咖啡厅之行说明我们如何‘虚无化’与我们无关的事物。” “你迟到就是为了要说明这点?” “是的,我想让你了解这个萨特哲学中的主要重点。你可以说这是一次演习。” “少来!” “当你谈恋爱,正等着你的爱人打电话给你时,你可能整晚都会‘听见’他没有打电话给你。因为你整个晚上注意到的就是他没有打电话来。当你跟他约好在火车站见面时,月台上人来人往,而你没有看见他。这些人都在那儿,但他们对你却是不重要的。你甚至可能觉得他们很讨厌,因为他们占去大多空间了。你唯一注意到的事情就是他不在那儿。” “多悲哀呀。” “西蒙波娃曾试图将存在主义应用到女性主义上。萨特已经说过,人没有基本的‘本性’。我们必须创造自我。” “真的吗?” “我们对于两性的看法也是这样。西蒙波娃否认一般人所谓的‘女人的天性’或‘男人的天性’。举例来说,一般人都说男人有所谓的‘超越的’或‘追求成功’的天性,因此他们会在家庭以外的地方追求意义和方向。而女人则被认为具有与男人完全相反的生活哲学。她们是所谓‘内在的’,意思就是说她们希望留在原地。因此她们会做养育小孩、整理环境等比较与家庭有关的事。今天我们也许会说妇女要比男人关心‘女性的价值’。” “她真的相信那些话吗?” “你没有在听我说。事实上,西蒙波娃不相信有任何这种‘女人天性’或‘男人天性’存在。相反的,她相信女人和男人都必须挣脱这种内在偏见或理想的束缚。” “我同意。” “她主要的作品名叫《第二性》,一九四九年出版。” “第二性是什么意思?” “她指的是女人。在我们的文化里,妇女是被当成‘第二性’的。 男人好像把她们当做臣民,把女人当成是他们的所有物,因此剥夺了她们对自己生命的责任。” “她的意思是只要我们愿意,我们就可以自由独立?” “是的,可以这么说。存在主义对于四十年代到现在的文学也有很大的影响。其中包括戏剧在内。萨特本身除了写小说外,也写了一些剧本。其他几位重要的作家包括法国的卡缪、爱尔兰的贝克特、罗马尼亚的伊欧涅思柯和波兰的康布罗维区(Gombrowich)。 他们和其他许多现代作家的典型风格就是我们所说的‘荒谬主义’。这个名词专门用来指‘荒谬剧场’。” “啊。” “你知道‘荒谬’的意思吗?” “不就是指没有意义或非理性的事物吗?” “一点没错。‘荒谬剧场’是‘写实剧场’的相反。它的目的在显示生命的没有意义,以使观众起而反对。它的用意并不是鼓吹人生没有意义,其实正好相反。他们借着显示、揭发日常生活情境的荒谬,进而迫使旁观者追求较为真实而有意义的生命。” “听起来挺有意思的。” “荒谬剧场经常描绘一些非常琐碎的情境,因此我们也可以称之为一种‘超写实主义’。剧中描绘的就是人们原来的面貌。可是当你把发生在浴室的事情或一个普通家庭平日早晨的景象搬上舞台时,观众就会觉得很好笑。他们的笑声可以解释成为一种看见自己在舞台上被嘲弄时的防卫机转。” “正是如此。” “荒谬剧场也可能具有若干超现实的特色。其中的角色时常发现自己处在一个非常不真实、像梦一般的情境里。当他们毫不讶异地接受这种情境时,观众就不得不讶异这些角色为何不感到讶异。 这是卓别林在他的默片中惯用的手法。这些默片中的喜剧效果经常来自于卓别林默默地接受所有发生在他身上的荒谬事情。这使得观众不得不检讨自己,追求更真实的事物。” “看到人们对于各种荒谬事件那种逆来顺受的态度,实在是让人觉得很惊讶。” “有时我们会有‘我必须远离这样的事,虽然我不知道该到哪里去’的感受。这种感觉可能并没有什么不好。” “如果房子着火了,你只好冲出去,虽然你没有其他地方可以住。” “没错。你想不想再喝一杯茶或一瓶可乐?” “好。不过我还是认为你是个烂人,因为你迟到了。” “没关系。” 艾伯特回来时拿了一杯意大利浓咖啡和一瓶可乐。这时,苏菲已经开始喜欢上咖啡厅的气氛了。她也开始认为其他桌客人的谈话也许不像她想象的那样没有意义。艾伯特“砰!”一声把可乐瓶子往桌上放。有几个别桌的客人抬起头来看。 “我们就上到这里了。”他说。 “你是说哲学史到了萨特和存在主义就结束了?” “不,这样讲就太夸张了。存在主义哲学后来对世界各地的许多人产生了重大的影响。正如我们说过的,它的根可以回溯到祁克果,甚至远及苏格拉底。因此二十世纪也是一个我们谈过的其他哲学潮流开花结果、重新复苏的年代。” “比如说什么潮流?” “其中有一个是所谓的新圣多玛斯主义(Neo—Thomism),也就是指那些属于圣多玛斯派的思想。另外一个就是所谓的‘分析哲学’或‘逻辑实验主义’。它的根源可追溯至休姆和英国的经验主义,甚至远及亚理斯多德的理则学。除此之外,二十世纪自然也曾受到所谓的新马克思主义的影响。至于新达尔文主义和精神分析的影响,我们已经谈过了。” “是的。” “最后还有一个是唯物主义。它同样有它历史上的根源。现代科学有一大部分源自苏格拉底之前的哲学家的努力,例如找寻组成所有物质的不可见的‘基础分子’。到目前为止还没有人能够对‘物质’是什么问题提出一个令人满意的答案。核子物理学与生物化学等现代科学对于这个问题极感兴趣,对许多人而言,这甚至是他们的生命哲学中很重要的一部分。” “新旧学说杂陈并列……” “对,因为我们开始这门课程时所提出的问题到现在还没有人能回答。在这方面,萨特说了一句很重要的话。他说:关于存在的问题是无法一次就回答清楚的。所谓哲学问题的定义就是每一个世代,甚至每一个人,都必须要一再的问自己的一些问题。” “满悲观的。” “我并不一定同意你的说法。因为,借着提出这些问题,我们才知道自己活着。当人们追寻这些根本问题的答案时,他们总是会发现许多其他问题因此而有了清楚明确的解决方法。科学、研究和科技都是我们哲学思考的副产品。我们最后之所以能登陆月球难道不是因为我们对于生命的好奇吗?” “这倒是真的。” “当阿姆斯壮踏上月球时,他说:‘这是个人的一小步,人类的一大步。’他用这些话来总结他身为第一位登陆月球者的感想,话中提到了所有我们的祖先,因为这显然不是他一个人的功劳。” “当然。” “在我们这个时代,我们有一些崭新的问题要去面对。其中最严重的就是环境问题。因此,二十世纪一个主要的哲学潮流就是‘生态哲学’(ecophilosophy),这是挪威哲学家那斯(ArneNaess)所给的名称,他也是这种哲学的奠立者之一。许多西方的生态哲学家已经提出警告,整个西方文明的走向根本就是错误的,长此下去,势必将会超出地球所能承受的范围。他们谈的不只是环境污染与破坏这些具体的问题。他们宣称,西方的思想形态根本上就有一些谬误。” “我认为他们说得对。” “举例来说,生态哲学家对于进化观念中以人为‘万物之首’的这个假设提出质疑。他们认为,人类这种自以为是大自然主宰的想法可能会对整个地球造成致命的伤害。” “我每次一想到这个就很生气。” “在批评这个假设时,许多生态哲学寥注意到印度等其他文化的观念与思想。他们并且研究了所谓‘原始民族’或美洲印第安人和爱斯基摩人(现已改称因纽特人——编者注)等‘原住民’的想法与习俗,以重新探索我们所失落的东西。” “然后呢?” “近年来科学界有二种说法是:我们整个科学思想的模式正面临一个‘典范移转’(paradigmshift),意思就是说科学家思考的方式有了一个根本上的转变,而且这个现象已经在若干领域内开花结果。我们可以看到许多所谓‘新生活运动’(alternativemove—ments)倡导整体主义(holism)和新的生活方式。” “太好了。” “不过,当一件事情牵涉到许多人时,我们必须要学会分辨好坏优劣。有些人宣称我们正进入一个‘新时代’,但并不是每一件新的东西都是好的。我们也不能把所有旧东西都抛弃。这是我为什么让你上这门哲学课的原因之一。你现在已经知道了古往今来的哲学理念了。接下来你应该能够为自己的人生找到一个方向。” “非常谢谢你。” “我想你会发现那些打着‘新时代’旗号的运动有一大部分都是骗人的玩意。这几十年来西方世界甚至受到所谓的‘新宗教’、‘新神秘主义’和各式各样现代迷信的影响。这些东西已经变成一种企业了。由于信奉基督教的人日益减少,哲学市场上就出现了许许多多的替代产品。” “什么样的替代产品?” “多得不胜枚举。无论如何,要描述我们本身所在的这个时代并不容易。现在我们可不可以到镇上去散散步?我想让你看一个东西。”苏菲耸耸肩。 “我没有多少时间了。你没有忘记明天的花园宴会吧?” “当然没有。那个时候会发生一件很奇妙的事。不过我们先得让席德的哲学课程有一个圆满的结束。少校还没有想到那儿,你明白吗?因此他已经不再能够完全控制我们了。” 他再次举起现在已经空了的可乐瓶,往桌上“砰!”一声用力一敲。 他们走到街上,人们正像蚂蚁窝里精力充沛的蚂蚁一样熙来攘往。苏菲心想艾伯特不知道要让她看什么东西。他们经过一家很大的商店,里面贩卖各式各样的通讯器材,从电视、录影机、小耳朵到各种行动电话、电脑和传真机都有。 艾伯特指着橱窗里的东西说:“这就是二十世纪了。在文艺复兴时代,世界开始膨胀。自从那些伟大的探险航程展开后,欧洲人就开始走遍世界各地。今天情形正好相反。我们称之为反膨胀。” “怎么说呢?” “意思是说世界正逐渐凝聚成一个庞大的通讯网络。在不算很久以前,哲学家们还必须坐好几天的马车才能到其他的地方去探索这个世界,并会见其他的哲学家。今天我们不论在地球任何一个角落都可以透过电脑荧屏获得人类所有的经验。” “想起来真是棒极了,甚至让人有点怕怕的,真的。” “问题在于历史是否即将结束,或者刚好相反,我们正要迈入一个崭新的时代。我们已经不再只是一个城市的居民或某个国家的公民了。我们是生活在全球文明里的世界公民。” “真的。” “过去三四十年来,科技的发展,尤其是在通讯方面的进步,可能大过历史上各时期的总和。而目前我们所见到的可能只是开始而已…...” “这就是你要让我看的东西吗?” “不,那个东西在那边那座教堂的另外一边。”他们转身要走时,一架电视的荧屏上闪过了一幅几个联合国士兵的画面。 “你看广苏菲说。摄影机的镜头淡入,停在其中一个士兵的身上。他有一脸几乎和艾伯特一模一样的黑胡子。突然间他举起一块牌子,上面写着:“席德,我就快回来了!”他挥一挥另外一只手,然后就消失了。 “唉,真是个江湖郎中!”艾伯特叹道。 “那是少校吗?”,“我可不想回答这个问题。”他们穿过教堂前面的公园,走到另外一条大街上。艾伯特似乎有点烦躁。他们在一家名叫里伯瑞斯(Libris)的大型书店前停下来。这是镇上最大的一家书店。 “你是不是要让我看里面的某个东西?” 超自然“我们进去吧。”在书店里,艾伯特指着最长的那面书墙,其中的书分成三类,包括:“新时代”、“新生活”和“神秘主义”。这些书都有着很吸引人的标题,如:《死后的生命?》、《招魂术的秘密》、《意大利纸牌算命术》、《幽浮现象》、《治疗术》、《上帝重临》、《你曾来过这里》、《占星术是什么?》等等,一共有成千上百本。书架的下面并堆着一叠叠类似的书。 “这也是二十世纪的现象。这是我们这个时代的神庙。” “这些东西你都不相信吗?” “其中有一大部分是鬼话。但他们的销路和色情刊物一样好,事实上它们有许多可以算得上是一种色情刊物。年轻人可以来到这儿,购买他们认为最有趣的思想。但这些书和真正的哲学之间的差异就像色情和真爱之间的差异一样。” “你这样说不是太粗鲁了吗?” “我们到公园里去坐吧!”他们走出书店,在教堂前找了一张没有A坐的长椅。旁边树底下成群的鸽子正摇头摆尾地走来走去,一只孤零零的麻雀在他们中间过度热心地跳来跳去。 “那些东西叫做ESP或灵学超心理学,”他开始说。“或者也叫做精神感应术、超感应能力、灵视和心理动力学,有些也叫做招魂术、占星术和幽浮学。” “老实说,你真的认为它们都是骗人的玩意吗?” “当然一个真正的哲学家不应该说它们都不好。但我可以说所有这些学问加起来就像一张地图一样,虽然巨细靡遗,但问题是那块土地可能根本并不存在,而且其中有许多是‘想象的虚构物’。要是休姆的话,早就一把火把它们给烧了。那些书里面,有许多根本没有包含一丝一毫的真实经验。” “那为什么会出现这么多这类的书呢?” “这是全世界最大规模的营利企业,因为那就是大多数人想要的东西。” “那你认为他们为什么想要这些呢?” “他们显然是希望有一些‘神秘的’、‘不一样’的东西来打破日常生活的烦闷与单调。可是这简直是多此一举!” “怎么说呢?” “囚为我们已经置身在一场奇妙的探险旅程里。青天白日之下,在我们的眼前就有一件伟大的创作品。这不是很美妙吗?” “我想是吧。” “我们为什么还要跑到占卜术士的帐篷或从学院派的后门去找寻一些‘刺激’或‘超自然’东西呢?” “你是说写这类书的人都是些江湖术士或骗子吗?” “不,我并没有这样说。可是这当中也有一个达尔文系统。” “请你解释一下好吗?” “请你想想看一天里面能够发生多少事。你甚至可以挑选你生命中的一天,然后想一想那天里你所看到和经验到的一切事物。” “然后呢?” “有时你会碰到一些奇异的巧合。你可能会跑进一家店里,买了一个价值二十八块钱的东西。后来,在同一天,乔安又跑来还她欠你的二十八块钱。然后你们两个决定要去看电影,结果你的座位号码是二十八号。” “嗯,这的确是一个很神秘的巧合。” “不管怎样,这些事就是一种巧合。问题在于有些人就会搜集这类巧合,还有各种奇异的、无法解释的经验。当这类取自数十亿人生活中的经验被集结成书时,看起来就像是真实的数据。而它们的数量会愈来愈庞大。不过这也像是一场摸彩,只有中奖的号码才会被公布出来。” “可是世上确实有天眼通和灵媒这些人,不是吗?他们不断地有这类经验呀。” “确实是有。但撇开那些招摇撞骗的人不谈,我们仍然可以为这些所谓的神秘经验找到另外一种解释。” “什么解释?” “你还记得我们谈过佛洛伊德所说的潜意识理论吗?” “当然记得啦。我不是一再告诉你我的记性很好吗?” “佛洛伊德曾说我们可能时常是自己潜意识的‘灵媒’。我们可能会突然发现自己正在想着或做着某件事,连自己也不太明白原因。这是因为我们内心中有许多连自己也没有察觉的经验、想法或记忆。” “所以说呢?” “你知道有些人会梦游或说梦话,我们可以称之为一种‘精神上的无意识行动’。除此之外,人们在经过催眠之后,也可能会‘不由自主’地说一些话或做一些事。你也许还记得那些超现实主义者曾经试图要制造所谓的自动写作。事实上他们只是试图要做自己潜意识的灵媒罢了。” “嗯,这个我也记得。” “本世纪不时流行我们所称的‘通灵’现象。有些人相信灵媒可以和已逝者接触。这些灵媒或者用死者的声音来说话,或者透过自动写作,借此接收几百年前某个古人的信息。有人认为这种现象证明人死后会进入另外一个世界,或者世间确实有轮回。” “嗯,我知道。” “我的意思并不是说所有的灵媒都是江湖术士。他们有些确实不是骗人的。他们确实当过灵媒,但他们所当的只是自己潜意识的灵媒罢了。曾经有过好几个这样的例子:有人仔细观察一些灵媒在恍惚状态的反应,发现他们居然会显示出一些无论是他们自己或别人都不知道他们如何获得的知识或能力。在其中一个案例里,一个从来没有学过希伯来文的女人突然以希伯来文说出一些事情。 因此她必定是在前世学的,要不就是她曾经和某个死者的灵魂沟通。” “你相信哪一种说法呢?” “结果后来发现她小时候有一个奶妈是犹太人。” “啊!” “你很失望吗?这个现象显示有些人具有不可思议的能力,可以把从前的经验储存在他们的潜意识里。” “我懂你的意思了。” “有许多日常生活中不可思议的事件都可以用佛洛伊德的潜意识理论来解释。也许有一天我正要找一个多年没有联络的朋友的电话时,却刚好接到他打来的电话。” “满诡异的。” “可是事实上也许是我们两个同时听到收音机里播的一首老歌,而这首歌刚好是我们两个上一次见面时听到的。重要的是,我们都没有察觉到其中的关联。” “所以这些事情要不就是道听途说,要不就是因为特别奇怪才众口相传,要不就是潜意识的作用,对吗?”。 “不管怎样,在进到这类书店时抱持相当的怀疑态度总是比较健康的,特别是对一个哲学家而言。英国有一个由怀疑论者组成的协会。许多年前他们重金悬赏第一个能够对那些超自然现象提供一点点证明的人。他们并不要求参加者展示什么奇迹,而只要他们表演一点点心电感应就可以了。但是到目前为止,没有一个人来参加。” “嗯。” “话说回来,有很多现象仍然是我们人类无法理解的。也许我们还不是真正了解自然的法则。在上一个世纪,许多人认为磁力与电力的现象是一种魔术。我敢打赌我的曾祖母如果听到我说关于电视和电脑的事,一定会惊讶得目瞪口呆。” “这么说你并不相信所有超自然的现象哼?” “我们已经谈过这点了。就连‘超自然’这个名词听起来也很奇怪。不,我相信世上只有一个自然。但从另外一方面来说,这也是很令人惊异的事。” “可是你让我看的那些书里面记载了那么多神秘的事情……” “所有真正的哲学家都应该睁大眼睛。即使我们从来没有见过白色的乌鸦,我们也不应该放弃寻找它。也许有一天,连我这样的怀疑论者也会不得不接受某种我从前并不相信的现象。如果我不承认有这种可能性,那我就是一个武断的人,而不是一个真正的哲学家。”艾伯特和苏菲继续坐在长椅上,两人都没有说话。那些鸽子伸长了脖子咕咕的叫着,不时被一辆路过的脚踏车或突然的动作吓着。 “我必须回家打点宴会的事了。”最后苏菲说。 “可是在我们分手以前,我要给你看一只白色的乌鸦。它比我们所想象的更接近我们。”他从长椅上站起来,示意苏菲再回到书店里去。 这次他们走过所有关于超自然现象的书,停在书店最里面一个看起来不甚牢固的架子前。架子的上方挂着一块很小的牌子,上面写着:哲学类。艾伯特指着架上的一本书。苏菲看到书名时不禁吓了一跳。上面写着:苏菲的世界。 “你要不要我买一本送给你?” “我不太敢看耶!” 无论如何,过了没多久,她就走在回家的路上了,一手拿着那本书,另一手则拿着一个小袋子,里面装着她刚才买的花园宴会用品。 The Garden Party ... a white crow Hilde sat on the bed, transfixed. She felt her arms and her hands tremble, as they gripped the heavy ring binder. It was almost eleven o'clock. She had been reading for over two hours. From time to time she had raised her eyes from the text and laughed aloud, but she had also turned over on her side and gasped. It was a good thing she was alone in the house. And what she had been through these last two hours! It started with Sophie trying to attract the major's attention on the way home from the cabin in the woods. She had finally climbed a tree and been rescued by Morten Goose, who had arrived like a guardian angel from Lebanon. Although it was a long, long time ago, Hilde had never forgotten how her father had read The Wonderful Adventures of Nils to her. For many years after that, she and her father had had a secret language together that was connected with the book. Now he had dragged the old goose out again. Then Sophie had her first experience as a lone customer in a cafe. Hilde had been especially taken with what Alberto said about Sartre and existentialism. He had almost managed to convert her--although he had done that many times before in the ring binder too. Once, about a year ago, Hilde had bought a book on astrology. Another time she had come home with a set of tarot cards. Next time it was a book on spiritualism. Each time, her father had lectured her about "superstition" and her "critical faculty," but he had waited until now for the final blow. His counterattack was deadly accurate. Clearly, his daughter would not be allowed to grow up without a thorough warning against that kind of thing. To be absolutely sure, he had waved to her from a TV screen in a radio store. He could have saved himself the trouble ... What she wondered about most of all was Sophie. Sophie--who are you? Where do you come from? Why have you come into my life? Finally Sophie had been given a book about herself. Was it the same book that Hilde now had in her hands? This was only a ring binder. But even so--how could one find a book about oneself in a book about oneself? What would happen if Sophie began to read that book? What was going to happen now? What could happen now? There were only a few pages left in her ring binder. Sophie met her mother on the bus on her way home from town. Oh, no! What would her mother say when she saw the book in Sophie's hand? Sophie tried to put it in the bag with all the streamers and balloons she had bought for the party but she didn't quite make it. "Hi, Sophie! We caught the same bus! How nice!" "Hi, Mom!" "You bought a book?" "No, not exactly." "Sophie's World ... how curious." Sophie knew she didn't have the slightest chance of lying to her mother. "I got it from Alberto." "Yes, I'm sure you did. As I said, I'm looking forward to meeting this man. May I see?" "Would you mind very much waiting till we get home, at least. It is my book, Mom." "Of course it's your book. I just want to take a peek at the first page, okay? ... 'Sophie Amundsen was on her way home from school. She had walked the first part of the way with Joanna. They had been discussing robots . . .'" "Does it really say that?" "Yes, it does, Sophie. It's written by someone called Albert Knag. He must be a newcomer. What's your Al-berto's name, by the way?" "Knox." "It'll probably turn out that this extraordinary person has written a whole book about you, Sophie. It's called using a pseudonym." "It's not him, Mom. Why don't you just give up. You don't understand anything anyway." "No, I don't suppose I do. The garden party is tomorrow, then everything will be all right again." "Albert Knag lives in a completely different reality. That's why this book is a white crow." "You really must stop all this! Wasn't it a white rabbit?" "You stop it!" That was as far as they got before they reached their stop at the end of Clover Close. They ran straight into a demonstration. "My God!" exclaimed Helene Amundsen, "I really thought we would be spared street politics in this neighborhood." There were no more than about ten or twelve people. Their banners read: THE MAJOR IS AT HAND YES TO YUMMY MIDSUMMER EATS MORE POWER TO THE UN Sophie almost felt sorry for her mother. "Never mind," she said. "But it was a peculiar demonstration, Sophie. Quite absurd, really." "It was a mere bagatelle." "The world changes more and more rapidly all the time. Actually, I'm not in the least surprised." "You should be surprised that you're not surprised, at any rate." "Not at all. They weren't violent, were they? I just hope they haven't trampled all over our rosebeds. Surely it can't be necessary to demonstrate in a garden. Let's hurry home and see." "It was a philosophical demonstration, Mom. Real philosophers don't trample on rosebeds." "I'll tell you what, Sophie. I don't think I believe in real philosophers any longer. Everything is synthetic nowadays." They spent the afternoon and evening preparing. They continued the next morning, setting and decorating the table. Joanna came over to give them a hand. "Good grief!" she said, "Mom and Dad are coming too. It's your fault, Sophie!" Everything was ready half an hour before the guests were due. The trees were festooned with streamers and Japanese lanterns. The garden gate, the trees lining the path, and the front of the house were hung with balloons. Sophie and Joanna had spent most of the afternoon blowing them up. The table was set with chicken, salad, and different kinds of homemade bread. In the kitchen there were raisin buns and layer cake, Danish pastry and chocolate cake. But from the start the place of honor in the center of the table was reserved for the birthday cake--a pyramid of almond-paste rings. On the top of the cake was the tiny figure of a girl in a confirmation dress. Sophie's mother had assured her that it could just as well represent an unconfirmed fifteen-year-old, but Sophie was certain her mother had only put it there because Sophie had told her she was not