【双语有声阅读】知识与美德Knowledge and Virtue

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知识是一回事，美德是另一回事。好意并非良心，优雅并非谦让，广博与公正的观点也并非信仰。哲学，无论多么富有启迪和深奥莫测，都无法驾驭情感，不具备有影响力的动机，不具有导致生动活泼的原理。

 

Knowledge is one thing, virtue¹ is another; good sense is not conscience, refinement² is not humility³, nor is largeness and justness of view faith. Philosophy, however enlightened, however profound, gives no command over the passions, no influential⁴ motives⁵, no vivifying principles.

 

Liberal Education makes not the Christian⁶, not the Catholic, but the gentleman. It is well to be a gentleman, it is well to have a cultivated intellect, a delicate taste, a candid⁷, equitable⁸, dispassionate mind, a noble and courteous⁹ bearing in the conduct of life--these are the connatural qualities of a large knowledge; they are the objects of a University; I am advocating, I shall illustrate¹⁰ and insist upon them; but still, I repeat, they are no guarantee for sanctity or even for conscientiousness¹¹, they may attach to the man of the world, to the profligate¹², to the heartless, pleasant, alas¹³, and attractive as he shows when decked out in them. Taken by themselves, they do but seem to be what they are not; they look like virtue at a distance, but they are detected by close observers, and on the long run; and hence it is that they are popularly accused of pretense¹⁴ and hypocrisy¹⁵, not, I repeat, from their own fault, but because their professors and their admirers persist in taking them for what they are not, and are officious in arrogating¹⁶ for them a praise to which they have no claim. Quarry¹⁷ the granite¹⁸ rock with razors, or moor¹⁹ the vessel²⁰ with a thread of silk, then may you hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and the pride of man.

 

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