VI. Christmas and the Aesthetes
第六章 聖誕節與美學家
第1段
The world is round, so round that the schools of optimism and pessimism have been arguing from the beginning whether it is the right way up. The difficulty does not arise so much from the mere fact that good and evil are mingled in roughly equal proportions; it arises chiefly from the fact that men always differ about what parts are good and what evil. Hence the difficulty which besets "undenominational religions." They profess to include what is beautiful in all creeds, but they appear to many to have collected all that is dull in them. All the colours mixed together in purity ought to make a perfect white. Mixed together on any human paintbox, they make a thing like mud, and a thing very like many new religions. Such a blend is often something much worse than any one creed taken separately, even the creed of the Thugs. The error arises from the difficulty of detecting what is really the good part and what is really the bad part of any given religion. And this pathos falls rather heavily on those persons who have the misfortune to think of some religion or other, that the parts commonly counted good are bad, and the parts commonly counted bad are good.
地球是圓的，而因為是圓的，所以樂觀與悲觀兩派人士對於到底誰的方向是對的，長久以來一直爭執不休。問題的癥結點不在於善與惡同等程度地混雜在一起，而是主要在於人們對於何為善、何為惡有不同的看法，這問題導致「無宗派宗教（undenominational religions）」的誕生。他們宣稱包容了所有宗教信仰中美善的部分，但在許多人眼中，他們只是收納了信條中單調無聊的部分。倘若將所有的純色融合，應會得到完美的潔白。但是在人類的調色箱裡，顏色融合卻只產生爛泥一樣的東西，而許多新興宗教也是如此。這類混合式宗教常常都比任何單一、獨立的宗教更糟，甚至不如暴徒的信條。錯誤通常就發生在決定宗教信條內哪些是好的部分，而哪些又是壞的部分。而這類苦難通常重重降臨在不幸有機會思考不同宗教的人身上，通常被視為好的部分是壞的，被視為壞的部分是好的。
第2段
It is tragic to admire and honestly admire a human group, but to admire it in a photographic negative. It is difficult to congratulate all their whites on being black and all their blacks on their whiteness. This will often happen to us in connection with human religions. Take two institutions which bear witness to the religious energy of the nineteenth century. Take the Salvation Army and the philosophy of Auguste Comte.
欣賞、真誠地欣賞一個群體，但卻是看著他們的攝影底片來欣賞他們，是個悲劇。要就他們的黑底而讚賞他們的白皙也不是，要針對他們透白讚揚他們的黑亮也不是。而這種狀況就常發生在我們與人類宗教相遇的情境中。以兩個見證十九世紀宗教能量的體制—救世軍（salvation army）與孔德（Auguste Comte）的哲學—作例子。
第3段
The usual verdict of educated people on the Salvation Army is expressed in some such words as these: "I have no doubt they do a great deal of good, but they do it in a vulgar and profane style; their aims are excellent, but their methods are wrong." To me, unfortunately, the precise reverse of this appears to be the truth. I do not know whether the aims of the Salvation Army are excellent, but I am quite sure their methods are admirable. Their methods are the methods of all intense and hearty religions; they are popular like all religion, military like all religion, public and sensational like all religion. They are not reverent any more than Roman Catholics are reverent, for reverence in the sad and delicate meaning of the term reverence is a thing only possible to infidels. That beautiful twilight you will find in Euripides, in Renan, in Matthew Arnold; but in men who believe
you will not find it—you will find only laughter and war. A man cannot pay that kind of reverence to truth solid as marble; they can only be reverent towards a beautiful lie. And the Salvation Army, though their voice has broken out in a mean environment and an ugly shape, are really the old voice of glad and angry faith, hot as the riots of Dionysus, wild as the gargoyles of Catholicism, not to be mistaken for a philosophy. Professor Huxley, in one of his clever phrases, called the Salvation Army "corybantic Christianity." Huxley was the last and noblest of those Stoics who have never understood the Cross. If he had understood Christianity he would have known that there never has been, and never can be, any Christianity that is not corybantic.
知識份子對救世軍這機構常有的評語大致如下：「我毫不懷疑他們做了很多善事，但他們採取的方式實在粗暴庸俗。他們的出發點是好的，但他們的方法是錯的。」很不幸的，對我而言，事實是剛好相反。我不知道救世軍這機構的目標是否是好的，但我肯定他們的方法是正確的。他們的方法是所有熱血與真誠的宗教會採用的方法。他們就跟所有宗教一樣大眾化、軍事化、公共化、感官化。他們沒有比天主教徒更敬虔，若要尋找敬虔這詞悲傷、肅穆的意涵，那只有在異教徒當中才可能找到。在尤里庇狄斯（Euripides）、在勒南（Renan），在阿諾德（Matthew Arnold）身上可找到那美麗微光，但在有信仰的人身上卻看不到，你只會找到笑聲與戰爭。人不會對如大理石般堅硬的真理發出那樣的敬畏之情，那種敬畏只會發生在美麗謊言當前時。而救世軍，雖然他們的聲音在不友善的環境下以不優美的形式嘶吼，但那的確是歡欣與憤怒信仰的老聲音，跟戴歐尼斯（Dionysus）的歡宴一樣喧鬧，跟天主教的石像怪（又譯：滴水嘴獸）一樣奇異，千萬不要誤以為這是一種哲學新思維。赫胥黎教授，在他諸多絕妙的評語中，稱呼救世軍為「狂野版基督教」。赫胥黎是那些從未理解十字架的斯多葛派人士中，最後、也最高貴的一位，若他真正懂得基督教，他就會知道，從來也沒有，也不可能會有任何版本的基督教是不狂野的。
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聖誕節已過，Heretics才剛進入第六章...
任務尚未成功，同志仍需努力....
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