sure she wanted to be confirmed. Her mother seemed to think the cake embodied the confirmation itself. "We haven't spared any expense," she repeated several times in the half hour before the party was due to start. The guests began to arrive. First came three of the girls from Sophie's class, dressed in summer shirts and light cardigans, long skirts, and the barest suggestion of eye makeup. A bit later, Jeremy and David came strolling in through the gate, with a blend of shyness and boyish arrogance. "Happy birthday!" "You're an adult now, too!" Sophie noticed that Joanna and Jeremy had already begun eyeing each other discreetly. There was something in the air. It was Midsummer Eve. Everybody had brought birthday presents, and as it was a philosophical garden party, several of the guests had tried to find out what philosophy was. Although not all of them had managed to find philosophical presents, most of them had written something philosophical on their cards. Sophie received a philosophical dictionary as well as a diary with a lock; on the cover was written MY PERSONAL PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHTS. As the guests arrived they were served apple juice in long-stemmed wine glasses. Sophie's mother did the serving. "Welcome ... And what is this young man's name? I don't believe we've met before ... So glad you could come, Cecilie . . ." When all the younger guests had arrived and were strolling under the trees with their wine glasses, Joanna's parents drew up at the garden gate in a white Mercedes. The financial adviser was impeccably dressed in an expensively cut gray suit. His wife was wearing a red pants suit with dark red sequins. Sophie was sure she had bought a Barbie doll in a toy store dressed in that suit, and had a tailor make it up in her size. There was another possibility; the financial adviser could have bought the doll and given it to a magician to make into a live woman. But this possibility was unlikely, so Sophie rejected it. They stepped out of the Mercedes and walked into the garden where younger guests looked at them with surprise. The financial adviser presented a long, narrow package from the Ingebrigtsen family. Sophie tried hard to maintain her composure when it turned out to be--yes, it was!--a Barbie doll. But Joanna made no such effort: "Are you crazy? Sophie doesn't play with dolls!" Mrs. Ingebrigtsen came hurrying over, with all her sequins clanking. "But it's only for decoration, you know." "Well, thank you very much indeed." Sophie tried to smooth things over. "Now I can start ft collection." People began to drift toward the table. "We're only waiting for Alberto," said Sophie's mother to her in a somewhat brisk tone that was intended to hide her growing apprehension. Rumors of the special guest of honor had already spread among the other guests. "He has promised to come, so he'll come." "But we can't seat the guests before he arrives, can we?" "Of course we can. Let's go ahead." Helene Amundsen began to seat people around the long table. She made sure that the vacant chair was between her own and Sophie's place. She said a few words about the beautiful weather and the fact that Sophie was now a grownup. They had been sitting at the table for half an hour when a middle-aged man with a black goatee and a beret came walking up Clover Close and in through the garden gate. He was carrying a bouquet of fifteen red roses. "Alberto!" Sophie left the table and ran to greet him. She threw her arms around his neck and took the bouquet from him. He responded to the welcome by rooting around in his jacket pocket and drawing out a couple of Chinese firecrackers which he lit and tossed into the yard. As. he approached the table, he lit a sparkler and set it on top of the almond pyramid. Then he went over and stood at the empty place between Sophie and her mother. "I'm delighted to be here," he said. The guests were dumbstruck. Mrs. Ingebrigtsen gave her husband a significant look. Sophie's mother was so relieved that the man had finally arrived, however, that she would have forgiven him anything. Sophie herself was struggling to suppress her laughter. Helene Amundsen tapped on her glass and said: "Let us also welcome Alberto Knox to this philosophical garden party. He is not my new boyfriend, because although my husband is so often away at sea, I don't have a new boyfriend for the time being. However, this astounding person is Sophie's new philosophy teacher. His prowess extends further than to setting off fireworks. This man is able, for example, to draw a live rabbit out of a top hat. Or was it a crow, Sophie?" "Many thanks," said Alberto. He sat down. "Cheers!" said Sophie, and the guests raised their glasses and drank his health. They sat for a long time over their chicken and salad. Suddenly Joanna got up, walked determinedly over to Jeremy, and gave him a resounding kiss on the lips. He responded by trying to topple her backward over the table so as to get a better grip as he returned her kiss. "Well, I've never ..." exclaimed Mrs. Ingebrigtsen. "Not on the table, children," was Mrs. Amundsen's only comment. "Why not?" asked Alberto, turning toward her. "That was an odd question." "It's never wrong for a real philosopher to ask questions." A couple of the other boys who had not been kissed started to throw chicken bones up on the roof. This, too, elicited only a mild comment from Sophie's mother: "Would you mind not doing that. It's such a nuisance when there are chicken bones in the gutter." "Sorry," said one of the boys, whereupon they started throwing chicken bones over the garden hedge instead. "I think it's time to clear the plates away and serve the cake," said Mrs. Amundsen finally. "Sophie and Joanna, will you give me a hand?" On their way to the kitchen there was only time for a brief discussion. "What made you kiss him?" Sophie said to Joanna. "I sat looking at his mouth and couldn't resist it. He is so cute!" "How did it taste?" "Not exactly like I'd imagined, but. . ." "It was the first time, then?" "But not the last!" Coffee and cake were soon on the table. Alberto had started giving the boys some of his firecrackers when Sophie's mother tapped on her coffee cup. "I am not going to make a long speech," she began, "but I only have this one daughter, and it is only this once that exactly one week and a day ago she reached the age of fifteen. As you see, we have spared no expense. There are twenty-four almond rings on the birthday cake, so there's at least one whole ring for each of you. Those who help themselves first can take two rings, because we start from the top and the rings get bigger and bigger as you go. That's the way it is in life too. When Sophie was a little girl, she went tripping around in tiny little rings. But as the years went by, the rings got bigger and bigger. Now they reach right over to the Old Town and back. And what is more, with a father who is at sea so much, she makes calls to all parts of the world. We congratulate you on your fifteenth birthday, Sophie!" "Delightful!" exclaimed Mrs. Ingebrigtsen. Sophie was not sure whether she was referring to her mother, the speech, the birthday cake, or Sophie herself. The guests applauded, and one of the boys threw a firecracker up into the pear tree. Joanna left the table and pulled Jeremy up off his chair. They lay down on the grass and started kissing each other again. After a while they rolled in under the red-currant bushes. "Nowadays it's the girl who takes the initiative," said Mr. Ingebrigtsen. Having said that, he got up and went over to the red-currant bushes where he stood observing the phenomenon at close quarters. The rest of the guests followed suit. Only Sophie and Alberto remained sitting at the table. The other guests now stood in a semicircle around Joanna and Jeremy. "They can't be stopped," said Mrs. Ingebrigtsen, not without a certain pride. "No, generation follows generation," said her husband. He looked around, expecting applause for his well-chosen words. When the only response was a few silent nods, he added: "It can't be helped." Sophie saw from a distance that Jeremy was trying to unbutton Joanna's white shirt, which was already covered with green stains from the grass. She was fumbling with his belt. "Don't catch cold!" said Mrs. Ingebrigtsen. Sophie looked despairingly at Alberto. "It's happening more quickly than I thought," he said. "We have to get away from here as soon as possible. I just have to make a short speech." Sophie clapped her hands loudly. "Could everyone please come back and sit down again? Alberto is going to make a speech." Everyone except Joanna and Jeremy came drifting back to their places at the table. "Are you really going to make a speech?" asked He-lene Amundsen. "How charming!" "Thank you." "And you like going for walks, I know. It is so important to stay in shape. And it's so much nicer when you have a dog to keep you company. Hermes, isn't that its name?" Alberto stood up. "Dear Sophie," he began. "Since this is a philosophical garden party, I will make a philosophical speech." This was greeted by a burst of applause. "In this riotous company, a dose of reason might not be out of place. But whatever happens, let us not forget to congratulate Sophie on her fifteenth birthday." He had hardly finished these sentences when they heard the drone of an approaching sports plane. It flew in low over the garden. Behind it streamed a long tail banner saying: "Happy 15th birthday!" This led to renewed applause, even louder than before. "There, you see?" Mrs. Amundsen cried joyfully. "This man can do more than set off fireworks!" "Thank you. It was a mere bagatelle. During the past few weeks, Sophie and I have carried out a major philosophical investigation. We shall here and now reveal our findings. We shall reveal the innermost secrets of our existence." The little gathering was now so quiet that the only sounds were the twittering of the birds and a few subdued noises from the red-currant bushes. "Go on," said Sophie. "After a thorough philosophical study--which has led from the first Greek philosophers to the present day--we have discovered that we are living our lives in the mind of a major who is at this moment serving as a UN observer in Lebanon. He has also written a book about us for his daughter back in Lillesand. Her name is Hilde Mailer Knag, and she was fifteen years old on the same day as Sophie. The book about us lay on her bedside table when she woke up early on the morning of June 15. To be more precise, it was in the form of a ring binder. Even as we speak, she can feel the final pages of the ring binder under her index finger." A feeling of apprehension had begun to spread around the table. "Our existence is therefore neither more nor less than a kind of birthday diversion for Hilde Mailer Knag. We have all been invented as a framework for the major's philosophical education of his daughter. This means, for example, that the white Mercedes at the gate is not worth a cent. It's just a bagatelle. It's worth no more than the white Mercedes that drives around and around inside the head of a poor UN major, who has just this minute sat down in the shade of a palm tree to avoid getting sunstroke. The days are hot in Lebanon, my friends." "Garbage!" exclaimed the financial adviser. "This is absolutely pure nonsense." "You are welcome to your opinion," Alberto continued unabashed, "but the truth is that it is this garden party which is absolutely pure nonsense. The only dose of reason in the whole party is this speech." At that, the financial adviser got up and said: "Here we are, trying our best to run a business, and to make sure we have insurance coverage against every kind of risk. Then along comes this know-it-all who tries to destroy it all with his 'philosophical' allegations." Alberto nodded in agreement. "There is indeed no insurance to cover this kind of philosophical insight. We are talking of something worse than a natural catastrophe, sir. But as you are probably aware, insurance doesn't cover those either." "This is not a natural catastrophe." "No, it is an existential catastrophe. For example, just take a look under the currant bushes and you will see what I mean. You cannot insure yourself against the collapse of your whole life. Neither can you insure yourself against the sun going out." "Do we have to put up with this?" asked Joanna's father, looking at his wife. She shook her head, and so did Sophie's mother. "What a shame," she said, "and after we had spared no expense." The younger guests continued to look at Alberto. "We want to hear more," said a curly-haired boy with glasses. "Thank you, but there is not much more to say. When you have realized that you are a dream image in another person's sleepy consciousness, then, in my opinion, it is wisest to be silent. But I can finish by recommending that you take a short course in the history of philosophy. It is important to be critical of the older generation's values. If I have tried to teach Sophie anything, it is precisely that, to think critically. Hegel called it thinking negatively." The financial adviser was still standing, drumming his fingers on the table. "This agitator is attempting to break down all the sound values which the school and the church and we ourselves are trying to instill in the younger generation. It is