第6章　生活的纯洁

这里讲一个在历史书中并非离题的数学小问题。

把一根绳子绕成圈，如图所示：

在这个圆圈中，各条直径当然是相等的。

AB=CD=EF=GH，等等，以此类推。

但是，轻轻地拉绳子两边，圆圈就变成了椭圆形，完美的平衡就会被破坏，各条直径变得参差不齐。AB和EF被大大缩短，其他线，尤其是CD却变长了。

现在把数学问题引申到历史问题中来。为了便于讨论，我们先假定：

AB代表政治；CD代表商业；EF代表艺术；GH代表军事

在图I中，是完美的平衡，所有线都一样长，对政治的关注与对商业、艺术和军事的关注是相同的。

但是在图II（它不再是完美的圆圈了）中，商业受到了特别优待，其代价是政治和艺术几乎完全销声匿迹，而军事却稍有发展。

或者使GH（军事）成为最长的线，而其他方面则趋于消亡。

Try it on the Greeks.

For a short time the Greeks had been able to maintain a perfect circle of all-around accomplishments. But the foolish quarrels between the different political parties soon grew to such proportions that all the surplus energy of the nation was being absorbed by the incessant civil wars. The soldiers were no longer used for the purpose of defending the country against foreign aggression. They were turned loose upon their own neighbors, who had voted for a different candidate, or who believed in a slightly modified form of taxation.

Trade, that most important diameter of all such circles, at first became difficult, then became entirely impossible and fied to other parts of the world, where business enjoyed a greater degree of stability.

The moment poverty entered through the front gate of the city, the arts escaped by way of the back door, never to be seen again. Capital sailed away on the fastest ship it could find within a hundred miles, and since intellectualism is a very expensive luxury, it was henceforth impossible to maintain good schools. The best teachers hastened to Rome and to Alexandria.

What remained was a group of second-rate citizens who subsisted upon tradition and routine.

And all this happened because the line of politics had grown out of all proportion, because the perfect circle had been destroyed, and the other lines, art, scien ce, philosophy, etc., etc., had been reduced to nothing.

If you apply the circular problem to Rome, you will find that there the particular line called “political power” grew and grew and grew until there was nothing left of any of the others. The circle which had spelled the glory of the

你将会发现这就是解答许多历史问题的灵巧钥匙。

我们就用它来试一下希腊吧。

在短时间内，希腊还能够保持各行各业的完美圆圈。但是，不同政党之间的愚蠢争吵很快发展到不可收拾的地步，以至于无休无止的内战耗尽了整个国家原本阔绰的精力。士兵们不再被用来保卫国家抵御外来侵略。他们奉命向同胞开火，因为这些人投了另一位候选人的票，或者提出了希望有更好的赋税法等观点。

商业作为这类圆圈中最重要的直径，第一次感到了无法伸展，到完全走投无路时，便逃到了世界的其他地方，因为生意在那里更加稳定。

贫穷从城市的前门进来，艺术便从后门溜走了，从此不再露面。资本也乘坐周围100海里以内最快的船逃走了。由于知识等智力活动成了昂贵的奢侈品，因此好学校也难以为继。最优秀的教师匆匆逃奔到了罗马和亚历山大。

剩下来的都是一群二流公民，他们靠传统和常规生活着。

这都是因为政治这条线的增长超出了比例，完美的平衡的圆圈遭到破坏，其他线，如艺术、科学、哲学等，几乎不见踪影了。

Republic disappeared. All that remained was a straight, narrow line, the shortest distance between success and failure.

And if, to give you still another example, you reduce the history of the medieval Church to this sort of mathematics, this is what you will find.

The earliest Christians had tried very hard to maintain a circle of conduct that should be perfect. Perhaps they had rather neglected the diameter of science, but since they were not interested in the life of the world, they could not very well be expected to pay much attention to medicine or physics or astronomy, useful subjects, no doubt, but of small appeal to men and women who were making ready for the last judgment and who regarded this world merely as the anteroom to Heaven.

But for the rest, these sincere followers of Christ endeavored（however imperfectly）to lead the good life and to be as industrious as they were charitable and as kindly as they were honest.

As soon, however, as their little communities had been united into a single powerful organization, the perfect balance of the old spiritual circle was rudely upset by the obligations and duties of the new international responsibilities. It was easy enough for small groups of halfstarved carpenters and quarry workers to follow those principles of poverty and unsel fishness upon which their faith was founded. But the heir to the imperial throne of Rome, the Pontifex Maximus of the western world, the richest landowner of the entire continent, could not live as simply as if he were a sub-deacon in a provincial town somewhere in Pomerania or Spain.

Or, to use the circular language of this chapter, the diameter representing “worldliness” and the diameter representing “foreign policy” were lengthened to such an extent that the diameters representing “humility” and “poverty” and “self-negation” and the other elementary Christian virtues were being reduced to the point of extinction.