they who have the future before them and who one day will inherit everything we have built up. If this man is not immediately removed from this gathering I intend to call our lawyer. He will know how to deal with this situation." "It makes little difference whether you deal with this situation or not, since you are nothing but a shadow. Anyway, Sophie and I are about to leave the party, since for us the philosophy course has not been purely theoretical. It has also had its practical side. When the time is ripe we will perform our disappearing act. That is how we are going to sneak our way out of the major's consciousness." Helene Amundsen took hold of her daughter's arm. "You are not leaving me, are you, Sophie?" Sophie put her arms around her mother. She looked up at Alberto. "Mom is so sad . . ." "No, that's just ridiculous. Don't forget what you have learned. It's this sort of nonsense we must liberate ourselves from. Your mother is a sweet and kind lady, just as the Little Red Ridinghood who came to my door that day had a basket filled with food for her grandmother. Your mother is no more sad than the plane that just flew over needed fuel for its congratulation maneuvers." "I think I see what you mean," said Sophie, and turned back to her mother. "That's why I have to do what he says, Mom. One day I had to leave you." "I'm going to miss you," said her mother, "but if there is a heaven over this one, you'll just have to fly. I promise to take good care of Govinda. Does it eat one or two lettuce leaves a day?" Alberto put his hand on her shoulder. "Neither you nor anyone else here will miss us for the simple reason that you do not exist. You are no more than shadows." "That is the worst insult I've ever heard," Mrs. Ingebrigtsen burst out. Her husband nodded. "If nothing else, we can always get him nailed for defamation of character. I'm sure he's a Communist. He wants to strip us of everything we hold dear. The man's a scoundrel." With that, both Alberto and the financial adviser sat down. The letter's face was crimson with rage. Now Joanna and Jeremy also came and sat at the table. Their clothes were grubby and crumpled. Joanna's golden hair was caked with mud and earth. "Mom, I'm going to have a baby," she announced. "All right, but you'll have to wait till you get home." She had immediate support from her husband. "She'll simply have to contain herself," he said. "And if there is to be a christening tonight, she'll have to arrange it herself." Alberto looked down at Sophie with a somber expression. "It's time." "Can't you at least bring us a little more coffee before you go?" asked her mother. "Of course, Mom, I'll do it right away." Sophie took the thermos from the table. She had to make more coffee. While she stood waiting for it to brew, she fed the birds and the goldfish. She also went into the bathroom and put a lettuce leaf out for Govinda. She couldn't see the cat anywhere, but she opened a large can of cat food, emptied it into a bowl and set it out on the step. She felt her tears welling up. When she returned with the coffee, the garden party looked more like a children's party than a young woman's philosophical celebration. Several soda bottles had been knocked over on the table, there was chocolate cake smeared all over the tablecloth and the dish of raisin buns lay upside down on the lawn. Just as Sophie arrived, one of the boys put a firecracker to the layer cake, which exploded all over the table and the guests. The worst casualty was Mrs. Ingebrigtsen's red pants suit. The curious thing was that both she and everybody else took it with the utmost calm. Joanna picked up a huge piece of chocolate cake, smeared it all over Jeremy's face, and proceeded to lick it off again. Her mother and Alberto were sitting in the glider a little way away from the others. They waved to Sophie. "So you finally had your confidential talk," said Sophie. "And you were perfectly right," said her mother, quite elated now. "Alberto is a very altruistic person. I entrust you to his strong arms." Sophie sat down between them. Two of the boys had managed to climb onto the roof. One of the girls went around pricking holes in all the balloons with a hairpin. Then an uninvited guest arrived on a motorcycle with a crate of beer and bottles of aquavit strapped to the carrier. A few helpful souls welcomed him in. At that, the financial adviser rose from the table. He clapped his hands and said: "Do you want to play a game?" He grabbed a bottle of beer, drank it down, and set the empty bottle in the middle of the lawn. Then he went to the table and fetched the last five rings of the birthday cake. He showed the other guests how to throw the rings so they landed over the neck of the bottle. "The death throes," said Alberto. "We'd better get away before the major ends it all and Hilde closes the ring binder." "You'll have to clear up alone, Mom." "It doesn't matter, child. This was no life for you. If Alberto can give you a better one, nobody will be happier than I. Didn't you tell me he had a white horse?" Sophie looked out across the garden. It was unrecognizable. Bottles, chicken bones, buns, and balloons were trampled into the grass. "This was once my little Garden of Eden," she said. "And now you're being driven out of it," said Alberto. One of the boys was sitting in the white Mercedes. He revved the engine and the car smashed through the garden gate, up the gravel path, and down into the garden. Sophie felt a hard grip on her arm as she was dragged into the den. Then she heard Alberto's voice: "Now!" At the same moment the white Mercedes crashed into an apple tree. Unripe fruit showered down onto the hood. "That's going too far!" shouted the financial adviser. "I demand substantial compensation!" His wife gave him her full support. "It's that damned scoundrel's fault! Where is he?" "They have vanished into thin air," said Helene Amundsen, not without a touch of pride. She drew herself up to her full height, walked toward the long table and began to clear up after the philosophical garden party. "More coffee, anyone?" 花园宴会    ……一只白色的乌鸦…… 席德坐在床上,动也不动。她可以感觉到她双臂与双手绷得紧紧的,拿着那本沉重的讲义夹,颤抖着。 已经快十一点。她坐在那儿读了两个多小时了。这期间她不时抬头大笑,有时笑得她不得不翻身喘气。还好屋里只有她一个人。 这两个小时内发生的事可真多呀。最先是苏菲在从林间小木屋回家的路上努力要引起少校的注意力。最后她爬到一棵树上,然后被大雁莫通给救了。那只雁是从黎巴嫩飞来的,仿佛是她的守护天使一般。 虽然已经过了很久,但席德永远不会忘记从前爸爸念《尼尔奇遇记》(TheWonderfulAdventureofNils)给她听的情景。因为那之后有许多年,她和爸爸之间发展出了一种与那本书有关的秘密语言。现在他又把那只老雁给揪出来了。 后来苏菲第一次体验到独自一人上咖啡厅的滋味。席德对艾伯特讲的萨特和存在主义的事特别感兴趣。他几乎让她变成了一个存在主义者。不过,话说回来,他过去也有好几次曾经这样过。 大约一年前,席德买了一本占星学的书,还有一次她拿了一组意大利纸牌回家,后来又有一次她买了一本有关招魂术的书。每一次,爸爸总是跟她说一些什么“迷信”呀、“批判的能力”呀等等道理,但他一直等到现在才来“绝地大反攻”。他的反击可说是正中要害。很明显的,他想在他的女儿长大之前彻彻底底警告她那些东西的害处。为了安全起见,他安排了他从电器商店的电视屏幕上对她挥手的场面。其实他大可不必这样的……她最感到好奇的还是那个女孩。 苏菲,苏菲——你在哪里?你从何处来?你为什么进入我的生命?最后,艾伯特给了苏菲一本有关她自己的书。那本书是否就是席德现在手上拿的这一本呢?当然,这只是一个讲义夹。但即使是这样,一个人怎么可能在一本有关他自己的书里面发现一本有关他自己的书呢?如果苏菲开始读这本书,会有什么事发生呢?席德用手指摸一摸讲义夹,只剩下几页了。 苏菲从镇上回家时在公车上碰到了她妈妈。该死J她如果看见她手上拿的这本书,不知道会说什么呢!苏菲想把那本书放在装着宴会用彩带和气球的袋子里,但并没有成功。 “嗨,苏菲j我们居然坐同一辆公车!真好尸“嗨,妈!” “你买了一本书呀?” “没有,不是买的。” “《苏菲的世界》……多奇怪呀。” 苏菲知道这时她是骗不了妈妈的。 “是艾伯特给我的。”“嗯,我想一定是的。我说过了,我一直在等着见这个人呢。我可以看看吗?” “可不可以等到我们回家以后?妈,这是我的书耶!” “这当然是你的书啦。我只想看看第一页。好吗?……苏菲放学回家了。有一段路她和乔安同行,她们谈着有关机器人的问题......” “书里真的这么写吗?” “没错。是一个名叫艾勃特的人写的。他一定是刚出道的。喔,对了,你那位哲学家叫什么名字?” “艾伯特。” “也许这个怪人写了一本关于你的书呢,苏菲。他用的可能是笔名。” “那不是他。妈,你就别再说了吧。反正你什么都不懂。” “是呀,我是不懂。明天我们就举行花园宴会了,然后一切又会恢复正常。” “艾伯特活在一个完全不同的世界里,所以这本书是一只白乌鸦。” “你真的不能再这样下去了2以前你说的不是白兔吗?” “好了,别说了。” 她们说到这里,苜蓿巷就到了。她们刚下车就遇上了一次示威游行。 “天哪!”苏菲的妈妈喊,“我还以为我们这个社区不会发生这样的事呢!” 示威的人顶多只有十到十二个。他们乎里拿的布条上写着:“少校快来了!” “支持美味的仲夏节大餐!” “加强联合国!” 苏菲几乎替妈妈感到难过。 “别理他们。”她说。 “可是这个示威好奇怪呀,挺荒谬的。” “只不过是个小把戏罢了!” “世界改变得愈来愈快了。其实,我一点也不感到惊讶。” “不管怎样,你应该对你不感到惊讶这件事感到惊讶。” “一点也不。他们并不暴力呀,是不是?我只希望他们还没有把我们的玫瑰花床踩坏。我想他们一定不会在一座花园里示威吧。 我们赶快回家看看。” “妈,这是一次哲学性的示威。真正的哲学家是不会践踏玫瑰花床的。” “我告诉你吧,苏菲。我不相信世上还有真正的哲学家了。这年头什么都是合成的。” 生日宴会那天下午和晚上,他们一直忙着准备。第二天早上,他们仍继续未完的工作,铺桌子、装饰餐桌。乔安也过来帮忙。 “这下可好了!”她说,“我爸妈也打算要来。都是你,苏菲!” 在客人预定到达前半小时,一切都准备好了。树上挂满了彩带和日本灯笼。花园的门上、小径两旁的树上和屋子的前面都挂满了气球。那天下午大部分时间,苏菲和乔安都忙着吹气球。 餐桌上摆了鸡、沙拉和各式各样的自制面包。厨房里还有葡萄面包和双层蛋糕、丹麦酥和巧克力蛋糕。可是打从一开始,餐桌上最中央的位置就保留给生日蛋糕。那是一个由杏仁圈饼做成的金字塔。在蛋糕的尖顶,有一个穿着坚信礼服装的小女孩图案。苏菲的妈妈曾向她保证那个图案也可以代表一个没有受坚信礼的十五岁女孩,可是苏菲相信妈妈之所以把它放在那儿,是因为苏菲说她不确定自己是不是想受坚信礼。而妈妈似乎认为那个蛋糕就象征坚信礼。 “我们是不惜工本。”在宴会开始前的半小时,这样的话她说了好几次。 客人们开始陆续抵达了。第一批来的是苏菲班上的三个女同学。她们穿着夏天的衬衫、浅色的羊毛背心、长裙子,涂了很淡很淡的眼影。过了一会儿,杰瑞米和罗瑞也缓缓地从大门口走进来了,看起来有点害羞,又有几分小男生的傲慢。 “生日快乐!” “你长大了!” 苏菲注意到乔安和杰瑞米已经开始偷偷地眉来眼去了。空气里有一种让人说不上来的气息,也许是仲夏的缘故。 每一个人都带了生日礼物。由于这是一个哲学性的花园宴会,有几个客人曾经试着研究哲学到底是什么。虽然并不是每个人都找到了与哲学有关的礼物,但大多数人都绞尽脑汁想了一些富有哲学意味的话写在生日卡片上。苏菲收到了一本哲学字典和一本有锁的日记,上面写着“我个人的哲学思维”。客人一抵达,苏菲的妈妈便端上用深色玻璃杯装的苹果西打请他们喝。 “欢迎……这位年轻的男士贵姓大名?……以前好像从来没见过……你能来真是大好了,赛西莉……” 当所有较年轻的客人都已经端着杯子在树下闲逛时,乔安的父母开了一辆白色的宾士轿车,停在花园门口。乔安的爸爸穿了一身昂贵的灰色西装,全身上下无懈可击,妈妈则穿着一套红色裤装,上面贴着暗红色的亮片。苏菲敢说她一定是在玩具店里买了一个穿着这种套装的芭比娃娃,然后请裁缝按照她的尺寸做一套。还有一种可能就是:乔安的爸爸买了一个这样的芭比娃娃,然后请魔术师把它变成一个活生生的女人。可是这种可能性很小,因此苏菲就放弃了。 他们跨出宾士轿车,走进花园,园里所有年轻客人都,晾奇地瞪大了眼睛。乔安的爸爸亲自拿了一个长方形的包裹给苏菲。那是他们全家人送她的礼物。当苏菲发现里面是——没错,是一个芭比娃娃时,很努力地保持镇静。可是乔安就不了:“你疯了吗?苏菲从来不玩洋娃娃的!” 乔安的妈妈连忙走来,衣服上的亮片发出霹霹啪啪的声音。 “可是这只是当装饰用的呀。” “真的很谢谢你,”苏菲想打圆场。“现在我可以开始搜集娃娃了。” 大家开始向餐桌的方向聚拢。 “现在就剩下艾伯特还没到了。”苏菲的妈妈用一种热切的声音向苏菲说,企图隐藏她愈来愈忧虑的心情。其他客人已经开始交换着有关这个特别来宾的小道消息了。 “他已经答应我了,所以他一定会来。” “不过在他来之前我们可以让其他客人先就座吗?” “当然可以。来吧!” 苏菲的妈妈开始请客人围着长桌子坐下。她特别在她自己和苏菲的位置间留了一个空位。她向大家说了一些话,内容不外是今天的菜、天气多好和苏菲已经是大人了等等。 他们在桌边坐了半小时后,就有一个蓄着黑色山羊胡子、戴着扁帽的中年男子走到苜蓿巷,并且进了花园的大门。他捧着一束由十五朵玫瑰做成的花束。 “艾伯特!” 苏菲离开餐桌,跑去迎接他。她用双手抱住他的脖子,并从他手里接过那束花。只见他在夹克的口袋里摸索一下,掏出两三个大—鞭炮,把它们点燃后就丢到各处。走到餐桌旁后,他点亮了一支烟火,放在杏仁塔上,然后便走过去,站在苏菲和妈妈中间的空位上。 “我很高兴能到这里来。”他说。 在座的宾客都愣住了。乔安的妈妈对她先生使了一个眼色。苏菲的妈妈看到艾伯特终于出现,在松了一口气之余,对他的一切行为都不计较了。苏菲自己则努力按捺她的笑意。 苏菲的妈妈用手敲了敲她的玻璃杯,说道:“让我们也欢迎艾伯特先生来到这个哲学的花园宴会。他不是我的新男友。因为,虽然我丈夫经常在海上,我目前并没有交男朋友。这位令人很意外的先生是苏菲的新哲学老师。他的本事不只是放鞭炮而已。他还能,比方说,从一顶礼帽里拉出一只活生生的兔子来。苏菲,你说是兔子还是乌鸦来着?” “多谢。”艾伯特说,然后便坐下来。 “干杯!”苏菲说。于是在座客人便举起他们那装着深红色可乐的玻璃杯,向他致意。 他们坐了很久,吃着鸡和沙拉。突然间乔安站起来,毅然决然地走到杰瑞米身旁,在他的唇上大声地亲了一下。杰瑞米也试图把她向后扳倒在桌上,以便回吻她。 “我要昏倒了。”乔安的妈妈喊。 “孩子们,不要在桌上玩。”苏菲的妈妈只说了这么一句话。 “为什么不要呢?”艾伯特转身对着她问。 “这个问题很奇怪。” “一个真正的哲学家问问题是从来没有错的。” 另外两三个没有被吻的男孩开始把鸡骨头扔到屋顶上。对于他们的举动,苏菲的妈妈也只温和地说了一句:“请你们不要这样好吗?檐沟里有鸡骨头清理起来挺麻烦的。” “对不起,伯母。”其中一个男孩说,然后他们便改把鸡骨扔到花园里的树篱上。 “我想现在应该收拾盘于,开始切蛋糕了。”苏菲的妈妈终于说。“有几个人想喝咖啡?” 乔安一家、艾伯特和其他几个客人都举起了手。 “也许苏菲和乔安可以来帮我忙……” 他们趁走向厨房的空档,匆匆讲了几句悄悄话。 “你怎么会跑去亲他的?” “我坐在那儿看着他的嘴,就是无法抗拒。他真的好可爱呀!” “感觉怎样?” “不完全像我想象的那样,不过……” “那么这是你的第一次哼?” “可是绝不是最后一次!” 很快的,咖啡与蛋糕就上桌了。艾伯特刚拿了一些鞭炮给那几个男孩,苏菲的妈妈便敲了敲她的咖啡杯。 “我只简短地说几句话。”她开始说,“我只有苏菲这个女儿。在一个星期又一天前,她满十五岁了。你们可以看出来,我们是不惜工本地办这次宴会。生日蛋糕上有二十四个杏仁圈饼,所以你们每人至少可以吃一个。那些先动手拿的人可以吃两个,因为我们要从上面开始拿,而愈往下的圈饼个愈大。人生也是这样。当苏菲还小时,她总是拿着很小的圈饼到处跑。几年过去了。圈饼愈来愈大。 现在它们可以绕到旧市区那儿再绕回来了。由于她爸爸经常出海,于是她常打电话到世界各地。祝你十五岁生日快乐,苏菲!” “真好!”乔安的妈妈说。 苏菲不确定她指的是她妈妈、她妈妈讲的话、生日蛋糕还是苏菲自己。 宾客们一致鼓掌。有一个男孩把一串鞭炮扔到梨树上。乔安也离开座位,想把杰瑞米从椅子上拉起来。他任由她把他拉走,然后两人便滚到草地上不停地互相亲吻。过了一会儿后,他们滚进了红醋栗的树丛。“这年头都是女孩子采取主动了。”乔先生说。 然后他便站起来,走到红醋栗树丛那儿,就近观察着这个现象。结果,其他的客人也都跟过去了。只有苏菲和艾伯特仍然坐在位子上。其他的客人站在那儿,围着乔安和杰瑞米,成了一个半圆形。这时,乔安和杰瑞米已经从最初纯纯的吻进展到了热烈爱抚的阶段。 “谁也挡不住他们。”乔安的妈妈说,语气里有点自豪。 “嗯,有其父必有其女。”她丈夫说。 他看看四周,期待众人对他的妙语如珠报以掌声,但他们却只是默默地点点头。于是他又说:“我看是没办法了。” 这时苏菲在远处看到杰瑞米正试图解开乔安白衬衫上的扣子。那件白衬衫上早已染了一块块青苹的印渍。乔安也正摸索着杰瑞米的腰带。 “别着凉了!”乔安的妈妈说。 苏菲绝望地看着艾伯特。 “事情发生得比我预料中还快。”他说。“我们必须尽快离开这儿。不过我要先对大家讲几句话。” 苏菲大声地拍着手。 “大家可不可以回到这里来坐下?艾伯特要演讲了。” 除了乔安和杰瑞米外,每一个人都慢慢走回原位。 “你真的要演讲吗?”苏菲的妈妈问。“太美妙了!” “谢谢你。” “你喜欢散步,我知道。保持身材是很重要的。如果有一只狗陪伴那就更好了。它的名字是不是叫汉密士?” 艾伯特站起身,敲敲他的咖啡杯。“亲爱的苏菲,”他开始说,“我想提醒你这是一个哲学的花园宴会。因此我将发表一篇有关哲学的演讲。” 众人爆出热烈的掌声。 “在这样乱糟糟的地方,也许正适合谈谈理性。可是无论发生什么,我们都不要忘记祝苏菲十五岁生日快乐。” 他刚讲完,他们便听见一架小飞机嗡嗡地飞过来。它飞低到花园上方,尾部拉着一个长长的布条,上面写着:“十五岁生日快乐!” 又是一阵掌声,比前几次都大声。 哲学演讲“哪,你看到没有?”苏菲的妈妈高兴地说,“这个人的本事不只是放鞭炮而已!” “谢谢。这不过是个小把戏罢了。过去这几个星期以来,苏菲和我进行了一项大规模的哲学调查。我们现在要在这里公布我们的调查结果,我们将揭开我们的存在最深处的秘密。” 现在,众人都安静下来了,只听见小鸟啁啾的声音和红醋栗树丛里偶尔传来的经过刻意压抑的声响。 “说下去呀!”苏菲说。 “在对最早的希腊哲学家一直到现代的哲学理论做过一番彻底的研究之后,我们发现我们是活在一个少校的心灵中,那位少校目前担任联合国驻黎巴嫩的观察员。他已经为他女儿写了一本关于我们的书。那个女孩住在黎乐桑,名叫席德,今年也是十五岁了,而且和苏菲同一天生日。在六月十五日清晨她醒来后,这本书就放在她床边的桌子上。说得更明确一点,那本书是装在一个讲义夹里的。现在,就在我们讲话的时候,她正用她的食指摸着讲义夹的最后几页。” 桌旁的众人脸上开始出现一种忧虑的神色。 “因此,我们的存在只不过是做为席德生日的娱乐罢了。少校创造我们,以我们为架构,以便对他的女儿进行哲学教育。这表示,(打个比方)大门口停的那辆宾士轿车是一文不值,那不过是个小把戏罢了。它只不过是在一位可怜的联合国少校的脑海里转来转去的白色宾士轿车。而那位少校此刻正坐在一棵棕榈树的树荫下,以免中暑呢。各位,黎巴嫩的天气是很炎热的。” “胡说!”乔先生喊道。“这真是一派胡言。” “你可以有你自己的看法,”艾伯特毫无怯意,继续说下去,“但事实上这次花园宴会才真正是一派胡言。整个宴会里唯一有理性的就是我这席演讲尸听到这话,乔先生便站起来说:“我们大家在这里,拚全力地做生意,并且买了各种保险,以防万一。可是这个无所事事的万事通先生却来这儿发表什么‘哲学’宣言,想破坏这一切哩尸艾伯特点头表示同意。 “的确没有保险公司会保这种哲学见解险,这种见解比什么天灾都还糟哩。可是我说,这位先生,你可能知道,保险公司也不保那些的。” “现在哪来的天灾?” “不,我说的是生存方面的天灾。比方说,你如果看看树丛底下发生的事,就会明白我的意思。你没法投保任何的险,以防止自己整个生命崩溃。你也不能防止太阳熄灭。” “我们一定得听他胡扯吗?”乔安的爸爸问,眼睛向下看着他的妻子。 她摇摇头,苏菲的妈妈也摇摇头。 “太可惜了,”她说,“这次宴会我们可是不惜工本。” 但年轻人们却坐在那儿,眼睛瞪着艾伯特一直看。通常年轻人比年长的人要更容易接受新思想和新观念。 “请你说下去。”一个一头金色的卷发,戴着眼镜的男孩说。 “谢谢你。但我没有很多话好说了。当你已经发现自己只是某个人不清不楚的脑袋里的一个梦般的人物时,依我来看最明智的办法就是保持缄默。可是最后我可以建议你们年轻人修一门简短的哲学史课程。对于上一代的价值观抱持批判的态度是很重要。如果说我曾经教苏菲任何事的话,那就是:要有批判性的思考态度。 黑格尔称之为否定的思考。” 乔先生还没有坐下。他一直站在那儿,用手指敲击桌面。 “这个煽动家企图破坏学校、教会和我们努力灌输给下一代的所有健全的价值观。年轻人有他们的未来,他们终有一天会继承我们所有的成就。如果这个家伙不立刻离开这里,我就要叫我的家庭律师来。他知道该怎么处理这样的事情。” “既然你只是一个影子,因此不管你想要处理的是什么事情,对他来说都没什么差别。还有,不管怎样,苏菲和我马上就要离开这个宴会了,因为,对我们而言,我们所上的哲学课不完全只谈理论,它也有实际的一面。当时机成熟时,我们会表演一个消失不见的把戏。那样我们就可以从少校的意识里偷偷溜走。” 消失苏菲的妈妈拉着苏菲的手。 “你不会离开我吧?苏菲。” 苏菲用双臂抱住妈妈,并抬头看着艾伯特。 “妈妈很难过……” “不,这是很荒谬的。你不可以忘记你所学的。我们要挣脱的是这些胡言。你的妈妈就像那个带着一篮子食物要送给她祖母的小红帽一样的可爱、亲切。她当然会难过,可是那就像那架飞在我们头顶上祝你生日快乐,的飞机需要有燃料一样。” “我明白你的意思了。”苏菲说,于是她转身背对着妈妈。“所以我必须照他的话做。早晚有一天,我是一定得离开你的。” “我会想你的,”她妈妈说,“可是如果这上面有一个天堂,你得飞上去才行,我答应你我会好好照顾葛文达。它一天吃一片还是两片莴苣叶子?” 艾伯特把手放在她的肩膀上。 “在座没有一个人,包括你在内,会想念我们。理由很简单:因为你们并不存在。所以你们不会有什么器官可以用来想念我们。” “这简直是太污辱人了。”乔安的妈妈大声说。 她的丈夫点点头。 “我们至少可以告他毁谤。他想要剥夺所有我们珍视的东西。 这人是个无赖,是个该死的蛮子!” 说完后,他和艾伯特都坐下来了。乔安的爸爸气得脸色发红。 此时,乔安和杰瑞米也过来坐下了。他们的衣服全都脏兮兮的,皱成一团。乔安的金发上也沾了一块块的泥巴。 “妈,我要生小孩了。”她宣布说。 “好吧,可是你得等到回家再生。” 乔先生也立刻表示支持。 “她得克制一下她自己。如果小孩今晚要受洗的话,她得自己设法安排。” 艾伯特用一种肃穆的神情看着苏菲。 “时候到了。” “你走之前能不能给我们端几杯咖啡来呢?”苏菲的妈妈问。 “当然可以,马上来。” 她从桌上拿了保温瓶。她得把厨房里的咖啡机再加满水才行。 当她站在那儿等水煮开时,顺便喂了鸟和金鱼,并走进浴室,拿出一片莴苣叶给葛文达吃。她到处找不到雪儿,不过她还是开了一大罐猫食,倒在一只碗里,并把碗放在门前的台阶上。她的眼泪不断涌出来。 当她端着咖啡回到园里时,宴会中的情景像是一个儿童聚会,而不像是一个十五岁生日宴会。桌上有好几个打翻的汽水瓶,桌布上到处沾满了巧克力蛋糕,装葡萄干面包的盘子覆在苹坪上。苏菲来到时,有一个男孩正把一串鞭炮放在双层蛋糕上。鞭炮爆炸时,蛋糕上的奶油溅得桌上、客人的身上到处都是。受害最深的是乔安的妈妈那身红色的裤装。奇怪的是她和每一个人都一副若无其事的样子。这时,乔安拿了一大块巧克力蛋糕,涂在杰瑞米的脸上,然后开始用舌头把它舔掉。 苏菲的妈妈和艾伯特一起坐在秋千上,与其他人有一段距离。 他们向苏菲挥挥手。 “你们两个终于开始密谈了。”苏菲说。 “你说对了。”她妈妈说,一副兴高采烈的样子。“艾伯特是一个很体贴人的人。我可以放心地把你交给他了。” 苏菲坐在他们两人中间。 这时,有两个男孩爬上了屋顶。一个女孩走来走去,用发夹到处戳气球。然后有一个不请自来的客人骑了一辆摩托车到来,后座的架子上绑了一箱啤酒和几瓶白兰地。有几个人很高兴地欢迎他进来。 乔先生看到后便站起来,拍拍手说:“我们来玩游戏好吗?” 他抓了一瓶啤酒,一口喝尽,并把空瓶子放在草坪中央。然后他走到餐桌旁,拿了生日蛋糕上的最后五个杏仁圈,向其他客人示范如何把圈饼丢出去,套在啤酒瓶的瓶颈上。 “死亡的苦痛。”艾伯特说。“现在,在少校结束一切,在席德把讲义夹合上前,我们最好赶紧离开。” “妈,你得一个人清理这些东西了!” “没关系,孩子。这不是你应该过的生活。如果艾伯特能够让你过得比较好,我比谁都高兴。你不是告诉过我他有一匹白马吗?” 苏菲向花园望去,已经认不得这是哪里了。草地上到处都是瓶子、鸡骨头、面包和气球。 “这里曾经是我小小的伊甸园。”她说。 “现在你要被赶出来了。”艾伯特答道。 这时有一个男孩正坐在白色的宾士轿车里。他发动引擎,车子就飞快冲过大门口,开到石子路上,并开进花园。 苏菲感觉有人紧抓着她的手臂,把她拖进密洞内。然后她听见艾伯特的声音:“来吧!” 就在这时,白色的宾士车撞到了一棵苹果树。树上那些还没成熟的苹果像下雨般纷纷落在车盖上。 “简直太过分了尸乔安的爸爸大吼。“我要你赔!” 他大大全力支持他。 “都是那个无赖的错。咦,他跑到哪里去了?” “他们在空气中消失了。”苏菲的妈妈说,语气里有点自豪。 她站起身,走向那张长餐桌,开始清理碗盘。 “还有没有人要喝咖啡?” Counterpoint two or more melodies sounding together Hilde sat up in bed. That was the end of the story of Sophie and Alberto. But what had actually happened? Why had her father written that last chapter? Was it just to demonstrate his power over Sophie's world? Deep in thought, she took a shower and got dressed. She ate a quick breakfast and then wandered down the garden and sat in the glider. She agreed with Alberto that the only sensible thing that had happened at the garden party was his speech. Surely her father didn't think Hilde's world was as chaotic as Sophie's garden party? Or that her world would also dissolve eventually? Then there was the matter of Sophie and Alberto. What had happened to the secret plan? Was it up to Hilde herself to continue the story? Or had they really managed to sneak out of it? And where were they now? A thought suddenly struck her. If Alberto and Sophie really had managed to sneak out of the story, there wouldn't be anything about it in the ring binder. Everything that was there, unfortunately, was clear to her father. Could there be anything written between the lines? There was more than a mere suggestion of it. Hilde realized that she would have to read the whole story again one or two more times. * * * As the white Mercedes drove into the garden, Alberto dragged Sophie with him into the den. Then they ran into the woods in the direction of the major's cabin. "Quickly!" cried Alberto. "It's got to happen before he starts looking for us." "Are we beyond the major's reach now?" "We are in the borderland." They rowed across the water and ran into the cabin. Alberto opened a trapdoor in the floor. He pushed Sophie down into the cellar. Then everything went black. In the days that followed, Hilde worked on her plan. She sent several letters to Anne Kvamsdal in Copenhagen, and a couple of times she called her. She also enlisted the aid of friends and acquaintances, and recruited almost half of her class at school. In between, she read Sophie's World. It was not a story one could be done with after a single reading. New thoughts about what could have happened to Sophie and Alberto when they left the garden party were constantly occurring to her. On Saturday, June 23, she awoke with a start around nine o'clock. She knew her father had already left the camp in Lebanon. Now it was just a question of waiting. The last part of his day was planned down to the smallest detail. Later in the morning she began the preparations for Midsummer Eve with her mother. Hilde could not help thinking of how Sophie and her mother had arranged their Midsummer Eve party. But that was something they had done. It was over, finished. Or was it? Were they going around right now, decorating everywhere? Sophie and Alberto seated themselves on a lawn in front of two large buildings with ugly air vents and ventilation canals on the outside. A young couple came walking out of one of the buildings. He was carrying a brown briefcase and she had a red handbag slung over one shoulder. A car drove along a narrow road in the background. "What happened?" asked Sophie. "We made it!" "But where are we?" "This is Oslo." "Are you quite sure?" "Quite sure. One of these buildings is called Chateau Neuf, which means 'the new palace.' People study music there. The other is the Congregation Faculty. It's a school of theology. Further up the hill they study science and up at the top they study literature and philosophy." "Are we out of Hilde's book and beyond the major's control?" "Yes, both. He'll never find us here." "But where were we when we ran through the woods?" "While the major was busy crashing the financial adviser's car into an apple tree, we seized the chance to hide in the den. We were then at the embryo stage. We were of the old as well as of the new world. But concealing ourselves there was something the major cannot possibly have envisaged." "Why not?" "He would never have let us go so easily. As it was, it went like a dream. Of course, there's always the chance that he was in on it himself." "What do you mean?" "It was he who started the white Mercedes. He may have exerted himself to the utmost to lose sight of us. He was probably utterly exhausted after everything that had been going on . . ." By now the young couple were only a few yards away. Sophie felt a bit awkward, sitting on the grass with a man so much older than herself. Besides, she wanted someone to confirm what Alberto had said. She got up and went over to them"Excuse me, would you mind telling me the name of this street?" But they ignored her completely. Sophie was so provoked that she asked them again. "It's customary to answer a person, isn't it?" The young man was clearly engrossed in explaining something to his companion: "Contrapuntal form operates on two dimensions, horizontally, or melodically, and vertically, or harmonically. There will always be two or more melodies sounding together . . ." "Excuse me for interrupting, but. . ." "The melodies combine in such a way that they develop as much as possible, independently of how they sound against each other. But they have to be concordant. Actually it's note against note." How rude! They were neither deaf nor blind. Sophie tried a third time, standing ahead of them on the path blocking their way,She was simply brushed aside. "There's a wind coming up," said the woman. Sophie rushed back to Alberto. 'They can't hear me!" she said desperately--and just as she said it, she recalled her dream about Hilde and the gold crucifix. "It's the price we have to pay. Although we have sneaked out of a book, we can't expect to nave exactly the same status as its author. But we really are here. From now on, we will never be a day older than we were when we left the philosophical garden party." "Does that mean we'll never have any real contact with me people around us?" "A true philosopher never says 'never.' What time is it?" "Eight o'clock." "The same as when we left Captain's Bend, of course." "This is the day Hilde's father gets back from Lebanon." "That's why we must hurry." "Why--what do you mean?" "Aren't you anxious to know what happens when the major gets home to Bjerkely?" "Naturally, but. . ." "Come on, then!" They began to walk down toward the city. Several people passed them on the way, but they all walked right on by as if Sophie and Alberto were invisible. Cars were parked by the curbside all the way along the street. Alberto stopped by a small red convertible with the top down. "This will do," he said. "We must just make sure it's ours." "I have no idea what you mean." "I'd better explain then. We can't just take an ordinary car that belongs to someone here in the city. What do you think would happen when people noticed the car driving along without a driver? And anyway, we probably wouldn't be able to start it." "Then why the convertible?" "I think I recognize it from an old movie." "Look, I'm sorry, but I'm getting tired of all these cryptic remarks." "It's a make-believe car, Sophie. It's just like us. People here only see a vacant space. That's all we have to confirm before we're on our way." They stood by the car and waited. After a while, a boy came cycling along on the sidewalk. He turned suddenly and rode right through the red car and onto the road. "There, you see? It's ours!" Alberto opened the door to the passenger seat. "Be my guest!" he said, and Sophie got in. He got into the driver's seat. The key was in the ignition, he turned it, and the engine started. They drove southward out of the city, past Lysaker, Sandvika, Drammen, and down toward Lillesand. As they drove they saw more and more Midsummer bonfires, especially after they had passed Drammen. "It's Midsummer, Sophie. Isn't it wonderful?" "And there's such a lovely fresh breeze in an open car. Is it true that no one can see us?" "Only people of our own kind. We might meet some of them. What's the time now?" "Half past eight." "We'll have to take a few shortcuts. We can't stay behind this trailer, that's for sure." They turned off into a large wheatfield. Sophie looked back and saw that they had left a broad trail of flattened stalks. "Tomorrow they'll say a freak wind blew over the field," said Alberto. * * * Major Albert Knag had just landed at Kastrup Airport outside Copenhagen. It was half past four on Saturday, June 23. It had already been a long day. This penultimate lap had been by plane from Rome. He went through passport control in his UN uniform, which he was proud to wear. He represented not only himself and his country. Albert Knag represented an international legal system--a century-old tradition that now embraced the entire planet. He carried only a flight bag. He had checked the rest of his baggage through from Rome. He just needed to hold up his red passport. "Nothing to declare." Major Albert Knag had a nearly three-hour wait in the airport before his plane left for Kristiansand. He would have time to buy a few presents for his family. He had sent the present of his life to Hilde two weeks ago. Marit, his wife, had put it on her bedside table for her to discover when she woke up on her birthday. He had not spoken with Hilde since that late night birthday call. Albert bought a couple of Norwegian newspapers, found himself a table in the bar, and ordered a cup of coffee. He had hardly had time to skim the headlines when he heard an announcement over the loudspeakers: "This is a personal call for Albert Knag. Albert Knag is requested to contact the SAS information desk." What now? He felt a chill down his spine. Surely he was not being ordered back to Lebanon? Could something be wrong at home? He quickly reached the SAS information desk. "I'm Albert Knag." "Here is a message for you. It is urgent." He opened the envelope at once. Inside lay a smaller envelope. It was addressed to Major Albert Knag, c/o SAS Information, Kastrup Airport, Copenhagen. Albert opened the little envelope nervously. It contained a short note: Dear Dad, Welcome home from Lebanon. As you can imagine, I can't even wait till you get home. Forgive me for having you paged over the loud-speakers. It was the easiest way. P.S. Unfortunately a claim for damages has arrived from financial adviser Ingebrigtsen regarding a stolen and wrecked Mercedes. P.S. P.S. I may be sitting in the garden when you get here. But you might also be hearing from me before that. P.S. P.S. P.S. I'm rather scared of staying in the garden too long at a time. It's so easy to sink into the ground in such places. Love from Hilde, who has had plenty of time to prepare your homecoming. Major Albert Knag's first impulse was to smile. But he did not appreciate being manipulated in this manner. He had always liked to be in charge of his own life. Now this little vixen in Lillesand was directing his movements in Kastrup Airport! How had she managed that? He put the envelope in his breast pocket and began to stroll toward the little shopping mall. He was just about to enter the Danish Food deli when he noticed a small envelope taped to the store window. It had MAJOR KNAG written on it with a thick marker pen. Albert took it down and opened it: Personal message for Major Albert Knag, c/o Danish Food, Kastrup Airport. Dear Dad, please buy a large Danish salami, preferably a two-pound one, and Mom would probably like a cognac sausage. P. S. Danish caviar is not bad either. Love, Hilde. Albert turned around. She wasn't here, was she? Had Mark given her a trip to Copenhagen so she could meet him here? It was Hilde's handwriting ... Suddenly the UN observer began to feel himself observed. It was as if someone was in remote control of everything he did. He felt like a doll in the hands of a child. He went into the shop and bought a two-pound salami, a cognac sausage, and three jars of Danish caviar. Then he continued down the row of stores. He had made up his mind to buy a proper present for Hilde. A calculator, maybe? Or a little radio--yes, that was what he would get. When he got to the store that sold electrical appliances, he saw that there was an envelope taped to the window there too. This one was addressed to "Major Albert Knag, c/o the most interesting store in Kastrup." Inside was the following note: Dear Dad, Sophie sends her greetings and thanks for the combined mini-TV and FM radio that she got for her birthday from her very generous father. It was great, but on the other hand it was a mere bagatelle. I must confess, though, that I share Sophie's liking for such bagatelles. P.S. In case you haven't been there yet, there are further instructions at the Danish Food store and the big Tax Free store that sells wines and tobacco. P.S. P.S. I got some money for my birthday, so I can contribute to the mini-TV with 350 crowns. Love, Hilde, who has already stuffed the turkey and made the Waldorf salad. A mini-TV cost 985 Danish crowns. That could certainly be called a bagatelle in comparison with how Albert Knag felt about being directed hither and thither by his daughter's sneaky tricks. Was she here--or was she not? From that moment on, he was constantly on guard wherever he went. He felt like a secret agent and a marionette rolled into one. Was he not being deprived of his basic human rights? He felt obliged to go into the Tax Free store as well. There hung a new envelope with his name on it. The whole airport was becoming a computer game with him as the cursor. He read the message: Major Knag, c/o the Tax Free store at Kastrup. All I need from here is a bag of gumdrops and some marzipan bars. Remember it's much more expensive in Norway. As far as I can recall, Mom is very fond of Campari. P.S. You must keep all your senses alert the whole way home. You wouldn't want to miss any important messages, would you? Love from your most teachable daughter, Hilde. Albert sighed despairingly, but he went into the store and shopped as instructed. With three plastic carriers and his flight bag he walked toward Gate 28 to wait for his flight. If there were any more messages they would have to stay there. However, at Gate 28 he caught sight of another white envelope taped to a pillar: "To Major Knag, c/o GATE 28, Kastrup Airport." This was also in Hilde's handwriting, but the gate number seemed to have been written by someone else. It was not easy to judge since there was no writing to compare it with, only block letters and digits. He took it down. This one said only "It won't be long now." He sat down on a chair with his back against the wall. He kept the shopping bags on his knees. Thus the proud major sat stiffly, eyes straight ahead, like a small child traveling alone for the first time. If Hilde was here, she was certainly not going to have the satisfaction of dis-covering him first. He glanced anxiously at each passenger that came in. For a while he felt like an enemy of the state under close surveillance. When the passengers were finally allowed to board the plane he breathed a sigh of relief. He was the last person to board. As he handed over his boarding pass he tore off another white envelope that had been taped to the check-in desk. Sophie and Alberto had passed Brevik, and a little later the exit to Kragera. "You're going awfully fasf," said Sophie. "It's almost nine o'clock. He'll soon be landing at Kjevik. But we won't be stopped for speeding." "Suppose we smash into another car?" "It makes no difference if it's just an ordinary car. But if it's one of our own . . ." "Then what?" "Then we'll have to be very careful. Didn't you notice that we passed the Bat Mobile." "No." "It was parked somewhere up in Vestfold." "This tourist bus won't be easy to pass. There are dense woods on each side of the road." "It makes no difference, Sophie. Can't you get it into your head?" So saying, he swung the car into the woods and drove straight through the trees. Sophie breathed a sigh of relief. "You scared me." "We wouldn't feel it if we drove into a brick wall." "That only means we're spirits of the air compared to our surroundings." "No, now you're putting the cart before the horse. It is the reality around us that's an airy adventure to us." "I don't get it." "Listen carefully, then. It is a widespread misunderstanding that spirit is a thing that is more 'airy' than vapor. On the contrary. Spirit is more solid than ice." "That never occurred to me." "And now I'll tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a man who didn't believe in angels. One day, while he was out working in the woods, he was visited by an angel." "And?" "They walked together for a while. Then the man turned to the angel and said, 'All right, now I have to admit that angels exist. But you don't exist in reality, like us."What do you mean by that?' asked the angel. So the man answered, 'When we came to that big rock, I had to go around it, but I noticed that you just glided through it. And when we came to that huge log that lay across the path, I had to climb over it while you walked straight through it.' The angel was very surprised, and said 'Didn't you also notice that we took a path that led through a marsh? We both walked right through the mist. That was because we were more solid than the mist.' "Ah." "It's the same with us, Sophie. Spirit can pass through steel doors. No tanks or bombers can crush anything that is of spirit." "That's a comfort." "We'll soon be passing Ris0r, and it's no more than an hour since we left the major's cabin. I could really use a cup of coffee." When they got to Fiane, just before S0ndeled, they passed a cafeteria on the lefthand side of the road. It was called Cinderella. Alberto swung the car around and parked on the grass in front of it. Inside, Sophie tried to take a bottle of Coke from the cooler, but she couldn't lift it. It seemed to be stuck. Further down the counter, Alberto was trying to tap coffee into a paper cup he had found in the car. He only had to press a lever, but even by exerting all his strength he could not press it down. This made him so mad that he turned to the cafeteria guests and asked for help. When no one reacted, he shouted so loudly that Sophie had to cover her ears: "I want some coffee!" His anger soon evaporated, and he doubled up with laughter. They were about to turn around and leave when an old woman got up from her chair and came toward them. She was wearing a garish red skirt, an ice-blue cardigan, and a white kerchief round her head. She seemed more sharply defined than anything else in the little cafeteria. She went up to Alberto and said, "My my, how you do yell, my boy!" "Excuse me." "You want some coffee, you said?" "Yes, but. . ." "We have a small establishment close by." They followed the old woman out of the cafeteria and down a path behind it. While they walked, she said, "You are new in these parts?" "We might as well admit it," answered Alberto. "That's all right. Welcome to eternity then, children." "And you?" "I'm out of one of Grimm's fairy tales. That was nearly two hundred years ago. And where are you from?" "We're out of a book on philosophy. I am the philosophy teacher and this is my student, Sophie." "Hee hee! That's a new one!" They came through the trees to a small clearing where there were several cozy-looking brown cottages. A large Midsummer bonfire was burning in a yard between the cottages, and around the bonfire danced a crowd of colorful figures. Sophie recognized many of them. There were Snow White and some of the seven dwarfs, Mary Poppins and Sherlock Holmes, Peter Pan and Pippi Longstocking, Little Red Ridinghood and Cinderella. A lot of familiar figures without names had also gathered around the bonfire--there were gnomes and elves, fauns and witches, angels and imps. Sophie also caught sight of a real live troll. "What a lot of noise!" exclaimed Alberto. "That's because it's Midsummer," said the old woman. "We haven't had a gathering like this since Valborg's Eve. That was when we were in Germany. I'm only here on a short visit. Was it coffee you wanted?" "Yes, please." Not until now did Sophie notice that all the buildings were made out of gingerbread, candy, and sugar icing. Several of the figures were eating directly off the facades. A baker was going around repairing the damage as it occurred. Sophie ventured to take a little bite off one corner. It tasted sweeter and better than anything she had ever tasted before. Presently the old woman returned with a cup of coffee. "Thank you very much indeed." "And what are the visitors going to pay for the coffee?" "To pay?" "We usually pay with a story. For coffee, an old wives' tale will suffice." "We could tell the whole incredible story of humanity," said Alberto, "but unfortunately we are in a hurry. Can we come back and pay some other day?" "Of course. And why are you in a hurry?" Alberto explained their errand, and the old woman commented: "I must say, you certainly are a pair of greenhorns. You'd better hurry up and cut the umbilical cord to your mortal progenitor. We no longer need their world. We belong to the invisible people." Alberto and Sophie hurried back to the Cinderella cafeteria and the red convertible. Right next to the car a busy mother was helping her little boy to pee. Racing along and taking shortcuts, they soon arrived in Lillesand. SK 876 from Copenhagen touched down at Kjevik on schedule at 9:35 p.m. While the plane was taxied out to the runway in Copenhagen, the.major had opened the envelope hanging from the check-in desk. The note inside read: To Major Knag, as he hands over his boarding pass at Kastrup on Midsummer Eve, 1990. Dear Dad, You probably thought I would turn up in Copenhagen. But my control over your movements is more ingenious than that. I can see you wherever you are, Dad. The fact is, I have been to visit a well-known Gypsy family which many, many years ago sold a magic brass mirror to Great-grandmother. I have also gotten myself a crystal ball. At this very moment, I can see that you have just sat down in your seat. May I remind you to fasten your seat belt and keep the back of your seat raised to an upright position until the Fasten Seat Belt sign has been switched off. As soon as the plane is in flight, you can lower the seat back and give yourself a well-earned rest. You will need to be rested when you get home. The weather in Lillesand is perfect, but the temperature is a few degrees lower than in Lebanon. I wish you a pleasant flight. Love, your own witch-daughter, Queen of the Mirror and the Highest Protector of Irony. Albert could not quite make out whether he was angry or merely tired and resigned. Then he started laughing. He laughed so loudly that his fellow passengers turned to stare at him. Then the plane took off. He had been given a taste of his own medicine. But with a significant difference, surely. His medicine had first and foremost affected Sophie and Alberto. And they--well, they were only imaginary. He did what Hilde had suggested. He lowered the back of his seat and nodded off. He was not fully awake again until he had gone through passport control and was standing in the arrival hall at Kjevik Airport. A demonstration was there to greet him. There were eight or ten young people of about Hilde's age. They were holding signs saying: WELCOME HOME, DAD -- HILDE IS WAITING IN THE GARDEN -- IRONY LIVES. The worst thing was that he could not just jump into a taxi. He had to wait for his baggage. And all the while, Hilde's classmates were swarming around him, forcing him to read the signs again and again. Then one of the girls came up and gave him a bunch of roses and he melted. He dug down into one of his shopping bags and gave each demonstrator a marzipan bar. Now there were only two left for Hilde. When he had reclaimed his baggage, a young man stepped forward and explained that he was under the command of the Queen of the Mirror, and that he had orders to drive him to Bjerkely. The other demonstrators dispersed into the crowd. They drove out onto the E 18. Every bridge and tunnel they passed was draped with banners saying: "Welcome home!", "The turkey is ready," "I can see you, Dad!" When he was dropped off outside the gate at Bjerkely, Albert Knag heaved a sigh of relief, and thanked the driver with a hundred crown note and three cans of Carlsberg Elephant beer. His wife was waiting for him outside the house. After a long embrace, he asked: "Where is she?" "She's sitting on the dock, Albert." Alberto and Sophie stopped the red convertible on the square in Lillesand outside the Hotel Norge. It was a quarter past ten. They could see a large bonfire out in the archipelago. "How do we find Bjerkely?" asked Sophie. "We'll just have to hunt around for it. You remember the painting in the major's cabin." "We'll have to hurry. I want to get there before he arrives." They started to drive around the minor roads and then over rocky mounds and slopes. A useful clue was that Bjerkely lay by the water. Suddenly Sophie shouted, "There it is! We've found it!" "I do believe you're right, but don't shout so loud." "Why? There's no one to hear us." "My dear Sophie--after a whole course in philosophy, I'm very disappointed to find you still jumping to conclusions." "Yes, but. . ." "Surely you don't believe this place is entirely devoid of trolls, pixies, wood nymphs, and good fairies?" "Oh, excuse me." They drove through the gate and up the gravel path to the house. Alberto parked the car on the lawn beside the glider. A little way down the garden a table was set for three. "I can see her!" whispered Sophie. "She's sitting down on the dock, just like in my dream." "Have you noticed how much the garden looks like your own garden in Clover Close?" "Yes, it does. With the glider and everything. Can I go down to her?" "Naturally. I'll stay here." Sophie ran down to the dock. She almost stumbled and fell over Hilde. But she sat down politely beside her. Hilde sat idly playing with the line that the rowboat was made fast with. In her left hand she held a slip of paper. She was clearly waiting. She glanced at her watch several times. Sophie thought she was very pretty. She had fair, curly hair and bright green eyes. She was wearing a yellow summer dress. She was not unlike Joanna. Sophie tried to talk to her even though she knew it was useless. "Hilde--it's Sophie!" Hilde gave no sign that she had heard. Sophie got onto her knees and tried to shout in her ear: "Can you hear me, Hilde? Or are you both deaf and blind?" Did she, or didn't she, open her eyes a little wider? Wasn't there a very slight sign that she had heard something--however faintly? She looked around. Then she turned her head sharply and stared right into Sophie's eyes. She did not focus on her properly; it was as if she was looking right through her. "Not so loud, Sophie," said Alberto from up in the car. "I don't want the garden filled with mermaids." Sophie sat still now. It felt good just to be close to Hilde. Then she heard the deep voice of a man: "Hilde!" It was the major--in uniform, with a blue beret. He stood at the top of the garden. Hilde jumped up and ran toward him. They met between the glider and the red convertible. He lifted her up in the air and swung her around and around. Hilde had been sitting on the dock waiting for her father. Since he had landed at Kastrup, she had thought of him every fifteen minutes, trying to imagine where he was now, and how he was taking it. She had noted all the times down on a slip of paper and kept it with her all day. What if it made him angry? But surely he couldn't expect that he would write a mysterious book for her-- and then everything would remain as before? She looked at her watch again. Now it was a quarter past ten. He could be arriving any minute. But what was that? She thought she heard a faint breath of something, exactly as in her dream about Sophie. She turned around quickly. There was something, she was sure of it. But what? Maybe it was only the summer night. For a few seconds she was afraid she was hearing things. "Hilde!" Now she turned the other way. It was Dad! He was standing at the top of the garden. Hilde jumped up and ran toward him. They met by the glider. He lifted her up in the air and swung her around and around. Hilde was crying, and her father had to hold back his tears as well. "You've become a grown woman, Hilde!" "And you've become a real writer." Hilde wiped away her tears. "Shall we say we're quits?" she asked. "We're quits." They sat down at the table. First of all Hilde had to have an exact description of everything that had happened at Kastrup and on the way home. They kept bursting out laughing. "Didn't you see the envelope in the cafeteria?" "I didn't get a chance to sit down and eat anything, you villain. Now I'm ravenous." "Poor Dad." "The stuff about the turkey was all bluff, then?" "It certainly was not! I have prepared everything. Mom's doing the serving." Then they had to go over the ring binder and the story of Sophie and Alberto from one end to the other and backwards and forwards. Mom brought out the turkey and the Waldorf salad, the rose wine and Hilde's homemade bread. Her father was just saying something about Plato when Hilde suddenly interrupted him: "Shh!" "What is it?" "Didn't you hear it? Something squeaking?" "No." "I'm sure I heard something. I guess it was just a field mouse." While her mother went to get another bottle of wine, her father said: "But the philosophy course isn't quite over." "It isn't?" "Tonight I'm going to tell you about the universe." Before they began to eat, he said to his wife, "Hilde is too big to sit on my knee any more. But you're not!" With that he caught Marit round the waist and drew her onto his lap. It was quite a while before she got anything to eat. "To think you'll soon be forty ..." When Hilde jumped up and ran toward her father, Sophie felt her tears welling up. She would never be able to reach her . . . Sophie was deeply envious of Hilde because she had been created a real person of flesh and blood. When Hilde and the major had sat down at the table, Alberto honked the car horn. Sophie looked up. Didn't Hilde do exactly the same? She ran up to Alberto and jumped into the seat next to him. "We'll sit for a while and watch what happens," he said. Sophie nodded. "Have you been crying?" She nodded again. "What is it?" "She's so lucky to be a real person. Now she'll grow up and be a real woman. I'm sure she'll have real children too . . ." "And grandchildren, Sophie. But there are two sides to everything. That was what I tried to teach you at the beginning of our course." "How do you mean?" "She is lucky, I agree. But she who wins the lot of life must also draw the lot of death, since the lot of life is death." "But still, isn't it better to have had a life than never to have really lived?" "We cannot live a life like Hilde--or like the major for that matter. On the other hand, we'll never die. Don't you remember what the old woman said back there in the woods? We are the invisible people. She was two hundred years old, she said. And at their Midsummer party I saw some creatures who were more than three thousand years old . . ." "Perhaps what I envy most about Hilde is all this ... her family life." "But you have a family yourself. And you have a cat, two birds, and a tortoise." "But we left all that behind, didn't we?" "By no means. It's only the major who left it behind. He has written the final word of his book, my dear, and he will never find us again." "Does that mean we can go back?" "Anytime we want. But we're also going to make new friends in the woods behind Cinderella's cafeteria." The Knag family began their meal. For a moment Sophie was afraid it would turn out like the philosophical garden party in Clover Close. At one point it looked as though the major intended to lay Marit across the table. But then he drew her on to his knee instead. The car was parked a good way away from where the family sat eating. Their conversation was only audible now and then. Sophie and Alberto sat gazing down over the garden. They had plenty of time to mull over all the details and the sorry ending of the garden party. The family did not get up from the table until almost midnight. Hilde and the major strolled toward the glider. They waved to Marit as she walked up to the white-painted house. "You might as well go to bed, Mom. We have so much to talk about." 对位法    ……两首或多首旋律齐响…… 席德在床上坐起来。苏菲和艾伯特的故事就这样结束了,但到底发生了什么事?爸爸为何要写那最后一章呢?难道只是为了展示他对苏菲的世界的影响力吗?她满腹心事地洗了一个澡,穿好衣服,很快地用过早餐,然后就漫步到花园里,坐在秋千上。 她同意艾伯特的说法。花园宴会里唯一有道理的东西就是他的演讲。爸爸该不会认为席德的世界就像苏菲的花园宴会一样乱七八糟吧?还是他认为她的世界最后也会消失呢?还有苏菲和艾伯特。他们的秘密计划最后怎么了?他是不是要席德自己把这个故事继续下去?还是他们真的溜到故事外面去了?他们现在到底在哪里呢?她突然有一种想法。如果艾伯特和苏菲真的溜到故事外面去了,讲义夹里的书页上就不会再提到他们了。因为很不幸的,书里所有的内容爸爸都很清楚呀。 可不可能在字里行间有别的意思?书里很明显地暗示有这种可能性。坐在秋千上,她领悟到她必须把整个故事至少重新再看一遍。 当白色的宾士轿车开进花园里时,艾伯特把苏菲拉进密洞中。 然后他们便跑进树林,朝少校的小木屋方向跑去。 “快!”艾伯特喊。“我们要在他开始找我们之前完成。” “我们现在已经躲开他了吗?” “我们正在边缘。”他们划过湖面,冲进小木屋。艾伯特打开地板上的活门,把苏菲推进地窖里。然后一切都变黑了。 计划过完生日后几天里,席德进行着她的计划。她写了好几封信给哥本哈根的安妮,并打了两三通电话给她。她同时也请朋友和认识的人帮忙,结果她班上几乎半数的同学都答应助她一臂之力。 在这期间她也抽时间重读《苏菲的世界》。这不是一个读一次就可以的故事。在重读时,她脑海中对于苏菲和艾伯特在离开花园宴会后的遭遇,不断有了新的想法。 六月二十三日星期六那一天大约九点时,她突然从睡眠中惊醒。她知道这时爸爸已经离开黎巴嫩的营区。现在她只要静心等待就可以了。她已经把他这天最后的行程都详详细细计划妥当。 那天上午,她开始与妈妈一起准备仲夏节的事。席德不时想起苏菲和她妈妈安排仲夏节宴会的情景。不过这些事都已经发生了,已经完了,结束了。可是到底有没有呢?他们现在是不是也到处走来走去,忙着布置呢?苏菲和艾伯特坐在两栋大房子前的草坪上。房子外面可以看到几个难看的排气口和通风管。一对年轻的男女从其中一栋房屋里走出来。男的拿着一个棕色的手提箱,女的则在肩上背了一个红色的皮包。一辆轿车沿着后院的一条窄路向前开。 “怎么了?”苏菲问。 “我们成功了!” “可是我们现在在哪里呢?” “在奥斯陆。” “你确定吗?” “确定。这里的房子有一栋叫做‘新宫’,是人们研习音乐的地方。另外一栋叫做‘会众学院’,是一所神学院。他们在更上坡一点的地方研究科学,并在山顶上研究文学与哲学。” “我们已经离开席德的书,不受少校的控制了吗?” “是的。他绝不会知道我们在这里。” “可是当我们跑过树林时,我们人在哪里呢?” “当少校忙着让乔安的爸爸的车撞到苹果树时,我们就逮住机会躲在密洞里。那时我们正处于胚胎的阶段。我们既是旧世界的人,也是新世界的人。可是少校绝对不可能想到我们会躲在那里。” “为什么呢?” “他绝不会这么轻易就放我们走,那就像一场梦一样,当然他自己也有可能参与其中。” “怎么说呢?” “是他发动那辆白色的宾士车的。他可能尽量不要看见我们。 在发生这么多事情以后,他可能已经累惨了……” 此时,那对年轻的男女距他们只有几码路了。苏菲觉得自己这样和一个年纪比她大很多的男人坐在草地上真是有点窘。何况她需要有人来证实艾伯特说的话。 于是,她站起来,走向他们。 “打搅一下,你可不可以告诉我这条街叫什么名字?” 可是他们既不回答她,也没有注意到她。 她很生气,又大声问了一次。 “人家问你,你总不能不回答吧?” 那位年轻的男子显然正在专心向他的同伴解释一件事情。 “对位法的形式是在两个空间中进行的。水平的和垂直的,前者是指旋律,后者是指和声。总是有两种以上的旋律一齐响起……” “抱歉打搅你们,可是……” “这些旋律结合在一起,尽情发展,不管它们合起来效果如何。 可是它们必须和谐一致。事实上那是一个音符对一个音符。” 多么没礼貌呀!他们既不是瞎子,也不是聋子。苏菲又试了一次。她站在他们前面,挡住他们的去路。 他们却擦身而过。 “起风了。”女人说。 苏菲连忙跑回艾伯特所在的地方。 “他们听不见我说话!”她绝望地说。这时她突然想起她梦见席德和金十字架的事。 “这是我们必须付出的代价。虽然我们溜出了一本书,可是我们却别想和作者拥有一样的身分。不过我们真的是在这里。从现在起,我们将永远不会老去。” “这是不是说我们永远不会和我们周遭的人有真正的接触?” “一个真正哲学家永不说‘永不’。现在几点了?” “八点钟。” “喔,当然了,和我们离开船长弯的时间一样。” “今天席德的父亲从黎巴嫩回来。” “所以我们才要赶快。” “为什么呢?这话怎么说?” “你不是很想知道少校回到柏客来山庄后会发生什么事吗?” “当然啦,可是……” “那就来吧!” 他们开始向城市走去。路上有几个人经过他们,可是他们都一直往前走,好像没看到苏菲和艾伯特似的。 整条街道旁边都密密麻麻停满了车。艾伯特在一辆红色的小敞篷车前停了下来。 “这辆就可以,”他说。“我们只要确定它是我们的就好了。” “我一点都不知道你在说什么。” “那我还是向你解释一下好了。我们不能随随便便开一辆属于这城里某个人的车子。你想如果别人发现这辆车没有人开就自动前进,那会发生什么事呢?何况,我们还不见得能发动它。” “那你为什么选这辆敞篷车呢?” “我想我在一部老片里看过它。” “听着,我很抱歉,但我可不想继续和你打哑谜了。” “苏菲,这不是一部真的车。它就像我们一样,别人在这里看到的是一个空的停车位,我们只要证实这点就可以上路了。” 他们站在车子旁边等候。过了一会儿,有个男孩在人行道上骑了一辆脚踏车过来。他突然转个弯,一直骑过这辆红敞篷车,骑到路上去了。 “你看到没?这辆车是我们的。” 艾伯特把驾驶座另外一边的车门打开。 “请进!”他说,于是苏菲就坐进去了。 他自己则进了驾驶座。车钥匙正插在点火器上。他一转动钥匙,引擎就发动了。 他们沿着城市的南方前进,很快就开到了卓曼(Dramman)公路上,并经过莱萨克(Lysaker)和桑德维卡(Sandvika)。他们一路看到愈来愈多的仲夏节火堆,尤其是在过了卓曼以后。 “已经是仲夏了,苏菲。这不是很美妙吗?” “而且这风好清新、好舒服呀!还好我们开的是敞篷车。艾伯特,真的没有人能够看见我们吗?” “只有像我们这一类的人。我们可能会遇见其中几位。现在几点了?” “八点半了。” “我们必须走几条捷径,不能老跟在这辆拖车后面。” 他们转个弯,开进了一块辽阔的玉米田。苏菲回头一看,发现车子开过的地方,玉米秆都被压平了,留下一条很宽的痕迹。 “明天他们就会说有一阵很奇怪的风吹过了这片玉米田。”艾伯特说。 操纵艾勃特少校刚刚从罗马抵达卡斯楚普机场。时间是六月二十三日星期六下午四点半。对于他来说,这是个漫长的一天。卡斯楚普是他行程的倒数第二站。 他穿着他一向引以为豪的联合国制服,走过护照检查站。他不仅代表他自己和他的国家,也代表一个国际司法体系,一个有百年传统、涵盖全球的机构。 他身上只背着一个飞行背包。其他的行李都在罗马托运了。他只需要举起他那红色的护照就行了。 “我没有什么东西要报关。” 还有将近三个小时,开往基督山的班机才会起飞。因此,他有时间为家人买一些礼物。他已经在两个星期前把他用毕生心血做成的礼物寄给席德了。玛丽特把它放在席德床边的桌子上,好让她在生日那天一觉醒来就可以看到那份礼物。自从那天深夜他打电话向席德说生日快乐后,他就没有再和她说过话了。 艾勃特买了两三份挪威报纸,在酒吧里找了一张桌子坐下,并叫了一杯咖啡。他还没来得及浏览一下标题,就听到扩音器在广播:“旅客艾勃特请注意,艾勃特,请和SAS服务台联络。” 怎么回事?他的背脊一阵发凉。他该不会又被调回黎巴嫩吧?是不是家里发生了什么事?他快步走到SAS服务台。 “我就是艾勃特。” “有一张紧急通知要给你。” 他立刻打开信封。里面有一个较小的信封。上面写着;请哥本哈根卡斯楚普机场SAS服务台转交艾勃特少校。 艾勃特忐忑不安地拆开那个小信封。里面有一张短短的字条:亲爱的爸爸:欢迎你从黎巴嫩回来。你应该可以想到,我真是等不及你回来了。原谅我请人用扩音器呼叫你。因为这样最方便。 PS:很不幸的,乔安的爸爸已经寄来通知,要求赔偿他那辆被窃后撞毁的宾士轿车。 PS.PS:当你回来时,我可能正坐在花园里。可是在那之前,我可能还会跟你联络。 PS.PS.PS:我不敢一次在花园里停留太久。在这种地方,人很容易陷到土里去。我还有很多时间准备欢迎你回家呢。 爱你的席德艾勃特少校的第一个冲动是想笑。可是他并不喜欢像这样被人操纵。他一向喜欢做自己生命的主宰。但现在这个小鬼却正在黎乐桑指挥他在卡斯楚普的一举一动!她是怎么办到的?他把信封放在胸前的口袋里开始慢慢地向机场的小型购物商场走过去。他刚要进入一家丹麦食品店时,突然注意到店里的橱窗上贴了一个小信封。上面用很粗的马克笔写着:艾勃特少校。艾勃特把它从橱窗上拿下来,并打开它:私人信函。请卡斯楚普机场的丹麦食品店转交艾勃特少校。 亲爱的爸爸:请买一条很大的丹麦香肠,最好是有两磅重的。妈可能会想要一条法国白兰地香肠。 PS:丹麦鱼子酱也不赖。 爱你的席德艾勃特转一圈。她不会在这儿吧?玛丽特是不是让她飞到哥本哈根,好让她在这里跟他会合呢?这是席德的笔迹没错……突然间这位联合国观察员觉得自己正在被人观察。仿佛有人正在遥控他所做的每一件事。他觉得自己像个被小孩子抓在手里的洋娃娃。 他进入食品店,买了一条两磅重的腊肠,一条白兰地香肠和三罐丹麦鱼子酱。然后便沿着这排商店逛过去。他已经决定也要给席德买一份恰当的礼物。是计算机好呢,还是一架小收音机?嗯,对了,就买收音机。 当他走到卖电器的商店时,他看到橱窗上也贴了一个信封。这回上面写着:请卡斯楚普机场最有趣的商店转交艾勃特少校。里面的字条上写着:亲爱的爸爸:苏菲写信问候你,并且谢谢你,因为她那很慷慨的父亲送了她一个迷你电视兼调频收音机做为生日礼物。那些玩意都是骗人的,但从另外一方面来说,也只不过是个小把戏而已。不过,我必须承认,我和苏菲一样喜欢这些小把戏。 PS:如果你还没有到那儿,丹麦食品店和那家很大的烟酒免税商店还有更进一步的指示。 PS.PS:我生日时得到了一些钱,所以我可以资助你三百五十元买那架迷你电视。顺便告诉你,我已经把火鸡的肚子填好料了,也做了华尔道夫沙拉。 爱你的席德一架迷你电视要九八五丹麦克朗。但比起艾勃特被女儿的诡计耍得团团转这件事,当然只能算是小事一桩。她到底在不在这里呢?从这时候起,他无论到哪里都留神提防。他觉得自己像个间谍,又像个木偶。他这可不是被剥夺了基本人权了吗?他也不得不到免税商店去。那儿又有一个写有他名字的信封。 这整座机场好像变成了一个电脑游戏,而他则是那个游标。他看着信封里的字条:请卡斯楚普机场免税商店转交艾勃特少校:我只想要一包酒味口香糖和几盒杏仁糖。记住,这类东西在挪威要贵得多。我记得妈很喜欢Campari。 PS:你回家时一路上可要提高警觉,因为你大概不想错过任何重要的信息吧?要知道,你女儿的学习能力是很强的。 爱你的席德艾勃特绝望地叹了口气,可是他还是进入店里,买了席德所说的东西。然后他便提了三个塑胶袋,背了一个飞行包,走向第二十八号登机门去等候他的班机。如果还有任何信,那他是看不到了。 然而,他看到第二十八号登机门的一根柱子上也贴了一个信封:“请卡斯楚普机场第二十八号登机门转艾勃特少校”。上面的字也是席德的笔迹,但那个登机门的号码似乎是别人写的。但究竟是不是,也无从比对,因为那只是一些数字而已。 他坐在一张椅子上,背靠着墙,把购物袋放在膝盖上。就这样,这位一向自负的少校坐得挺直,目光注视前方,像个第一次自己出门的孩子。他心想,如果她在这儿,他才不会让她先发现他呢!他焦急地看着每一位进来的旅客。有一阵子,他觉得自己像一个被密切监视的敌方间谍。当旅客获许登机时,他才松了一口气。 他是最后一个登机的人。当他交出他的登机证时,顺便撕下了另外一个贴在报到台的白色信封。 苏菲和艾伯特已经经过布列维克(Brevik),没多久就到了通往卡拉杰罗(Krager)的出口。 “你的时速已经开到一八O英里了。”苏菲说。 “已经快九点了。他很快就要在凯耶维克机场着陆了。不过,你放心,我们不会因为超速被抓的。” “万一我们撞到别的车子怎么办?” “如果是一辆普通的车子就没关系,但如果是一辆像我们一样的子……” “那会怎样?” “那我们就要非常小心。你没注意到我们已经超过了蝙蝠侠的车……” “没有。” “它停在维斯特福(Vestfold)的某个地方。” “想超这辆游览车可不容易。路两旁都是浓密的树林。” “这没有什么差别。你难道就不能了解这点吗?” 说完后,他把车子调个头就开进树林里,直直穿过那些浓密的树木。 苏菲松了一口气。 “吓死我了!” “就算开进一堵砖墙,我们也不会有感觉的。” “这只表示,和我们周遭的东西比起来,我们只不过是空气里的精灵而已。” “不,你这样说就本末倒置了。对我们来讲,我们周遭的现实世界才是像空气一般的奇怪东西。” “我不懂。” “那请你听好:很多人以为精灵是一种比烟雾还要‘缥缈’的东西。这是不对的。相反的,精灵比冰还要固体。” “我从来没有想过是这样。” “现在我要告诉你一个故事。从前有一个男人,他不相信世上有天使。有一天,他到树林里工作时,有一个天使来找他。” “然后呢?” “他们一起走了一会儿。然后那个人转向天使说:‘好吧,现在我必须承认世上真的有天使。可是你不像我们一样真实。,‘你这话是什么意思?’天使问。这人回答道:‘我们刚才走到那块大石头的时候,我必须绕过去,而你却是直接走过去。’天使听了很惊讶,便说道:‘你难道没有注意到刚才我们经过了一个沼泽吗?我们两个都直接穿过那阵雾气。那是因为我们比雾气更固体呀?” “啊!” “我们也是这样,苏菲。精灵可以穿过铁门。没有坦克或轰炸机可以压垮或炸毁任何一种由精灵做的东西。” “这倒是挺令人安慰的。” “我们很快就要经过里棱(Ris&r)。而从我们离开少校的小木屋到现在顶多只有一个小时。我真想喝一杯咖啡。” 当他们经过费安(Fiane),还没到桑德雷德(S&ndeled)时,在路的左边看到了一家名叫灰姑娘的餐馆。艾伯特将车子调头,停在它前面的苹地上。 在餐馆里,苏菲试着从冰柜里拿出一瓶可乐,却举不起来。那瓶子似乎被粘紧了。在柜台另一边,艾伯特想把他在车里发现的一个纸杯注满咖啡。他只要把一根杆子压下就可以了,但他使尽了全身的力气却仍压不下去。 他气极了,于是向其他的顾客求助。当他们都没有反应时,他忍不住大声吼叫,吵得苏菲只好把耳朵遮起来:“我要喝咖啡!” 他的怒气很快就消失了,然后就开始大笑,笑得弯了腰。他们正要转身离去时,一个老妇人从她的椅子上站起来,向他们走过来。 她穿着一条鲜艳的红裙,冰蓝色的羊毛上衣,绑着白色的头巾。这些衣服的颜色和形状似乎比这家小餐馆内的任何东西都要鲜明。 她走到艾伯特身旁说:“乖乖,小男孩,你可真会叫呀!” “对不起。” “你说你想喝点咖啡是吗?” “是的,不过……” “我们在这附近有一家店。” 他们跟着老妇人走出餐馆,沿着屋后一条小路往前走。走着走着,她说:“你们是新来的?” “我们不承认也不行。”艾伯特回答。 “没关系。欢迎你们来到永恒之乡,孩子们。” “那你呢?” “我是从格林童话故事来的。这已经是将近两百年前的事了。 你们是打哪儿来的呢?” “我们是从一本哲学书里出来的。我是那个哲学老师,而这是我的学生苏菲。” “嘻嘻!那可是一本新书哩!” 他们穿过树林,走到一小块林间空地。那儿有几栋看起来很舒适的棕色小屋。在小屋之间的院子里,有一座很大的仲夏节火堆正在燃烧,火堆旁有一群五颜六色的人正在跳舞。其中许多苏菲都认得,有白雪公主和几个小矮人、懒杰克、福尔摩斯和小飞侠。小红帽和灰姑娘也在那儿。许多不知名的熟悉的人物也围在火堆旁,有地精、山野小精灵、半人半羊的农牧神、巫婆、天使和小鬼。苏菲还看到一个活生生的巨人。 “多热闹呀!”艾伯特喊。 “这是因为仲夏节到了,”老妇人回答说。“自从瓦普几司之夜(编按:五月一日前夕,据传在这一夜,女妖们会聚在布罗肯山上跳舞)过后,我们就不曾像这样聚在一起了。那时我们还在德国呢。我只是到这里来住一阵子的。你要的是咖啡吗?” “是的。麻烦你了。” 直到现在,苏菲才注意到所有的房子都是姜饼、糖果和糖霜做的。有几个人正直接吃着屋子前面的部分。一个女面包师正走来走去,忙着修补被吃掉的部分。苏菲大着胆子在屋角咬了一口,觉得比她从前所吃过的任何东西都更香甜美味。 过一会儿,老妇人就端着一杯咖啡走过来了。 “真的很谢谢你。” “不知道你们打算用什么来支付这杯咖啡?” “支付?” “我们通常用故事来支付。一杯咖啡只要一个荒诞不经的故事就够了。” “我们可以讲一整个关于人类的不可思议的故事,”艾伯特说,“可是很遗憾我们赶时间。我们可不可以改天再回来付?” “当然可以。但你们为什么会这么赶时间呢?” 艾伯特解释了他们要做的事。老妇人听了以后便说:“我不得不说你们真是太嫩了。你们最好快点剪断你们和那凡人祖先之间的脐带吧,我们已经不需要他们的世界了。我们现在是一群隐形人。” 艾伯特和苏菲匆忙赶回灰姑娘餐馆去开他们那辆红色的敞篷车。这时车旁正有一位忙碌的母亲为她的小男孩把尿。 他们风驰电掣地开过树丛和荆棘,并不时走天然的捷径,很快地就到了黎乐桑。 从哥本哈根开来的SK八七六号班机二十一点三十五分在凯耶维克机场着陆。当飞机在哥本哈根的跑道上滑行时,艾勃特少校打开了那个贴在报到台上的信封。里面的字条写着:致:艾勃特少校,请在他于一九九O年仲夏节在卡斯楚普机场交出他的登机证时转交。 亲爱的爸爸:你可能以为我会在哥本哈根机场出现。可是我对你的行踪的控制要比这更复杂。爸,无论你在哪里,我都可以看到你。老实说,我曾经去拜访过许多许多年前卖一面魔镜给曾祖母的那个很有名的吉普赛家庭,并且买了一个水晶球。此时此刻,我可以看到你刚在你的位子上坐下。请客我提醒你系紧安全带,并把椅背竖直,直到“系紧安全带”的灯号熄灭为止。飞机一起飞,你就可以把椅背放低,好好地休息。在你回到家前,你需要有充分的休息。黎乐桑的天气非常好,但气温比黎巴嫩低了好几度。祝你旅途愉快。 你的巫婆女儿、镜里的皇后和反讽的最高守护神席德敬上艾勃特分不清自己究竟是生气,或者只是疲倦而无奈。然后他开始笑起来。他笑得如此大声,以至于别的乘客转过身来瞪着他,然后飞机就起飞了。 这是以其人之道还治其人之身了,但两者之间当然有很大的不同。他的做法只影响到苏菲和艾伯特,而他们毕竟只是虚构的人物。 他按照席德所建议的,把椅背放低,开始打瞌睡。一直到通关后,站在凯耶维克机场的入境大厅时,他才完全清醒。这时他看到有人在示威。 总共有八个或十个大约与席德一般大的年轻人。他们手里举的牌子上写着:“爸爸,欢迎回家!“席德正在花园里等候。”反讽万岁!” 最糟的是他不能就这样跳进一辆计程车,因为他还要等他的行李。这段时间,席德的同学一直在他旁边走来走去,使他不得不一而再、再而三地看到那些牌子。然后有一个女孩走上来,给了他一束玫瑰花,他就心软了。他在一个购物袋里摸索,给了每个示威者一条杏仁糖。这样一来只剩下两条给席德了。他领了行李后,一个年轻人走过来,说他是“镜子皇后”的属下,奉命要载他回柏客来山庄。其他的示威者就消失在人群里了。 他们的车子开在E一八号路上,沿途经过的每一座桥和每一条隧道都挂着布条,写着:“欢迎回家!”火鸡已经好了。…‘爸,我可以看见你!” 当他在柏客来山庄的门口下车时,艾勃特松了一口气,并给了那位开车送他的人一百块钱和三罐象牌啤酒表示感谢。 他的妻子玛丽特正在屋外等他。在一阵长长的拥抱之后,他问:“她在哪里?” “坐在平台上面。” 艾伯特和苏菲把那辆红色的敞篷车停在黎乐桑诺芝(Norge)旅馆外的广场上时,已经是十点十五分了。他们可以看到远处的列岛有一座很大的火堆。 “我们怎样才能找到柏客来山庄呢?”苏菲问。 “我们只好到处碰运气了。你应该还记得少校的小木屋里的那幅画吧。” “我们得赶快了。我想在他抵达前赶到那儿。” 他们开始沿着较小的路到处开,然后又开上岩堆和斜坡。有一个很有用的线索就是柏客来山庄位于海边。 突然间,苏菲喊:“到了!我们找到了!” “我想你说得没错,可是你不要叫这么大声好吗?” “为什么?又没有人会听到我们。” “苏菲,在我们上完了一整门哲学课之后,你还是这么妄下结论,真是使我很失望。” “我知道,可是……” “你不会以为这整个地方都没有巨人、小妖精、山林女神和好仙女吧?” “喔,对不起。” 他们开过大门口,循着石子路到房子那儿。艾伯特把车停在草坪上的秋千旁。在不远处放着一张有三个位子的桌子。 “我看见她了!”苏菲低声说。“她正坐在平台上,就像上次在我梦里一样。” “你有没有注意到这座花园多么像你在苜蓿巷的园子呢?” “嗯,真的很像。有秋千呀什么的。我可以去找她吗?” “当然可以。你去吧,我留在这里。” 苏菲跑到平台那儿。她差点撞到席德的身上,但她很有礼貌地坐在她旁边。 席德坐在那儿,闲闲地玩弄着那条系小舟的绳索。她的左手拿着一小张纸,显然正在等待。她看了好几次表。 苏菲认为她满可爱的。她有一头金色的卷发和一双明亮的绿色眼睛,身穿一件黄色的夏装,样子有点像乔安。 虽然明知道没有用,但苏菲还是试着和她说话。 “席德,我是苏菲!” 席德显然没有听到。 苏菲跪坐着,试图在她耳朵旁边大喊:“你听得到我吗?席德,还是你既瞎又聋呢?” 她是否曾把她的眼睛稍微张大一点呢?不是已经有一点点迹象显示她听见了一些什么吗?她看看四周,然后突然转过头直视着苏菲的眼睛。她视线的焦点并没有放在苏菲身上,仿佛是穿透苏菲而看着某个东西一般。 “苏菲,不要叫这么大声。”艾伯特从车里向她说。“我可不希望这花园里到处都是美人鱼。” 于是苏菲坐着不动。只要能靠近席德她就心满意足了。 然后她听到一个男人用浑厚的声音在叫:“席德!” 是少校!穿着制服,戴着蓝扁帽,站在花园最高处。 席德跳起来,跑向他。他们在秋千和红色的敞篷车间会合了。 他把她举起来,转了又转。 席德坐在平台上等候她的父亲。自从他在卡斯楚普机场着陆后,她每隔十五分钟就会想到他一次,试着想象他在哪里,有什么反应。她把每一次的想法都记在一张纸上,整天都带着它。 万一他生气了怎么办?可是他该不会以为在他为她写了一本神秘的书以后,一切都会和从前一样吧?她再度看看表。已经十点十五分了。他随时可能会到家。 不过,那是什么声音?她好像听到了一种微弱的呼吸声,就像她梦见苏菲的情景一样。 她很快转过头。——定有个什么东西,她很确定。可是到底是什么呢?也许是夏夜的关系吧。 有几秒钟,她觉得好像又听见了什么声音。 “席德!” 她把头转到另外一边。是爸爸!他正站在花园的最高处。 席德跳起来跑向他。他们在秋千旁相遇。他把她举起来,转了又转。席德哭起来了,而她爸爸则忍住了眼泪。 “你已经变成一个女人了,席德!” “而你真的变成了作家。” 席德用身上那件黄色的洋装擦了擦眼泪。 “怎样,我们现在是不是平手了?” “对,平手了。” 他们在桌旁坐下。首先席德向爸爸一五一十地诉说如何安排卡斯楚普机场和他回家的路上那些事情。说着说着,他们俩不时爆出一阵又一阵响亮的笑声。 “你没有看见餐厅里的那封信吗?” “我都没时间坐下来吃东西,你这个小坏蛋。现在我可是饿惨了。” “可怜的爸爸。” “你说的关于火鸡的事全是骗人的吧?” “当然不是!我都弄好了。妈妈正在切呢。” 然后他们又谈了关于讲义夹和苏菲、艾伯特的故事,从头讲到尾,从尾又讲到头。 然后席德的妈妈就端着火鸡、沙拉、粉红葡萄酒和席德做的乡村面包来了。 当爸爸正说到有关柏拉图的事时,席德突然打断他:“嘘!” “什么事?” “你听到没有?好像有个东西在吱吱叫。” “没有。” “我确定我听到了。我猜大概只是一只地鼠。” 当妈妈去拿另外一瓶酒时,席德的爸爸说:“可是哲学课还没完全结束呢。” “是吗?” “今晚我要告诉你有关宇宙的事情。” 在他们开始用餐前,他说:“席德现在已经太大,不能再坐在我的膝盖上了。可是你不会。” 说完他便一把搂住玛丽特的腰,把她拉到他的怀中。过了好一会,她才开始吃东西。 “想想你就快四十岁了……” 当席德跳起来冲向她父亲时,苏菲觉得自己的眼泪不断涌出。 她永远没法与她沟通了……苏菲很羡慕席德,因为她生下来就是一个活生生、有血有肉的人。 当席德和少校坐在餐桌旁时,艾伯特按了一下汽车的喇叭。 苏菲抬起头看。席德不也做了同样的动作吗?她跑到艾伯特那儿,跳进他旁边的座位上。 “我们在这儿坐一下,看看会发生什么事。”他说。 苏菲点点头。 “你哭了吗?” 她再度点头。 “怎么回事?” “她真幸运,可以做一个真正的人……她以后会长大,变成一个真正的女人……我敢说她一定也会生一些真正的小孩……” “还有孙子,苏菲。可是任何事情都有两面。这就是我在哲学课开始时想要教你的事情。” “这话怎么说呢?” “她的确是很幸运,这点我同意。但是有生必然也会有死,因为生就是死。” “可是,曾经活过不是比从来没有恰当地活要好些吗?” “我们当然不能过像席德或少校那样的生活。可是从另一方面来说,我们也永远不会死。你不记得树林里那位老妇人说的话了吗?我们是一些隐形人。她还说她已经两百岁了。在他们那个仲夏节庆祝会上,我看到一些已经三千多岁的人……” “也许我最羡慕席德的是……她的家庭生活。” “可是你自己也有家呀。你还有一只猫、两只鸟和一只乌龟。” “可是我们把那些东西都抛在身后了,不是吗?” “绝不是这样,只有少校一个人把它抛在身后。他已经打上了最后一个句点了,孩子,他以后再也找不到我们了。” “这是不是说我们可以回去了?” “随时都可以,可是我们也要回到灰姑娘餐厅后面的树林里去交一些新朋友。” 艾勃特一家开始用餐。苏菲有一度很害怕他们的情况会像苜蓿巷哲学花园宴会一样,因为有一次少校似乎想把玛丽特按在桌上,可是后来他把她拉到了怀中。 艾伯特和苏菲那辆红色的敞篷车停的地方距少校一家人用餐之处有好一段距离。因此他们只能偶尔听见他们的对话。苏菲和艾伯特坐在那儿看着花园。他们有很多时间可以思索所有的细节和花园宴会那悲哀的结局。 少校一家人一直在餐桌旁坐到将近午夜才起身。席德和少校朝秋千的方向走去。他们向正走进他们那栋白屋的妈妈挥手。 “你去睡觉好了,妈。我们还有很多话要说呢。” The Big Bang ... we too are stardust. . . Hilde settled herself comfortably in the glider beside her father. It was nearly midnight. They sat looking out across the bay. A few stars glimmered palely in the light sky. Gentle waves lapped over the stones under the dock. Her father broke the silence. "It's a strange thought that we live on a tiny little planet in the universe." "Yes ..." "Earth is only one of many planets orbiting the sun. Yet Earth is the only living planet." "Perhaps the only one in the entire universe?" "It's possible. But it's also possible that the universe is teeming with life. The universe is inconceivably huge. The distances are so great that we measure them in light-minutes and light-years." "What are they, actually?" "A light-minute is the distance light travels in one minute. And that's a long way, because light travels through space at 300,000 kilometers a second. That means that a light-minute is 60 times 300,000--or 18 million kilometers. A light-year is nearly ten trillion kilometers." "How far away is the sun?" "It's a little over eight light-minutes away. The rays of sunlight warming our faces on a hot June day have traveled for eight minutes through the universe before they reach us." "Go on..." "Pluto, which is the planet farthest out in our solar system, is about five light-hours away from us. When an astronomer looks at Pluto through his telescope, he is in fact looking five hours back in time. We could also say that the picture of Pluto takes five hours to get here." "It's a bit hard to visualize, but I think I understand." "That's good, Hilde. But we here on Earth are only just beginning to orient ourselves. Our own sun is one of 400 billion other stars in the galaxy we call the Milky Way. This galaxy resembles a large discus, with our sun situated in one of its several spiral arms. When we look up at the sky on a clear winter's night, we see a broad band of stars. This is because we are looking toward the center of the Milky Way." "I suppose that's why the Milky Way is called 'Winter Street' in Swedish." "The distance to the star in the Milky Way that is our nearest neighbor is four light-years. Maybe that's it just above the island over there. If you could imagine that at this very moment a stargazer is sitting up there with a powerful telescope pointing at Bjerkely--he would see Bjerkely as it looked four years ago. He might see an eleven-year-old girl swinging her legs in the glider." "Incredible." "But that's only the nearest star. The whole galaxy-- or nebula, as we also call it--is 90,000 light-years wide. That is another way of describing the time it takes for light to travel from one end of the galaxy to the other. When we gaze at a star in the Milky Way which is 50,000 light-years away from our sun, we are looking back 50,000 years in time." "The idea is much too big for my little head." "The only way we can look out into space, then, is to look back in time. We can never know what the universe is like now. We only know what it was like then. When we look up at a star that is thousands of light-years away, we are really traveling thousands of years back in the history of space." "It's completely incomprehensible." "But everything we see meets the eye in the form of light waves. And these light waves take time to travel through space. We could compare it to thunder. We always hear the thunder after we have seen the lightning. That's because sound waves travel slower than light waves. When I hear a peal of thunder, I'm hearing the sound of something that happened a little while ago. It's the same thing with the stars. When I look at a star that is thousands of light-years away, I'm seeing the 'peal of thunder' from an event that lies thousands of years back in time." "Yes, I see." "But so far, we've only been talking about our own galaxy. Astronomers say there are about a hundred billion of such galaxies in the universe, and each of these galaxies consists of about a hundred billion stars. We call the nearest galaxy to the Milky Way the Andromeda nebula. It lies two million light-years from our own galaxy. That means the light from that galaxy takes two million years to reach us. So we're looking two million years back in time when we see the Andromeda nebula high up in the sky. If there was a clever stargazer in this nebula--I can just imagine him pointing his telescope at Earth right now--he wouldn't be able to see us. If he was lucky, he'd see a few flat-faced Neanderthals." "It's amazing." "The most distant galaxies we know of today are about ten billion light-years away from us. When we receive signals from these galaxies, we are going ten billion years back in the history of the universe. That's about twice as long as our own solar system has existed." "You're making me dizzy." "Although it is hard enough to comprehend what it means to look so far back in time, astronomers have discovered something that has even greater significance for our world picture." "What?" "Apparently no galaxy in space remains where it is. All the galaxies in the universe are moving away from each other at colossal speeds. The further they are away from us, the quicker they move. That means that the distance between the galaxies is increasing all the time." "I'm trying to picture it." "If you have a balloon and you paint black spots on it, the spots will move away from each other as you blow up the balloon. That's what's happening with the galaxies in the universe. We say that the universe is expanding." "What makes it do that?" "Most astronomers agree that the expanding universe can only have one explanation: Once upon a time, about 15 billion years ago, all substance in the universe was assembled in a relatively small area. The substance was so dense that gravity made it terrifically hot. Finally it got so hot and so tightly packed that it exploded. We call this explosion the Big Bang." "Just the thought of it makes me shudder." "The Big Bang caused all the substance in the universe to be expelled in all directions, and as it gradually cooled, it formed stars and galaxies and moons and planets ..." "But I thought you said the universe was still expanding?" "Yes I did, and it's expanding precisely because of this explosion billions of years ago. The universe has no timeless geography. The universe is a happening. The universe is an explosion. Galaxies continue to fly through the universe away from each other at colossal speeds." "Will they go on doing that for ever?" "That's one possibility. But there is another. You may recall that Alberto told Sophie about the two forces that cause the planets to remain in constant orbit round the sun?" "Weren't they gravity and inertia?" "Right, and the same thing applies to the galaxies. Because even though the universe continues to expand, the force of gravity is working the other way. And one day, in a couple of billion years, gravity will perhaps cause the heavenly bodies to be packed together again as the force of the huge explosion begins to weaken. Then we would get a reverse explosion, a so-called implosion. But the distances are so great that it will happen like a movie that is run in slow motion. You might compare it with what happens when you release the air from a balloon." "Will all the galaxies be drawn together in a tight nucleus again?" "Yes, you've got it. But what will happen then?" "There would be another Big Bang and the universe would start expanding again. Because the same natural laws are in operation. And so new stars and galaxies will form." "Good thinking. Astronomers think there are two possible scenarios for the future of the universe. Either the universe will go on expanding forever so that the galaxies will draw further and further apart--or the universe will begin to contract again. How heavy and massive the universe is will determine what happens. And this is something astronomers have no way of knowing as yet." "But if the universe is so heavy that it begins to contract again, perhaps it has expanded and contracted lots of times before." "That would be an obvious conclusion. But on this point theory is divided. It may be that the expansion of the universe is something that will only happen this one time. But if it keeps on expanding for all eternity, the question of where it all began becomes even more pressing." "Yes, where did it come from, all that stuff that suddenly exploded?" "For a Christian, it would be obvious to see the Big Bang as the actual moment of creation. The Bible tells us that God said 'Let there be light!' You may possibly also remember that Alberto indicated Christianity's 'linear' view of history. From the point of view of a Chris-tian belief in the creation, it is better to imagine the universe continuing to expand." "It is?" "In the Orient they have a 'cyclic' view of history. In other words, history repeats itself eternally. In India, for example, there is an ancient theory that the world continually unfolds and folds again, thus alternating between what Indians have called Brahman's Day and Brahman's Night. This idea harmonizes best, of course, with the universe expanding and contracting--in order to expand again--in an eternal cyclic process. I have a mental picture of a great cosmic heart that beats and beats and beats..." "I think both theories are equally inconceivable and equally exciting." "And they can compare with the great paradox of eternity that Sophie once sat pondering in her garden: either the universe has always been there--or it suddenly came into existence out of nothing ..." "Ouch!" Hilde clapped her hand to her forehead. "What was that?" "I think I've just been stung by a gadfly." "It was probably Socrates trying to sting you into life." Sophie and Alberto had been sitting in the red convertible listening to the major tell Hilde about the universe. "Has it struck you that our roles are completely reversed?" asked Alberto after a while. "In what sense?" "Before it was they who listened to us, and we couldn't see them. Now we're listening to them and they can't see us." "And that's not all." "What are you referring to?" "When we started, we didn't know about the other reality that Hilde and the major inhabited. Now they don't know about ours." "Revenge is sweet." "But the major could intervene in our world." "Our world was nothing but his interventions." "I haven't yet relinquished all hope that we may also intervene in their world." "But you know that's impossible. Remember what happened in the Cinderella? I saw you trying to get out that bottle of Coke." Sophie was silent. She gazed out over the garden while the major explained about the Big Bang. There was something about that term which started a train of thought in her mind. She began to rummage around in the car. "What are you doing?" asked Alberto. "Nothing." She opened the glove compartment and found a wrench. She grabbed it and jumped out of the car. She went over to the glider and stood right in front of Hilde and her father. First she tried to catch Hilde's eye but that was quite useless. Finally she raised the wrench above her head and crashed it down on Hilde's forehead. "Ouch!" said Hilde. Then Sophie hit the major on his forehead, but he didn't react at all. "What was that?" he asked. "I think I've just been stung by a gadfly." "It was probably Socrates trying to sting you into life." Sophie lay down on the grass and tried to push the glider. But it remained motionless. Or did she manage to get it to move a millimeter? "There's a chilly breeze coming up," said Hilde. "No, there isn't. It's very mild." "It's not only that. There is something." "Only the two of us and the cool summer night." "No, there's something in the air." "And what might that be?" "You remember Alberto and his secret plan?" "How could I forget!" "They simply disappeared from the garden party. It was as if they had vanished into thin air . . ." "Yes, but..." "... into thin air." "The story had to end somewhere. It was just something I wrote." "That was, yes, but not what happened afterward. Suppose they were here . . ." "Do you believe that?" "I can feel it, Dad." Sophie ran back to the car. "Impressive," said Alberto grudgingly as she climbed on board clasping the wrench tightly in her hand. "You have unusual talents, Sophie. Just wait and see." The major put his arm around Hilde. "Do you hear the mysterious play of the waves?" "Yes. We must get the boat in the water tomorrow." "But do you hear the strange whispering of the wind? Look how the aspen leaves are trembling." "The planet is alive, you know ..." "You wrote that there was something between the lines." "I did?" "Perhaps there is something between the lines in this garden too." "Nature is full of enigmas. But we are talking about stars in the sky." "Soon there will be stars on the water." "That's right. That's what you used to say about phosphorescence when you were little. And in a sense you were right. Phosphorescence and all other organisms are made of elements that were once blended together in a star." "Us too?" "Yes, we too are stardust." "That was beautifully put." "When radio telescopes can pick up light from distant galaxies billions of light-years away, they will be charting the universe as it looked in primeval times after the Big Bang. Everything we can see in the sky is a cosmic fossil from thousands and millions of years ago. The only thing an astrologer can do is predict the past." "Because the stars in the constellations moved away from each other long before their light reached us, right?" "Even two thousand years ago, the constellations looked considerably different from the way they look today." "I never knew that." "If it's a clear night, we can see millions, even billions of years back into the history of the universe. So in a way, we are going home." "I don't know what you mean." "You and I also began with the Big Bang, because all substance in the universe is an organic unity. Once in a primeval age all matter was gathered in a clump so enormously massive that a pinhead weighed many billions of tons. This 'primeval atom' exploded because of the enormous gravitation. It was as if something disintegrated. When we look up at the sky, we are trying to find the way back to ourselves." "What an extraordinary thing to say." "All the stars and galaxies in the universe are made of the same substance. Parts of it have lumped themselves together, some here, some there. There can be billions of light-years between one galaxy and the next. But they all have the same origin. All stars and all planets belong to the same family." "Yes, I see." "But what is this earthly substance? What was it that exploded that time billions of years ago? Where did it come from?" "That is the big question." "And a question that concerns us all very deeply. For we ourselves are of that substance. We are a spark from the great fire that was ignited many billions of years ago." "That's a beautiful thought too." "However, we must not exaggerate the importance of these figures. It is enough just to hold a stone in your hand. The universe would have been equally incomprehensible if it had only consisted of that one stone the size of an orange. The question would be just as impenetrable: where did this stone come from?" Sophie suddenly stood up in the red convertible and pointed out over the bay. "I want to try the rowboat," she said. "It's tied up. And we would never be able to lift the oars." "Shall we try? After all, it is Midsummer Eve." "We can go down to the water, at any rate." They jumped out of the car and ran down the garden. They tried to loosen the rope that was made fast in a metal ring. But they could not even lift one end. "It's as good as nailed down," said Alberto. "We've got plenty of time." "A true philosopher must never give up. If we could just... get it loose . . ." "There are more stars now," said Hilde. "Yes, when the summer night is darkest." "But they sparkle more in winter. Do you remember the night before you left for Lebanon? It was New Year's Day." "That was when I decided to write a book about philosophy for you. I had been to a large bookstore in Kris-tiansand and to the library too. But they had nothing suitable for young people." "It's as if we are sitting at the very tip of the fine hairs in the white rabbit's fur." "I wonder if there is anyone out there in the night of the light-years?" "The rowboat has worked itself loose!" "So it has!" "I don't understand it. I went down and checked it just before you got here." "Did you?" "It reminds me of when Sophie borrowed Alberto's boat. Do you remember how it lay drifting out in the lake?" "I bet it's her at work again." "Go ahead and make fun of me. All evening, I've been able to feel someone here." "One of us will have to swim out to it." "We'll both go, Dad." 那轰然一响    ……我们也是星尘…… 席德舒服地坐在秋千上,靠在爸爸身旁。已经将近午夜了。他们坐在那儿眺望海湾,明亮的天空有几颗星星正闪烁着微弱的光芒。 温柔的海浪一波波拍打在平台下的礁岩上。 爸爸打破沉默。 “想起来真是很奇怪,我们居然住在宇宙这样一个小小的星球上。” “嗯......” “地球只是许多围绕太阳运行的星球之一,但它却是唯一有生命的星球。” “会不会也是整个宇宙中唯一的一个?” “可能。但宇宙也可能到处充满了生命,因为宇宙之大是无法想象的。其间的距离如此遥远,因此我们只能以光分和光年来计算。” “什么是光分和光年?” “一光分就是光线在一分钟内可走的距离,这是非常长的距离,因为光线在太空每秒钟可以走三十万公里。这表示一光分就是三十万乘以六十,也就是一千八百万公里。一光年就是将近十兆公里。” “那太阳有多远呢?” “它距离地球有八光分多一点。炎热的六月天照在我们脸上的温暖太阳光,可是在太空中走了八分钟才到我们这儿来的。” “然后呢?” “地球到太阳系最远的一颗星球冥王星的距离大约有五光时。 当天文学家透过天文望远镜观察冥王星的时候,事实上他看的是五个小时以前的冥王星。我们也可以说冥王星的画面要花五个小时才能传到这里。” “实在有点难以想象,但我想我可以了解。” “很好,席德,但是你要知道我们人类只是刚开始了解宇宙而已。我们的太阳只是银河里四千亿个星球当中的一个,这个银河有点像是一个很大的铁饼。我们的太阳刚好位于其中一个螺旋臂上。 当我们在晴朗的冬日夜晚仰望星星时,会看见一条由星星构成的宽带子,那是因为我们正好看到银河的中心。” “大概是因为这样,所以瑞典文才把银河称为‘冬之街’吧。” 。“在银河系中,离我们最近的一颗恒星距地球有四光年,也许它正在我们这个岛的上方。此时此刻,如果那颗星球上有一个人正用一具强力的天文望远镜对着柏客来山庄看的话,他看到的将是四年前的柏客来山庄。他也许会看到一个十一岁女孩正坐在秋千上晃动她的双腿。” “真不可思议。” “可是这还是最近的一颗。整个银河(或称星云)共有九万光年这么宽,也就是说光线从银河的一端传到另外一端要花九万年的时间。当我们注视着银河中一颗距离我们有五万光年的星星时,我们看到的是那颗星球在五万年以前的情形。” “这么大的空间实在是我这个小脑袋难以想象的。” “我们只要眺望太空,所看到的一定是从前的太空。我们永远无法知道现在的宇宙是什么模样。我们只知道它当时如何。当我们仰望一颗距我们有几千光年的星球时,我们事实上是回到了几千年前的太空。” “真是不可思议极了。” “因为我们眼中所见的一切事物都以光波的形式出现,这些光波需要时间才能传过太空。我们可以拿打雷来做比方。我们总是在看见闪电后才听见打雷的声音,这是因为声波传送的速度比光波慢。当我听到一阵雷鸣时,我听到的声音事实上已经发出了一会儿。各星球间的情况也是这样。当我看到一颗几千光年之外的星星时,就好像见到几千年前发出的‘雷声’一样。” “嗯,我明白了。” “但是到目前为止,我们谈的还只是我们的银河系。天文学家说,宇宙间大约有一千亿像这样的银河系,而每一个银河系都包含一千亿左右的星球。我们称距我们的银河最近的一个银河系为仙女座星云。它距我们的银河系约有两百万光年。就像我们刚才所说的,这表示那个银河系的光线要花两百万年才能到达我们这里。 同时也表示当我们看见高空中的仙女座星云时,我们看到的是它在两百万年前的情形。如果在这个星云内有一个人正在观测星球——我可以想象那个鬼鬼祟祟的小家伙现在正用天文望远镜对准地球——他是看不到我们的。如果他运气好的话,倒是可以看见几个扁脸的尼安德原人。” “真是太令人吃惊了。” “我们今天所知的最远的银河系距我们大约有一百亿光年。当我们收到来自那些银河系的信号时,我们事实上是收到一百亿年前的人所发出的信号。这个时间大约是太阳系历史的两倍。” “我的头都昏了。” “虽然我们很难理解这是一种什么样的情形,但天文学家已经发现一种现象,它将对我们的世界观有很大的影响。” “什么现象?” “太空中的银河系显然没有一个留在固定的位置。宇宙中所有的银河系都以极快的速度彼此分开,愈离愈远。它们离我们愈远,移动的速度就愈快。这表示各银河系之间的距离在不断增加。” “我正试着想象这幅画面。” “如果你有一个气球,而你在它的表面画上许多黑点。然后你愈吹它,那些黑点就分得愈开。这就是宇宙间各银河系所发生的现象。我们说宇宙在扩张。” “怎么会这样呢?” “大多数天文学家都认为,宇宙扩张的现象只可能是一个原因造成的。那就是:在大约一百五十亿年以前,宇宙间所有的物质都集中在一个比较小的范围内。由于物质密度极高,再加上重力的作用,使得这些物质温度高得吓人。温度日趋上升的结果,这一团紧密的物质终于爆炸了。我们称这个现象为‘宇宙大爆炸’。” “挺吓人的。” “宇宙大爆炸使得宇宙中所有的物质都向四面扩散。当这些物质碎片逐渐冷却后,就形成各个星球、银河系、卫星与行星……” “你不是说宇宙还在继续扩张吗?” “是的。而它扩张的理由正是由于一百多亿年前的这次大爆炸。因此目前宇宙各星球并没有固定不变的位置,宇宙仍然在形成中。它是一次爆炸后的产物。各银河目前仍继续以极高的速度向宇宙的四面飞散。” “它们会永远这样下去吗?” “有可能,但还有另外一个可能性。你还记得艾伯特告诉过苏菲有两种力量使行星一直在固定的轨道上围绕恒星运行吗?” “是不是引力和惯性?” “对,同样的道理也适用于各银河系。因为即使宇宙仍继续扩张,引力的作用却刚好相反。也许几十亿年后有一天,当大爆炸的力量逐渐减弱后,重力会使得各星球重新凝聚,然后就会发生一种‘反爆炸’的现象,也就是所谓的‘内破裂’。不过,由于各银河系之间的距离过于遥远,所以情况会变得像是电影的慢动作,就像你把一个气球里的空气放掉以后的现象。” “那这些银河系会不会再度聚拢成一个紧密的核心呢?” “没错,你说对了。但到时候会发生什么事呢?” “又会有一次大爆炸,而宇宙也会再度开始扩张,因为到时同样的自然法则又会发生作用。所以会形成新的星球和新的银河系。” 未来的宇宙“说得好。关于宇宙的未来,天文学家认为有两种可能。要不就是宇宙一直扩张下去,使得各银河系间的距离愈来愈远。要不就是宇宙会开始再度收缩。究竟会发生哪一种现象,要看宇宙有多重、多大而定。而这点天文学家目前还无法得知。” “但是如果宇宙重到使它开始收缩的程度,那么也许这种扩张、收缩又扩张的现象以前已经发生过好几次了。” “结论显然应该是这样。但在这一点上,各家理论不同。也许宇宙的扩张现象只会发生这么一次,但是如果它永远不断扩张下去,则这个现象是从何处开始的问题就变得更加迫切了。” “没错,因为这些突然间爆炸的物质最初是从哪里来的呢?” “对于一个基督徒来说,这次大爆炸显然就是创造过程开始的时刻。圣经告诉我们上帝说过:‘让世上有光吧!’你可能也还记得艾伯特说过基督教的历史观是‘直线式的’。从基督教相信上帝创造万物的观点来看,宇宙应该是会继续扩张下去的。” “真的吗?” “东方文化的历史观则是‘循环式的’。换句话说,他们认为历史会不断重复。举例来说,印度就有一个古老的理论,主张世界会不断开合,因此造成所谓的‘婆罗门日’(Brahman’sDay)和‘婆罗门夜’(Brahman’sNight)轮流交替的现象。这种观点自然比较符合宇宙会永远不断扩张、收缩的看法。在我的想象中,那就像是有一颗宇宙的心脏不断在跳动的情景……” “我认为这两种理论都同样令人无法想象,也同样令人兴奋。” “这就像是苏菲有一次坐在花园里思索永恒的矛盾:宇宙要不就是一向都存在着,要不就是突然无中生有……” “喔,好痛!” 席德用手拍了一下额头。 “怎么回事?” “我好像被牛蝇叮了一口。” “也许是苏格拉底在给你一些心灵的刺激呢。” 苏菲和艾伯特坐在红色的敞篷车里听着少校对席德讲述宇宙的现象。过了一会儿,艾伯特问道:“你有没有想到现在我们的角色已经完全相反了呢?” “怎么说?” “以前是他们听我们说话,而我们看不见他们。现在是我们听他们讲话,而他们看不见我们。” “还不止于此呢。” “你是指什么?” “我们一开始时并不知道席德和少校生活的那个世界,而现在他们也不知道我们存在的这个世界。” “我们算是报了一箭之仇了。” “可是那时候少校可以介入我们的世界。” “我们的世界全是他一手造成的。” “我还不死心。我们应该也有办法介入他们的世界吧?” “可是你知道这是不可能的。还记得我们在灰姑娘餐馆里发生的事吗?无论你多费劲,还是拿不起那瓶可乐。” 苏菲默默不语。当少校正在说明宇宙大爆炸的现象时,她看着这座花园。“大爆炸”这个名词牵动着她的思绪。 她开始在车子里面四处翻寻。 “你在干嘛?” “没事。” 她打开手套箱,找到了一支扳钳。她拿着扳钳,跳出车外,走到秋千旁,站在席德和她父亲前面。她试着吸引席德的视线,但一直都没有成功。最后她举起扳钳敲在席德的额头上。 “喔,好痛!”席德说。 然后苏菲又用扳钳敲击少校的额头,可他动也不动。 “怎么回事?”他问“我好像被牛蝇叮了一口。” “也许是苏格拉底在给你一些心灵的刺激呢。” 苏菲躺在草地上,努力推动秋千。但是秋千仍静止不动。可是又好像稍动了一点点。 “风挺凉的。”席德说。 “不会呀,我倒觉得挺舒服的。” “不只是风。还有另1J的。” “这里只有我们两个,在这个凉爽的仲夏夜。” “不,空气里面有一种东西。” “会是什么呢?” “你还记得艾伯特拟的秘密计划吗?” “我怎么会忘记?” “他们就这样从花园宴会里消失了。就好像他们消失在空气中了。” “没错,可是……” “……消失在空气中了……” “故事总得结束呀。那不过是我编的。” “没错,那时候是你编的。可是后来就不是了。他们不知道会不会在这儿.....” “你相信吗?” “爸,我可以感觉到。” 苏菲跑回车子里。 “很不错嘛!”当她紧握着扳钳爬进车里时,艾伯特不太情愿的说。“你有很不寻常的本领。我们就等着瞧吧。” 人生如星尘少校搂住席德。 “你没有听到那神秘的海潮声?” “听到了。我们明天得让船下水。” “可是你有没有听见那奇异的风声呢?你看那白杨树的叶子都在颤动呢。” “这个星球是有生命的。不是吗……” “你在信里说书中的字里行间另有意思。” “我有吗?” “也许这座花园也有别的东西存在。” “大自然充满了谜题,不过我们现在谈的是天上的星星。” “水上很快也会有星星了。” “对。你小时候就把磷光称为水上的星星。从某个角度来看,你说的并没有错。磷光和其他所有的有机体都是由那些曾经融合为一个星球的各种元素所组成的。” “人也是吗?” “没错,我们也是星尘。” “说得很美。” “当无线电波天文望远镜可以接收到来自数十亿光年外的遥远银河系的光线时,它们就可以描绘出太初时期大爆炸后宇宙的形貌。我们现在在天空中所看到的一切,都是几千、几百万年前宇宙的化石,因此占星学家只能预测过去的事。” “因为在它们的光芒传到地球之前,这些星座里的星星早就已经彼此远离了,是吗?” “即使是在两千年前,这些星座的面貌也与今天大不相同。” “我以前从来不知道是这样。” “在晴天的夜晚,我们可以看见几百万、甚至几十亿年前宇宙的面貌。所以,我们可以说正在回家的路上。” “我不懂你的意思。” “你我也是在大爆炸时开始,因为宇宙所有的物质整个是一个有机体。在万古之前,所有的物质都聚合成一大块,质量极其紧密,因此即使是小如针头般的一块,也可以重达好几十亿吨。在这样大的重力作用下,这个‘原始原子’爆炸了,就好像某个东西解体一样。所以说当我们仰望天空时,我们其实是在试图找寻回到自我的路。” “这个说法好特别。” “宇宙中所有的星球和银河都是由同一种物质做成的。这种物质的各个部分分别又合成一块,这里一块,那里一块。一个银河系到另外一个银河系的距离可能有数十亿光年,可是它们都来自同样一个源头。所有的恒星和行星都属于同一个家庭。” “我懂了。” “但是这种物质又是什么呢?数十亿年前爆炸的那个东西究竟是怎样的一种物质?它是从哪里来的呢?” “这是个很大的问题。” “而与我们每个人都密切相关。因为我们本身就是这种物质。 我们是几十亿年前熊熊燃烧的那场大火所爆出来的一点火花。” “这种想法也很美。” “然而,我们也不要太过强调这些数字的重要性。只要你在手中握着一块石头就够了。就算宇宙是由这样一块橘子般大小的石头做成的,我们也还是无法理解它。我们还是要问:这块石头是从哪里来的?” 苏菲突然在红色敞篷车里站起来,指着海湾的方向。 “我想去划那条船。”她说。 “它被绑起来了,而且我们也不可能拿得动桨。” “我们试试看好不好?不管怎么说,现在可是仲夏耶!” “至少我们可以到海边去。” 他们跳下车,沿着花园向下跑。 他们试图解开牢牢系在一个铁圈里的缆绳,可是却连绳尾都举不起来。 “跟钉牢了一样。”艾伯特说。 “我们有很充裕的时间。”“一个真正的哲学家永远不能放弃。如果我们能够……松开它……” “现在星星更多了。”席德说。 “是的,因为现在是夏夜里夜色最深的时候。” “可是在冬天里它们的光芒比较亮。你还记得你要动身去黎巴嫩的那个晚上吗?那天是元旦。” “就在那个时候,我决定为你写一本有关哲学的书。我也曾经去基督山的一家大书店和图书馆找过,可是他们都没有适合年轻人看的哲学书。” “感觉上现在我们好像正坐在白兔细毛的最顶端。” “我在想那些遥远的星球上是否也有人。” “你看,小船的绳子自己松开了!” “真的是这样!” “怎么会呢?在你回来前,我还到那里去检查过的。” “是吗?” “这使我想到苏菲借了艾伯特的船的时候。你还记得它当时在湖里漂浮的样子吗?” “我敢说现在也一定是她在搞鬼。” “你尽管取笑我吧。可是我还是觉得整个晚上都有人在这里。” “我们两人有一个必须游到那里去,把船划回来。” “我们两个都去,爸爸。”