如果把这个圆圈的问题应用于罗马，你就会发现，那条叫“政治权力”的特殊线条在不停地增长，直到其他所有线条都被挤掉了。于是，筑成共和国荣耀的圆圈消失了，剩下的只是一条细细的直线，也就是从成功到失败的最短距离。

再举一例。如果你把中世纪教会的历史简化成这种数学问题，就会发现下面的情况。

最早的基督徒曾经极力使自己的行为保持为完美的圆圈。也许他们忽略了科学的直径，不过既然他们对这个世界的生活不感兴趣，也就不要指望他们会过多地关注医学、物理或天文。有用的科学对于这些只想为末日审判做好准备、并认为尘世只是通往天堂前厅的男男女女来说，当然没有什么吸引力。

但对于基督的其他虔诚的追随者而言，他们却在想方设法（尽管很不完备）要过好日子。他们勤奋而仁慈，和善而诚实。

然而，当众多的小社团联合成一个单一的强大组织时，旧的精神圆圈的完美平衡就被新的世界性责任和义务无情地破坏了。半饥半饱的木匠和采石工人的信仰是建立在贫穷和无私的原则基础上的，要他们遵守这样的信条还很容易。可是罗马皇位继承人、西方世界的大祭司和整个欧洲大陆最富有的财主却不能像波美拉尼亚或西班牙某些外省城镇的小执事那样过简朴的生活。

或者用这一章的圆圈术语来讲，代表“世俗”和“对外政策”的直径伸展得太长，而代表“谦卑”“贫穷”“无私”和其他基督教基本美德的直径却日益缩短，甚至微乎其微了。

It is a pleasant habit of our time to speak patronizingly of the benighted people of the Middle Ages, who, as we all know, lived in utter darkness. It is true they burned wax tapers in their churches and went to bed by the uncertain light of a sconce, they possessed few books, they were ignorant of many things which are now being taught in our grammar schools and in our better grade lunatic asylums. But knowledge and intelligence are two very different things and of the latter, these excellent burghers, who constructed the political and social structure in which we ourselves continue to live, had their full share.

If a good deal of the time they seemed to stand apparently helpless before the many and terrible abuses in their Church, let us judge them mercifully. They had at least the courage of their convictions and they fought whatever they considered wrong with such sublime disregard for personal happiness and comfort that they frequently ended their lives on the scaffold.

More than that we can ask of no one.

It is true that during the first thousand years of our era, comparatively few people fell as victims to their ideas.Not, however, because the Church felt less strongly about heresy than she did at a later date, but because she was too much occupied with more important questions to have any time to waste upon comparatively harmless dissenters.

In the first place, there remained many parts of Europe where Odin and the other heathen gods still ruled supreme.

And in the second place, something very unpleasant had happened, which had wellnigh threatened the whole of Europe with destruction.

This “something unpleasant” was the sudden appearance of a brand-new prophet by the name of Mahomet, and the conquest of western Asia and northern Africa by the followers of a new God who was called Allah.

The literature which we absorb in our childhood full of “infidel dogs” and Turkish atrocities is apt to leave us under the impression that Jesus and Mahomet represented

我们这一代人有一个好习惯，那就是在谈到中世纪的愚昧时总带着一种包容态度，知道他们生活在无尽的黑暗之中。的确，他们在教堂里点蜡烛，在摇曳不定的烛光下起居，没有什么书，甚至不知道如今小学和稍好些的精神病院里教授的东西。不过，知识和智力是全然不同的东西，这些优秀的自由民很聪明，正是他们建立了我们现在仍在采用的政治和社会结构。

如果他们在很长的时间里面对其他人对教会的恶毒诋毁束手无策的话，我们评价他们时还是留点情吧。他们至少对自己的信念还是充满勇气的，他们会与他们认为错误的东西作战，完全不考虑个人幸福和舒适，以至于在断头台上结束自己的一生。

除此之外，我们不能提更多的要求了。

确实，在公元后1000年中，很少有人为自己的思想而牺牲。不过这并不是因为教会对异端的反感不如以前强烈，而是因为它有更重要的事情，无暇顾及那些相对无害的持不同观点的人。

首先，在欧洲许多地方，奥丁神和其他异教神仍然是最高统治者。

其次，发生了一件很不妙的事，它使整个欧洲几乎面临毁灭。

这件“不妙的事”就是突然出现了一个名叫穆罕默德的新先知，一群追随真主“安拉”的人征服了西亚和北非。

我们在孩提时代读到的充满了“异教徒”和土耳其人残酷恶行的文学故事，容易使我们认为耶稣和穆罕默德各自代表的思想是水火不容的。

ideals which were as mutually antagonistic as fire and water.

But as a matter of fact, the two men belonged to the same race, they spoke dialects which belonged to the same linguistic group, they both claimed Abraham as their great-great-grandfather and they both looked back upon a common ancestral home, which a thousand years before had stood on the shores of the Persian Gulf.

And yet, the followers of those two great teachers who were such close relatives have always regarded each other with bitter scorn and have fought a war which has lasted more than twelve centuries and which has not yet come to an end.

At this late day and age it is useless to speculate upon what might have happened, but there was a time when Mecca, the arch-enemy of Rome, might have easily been gained for the Christian faith.

The Arabs, like all desert people, spent a great deal of their time tending their flocks and therefore were much given to meditation. People in cities can drug their souls with the pleasures of a perennial county-fair. But shepherds and fisher folk and farmers lead solitary lives and want something a little more substantial than noise and excitement.

In his quest for salvation, the Arab had tried several religions, but had shown a distinct preference for Judaism. This is easily explained, as Arabia was full of Jews. In the tenth century B.C., a great many of King Solomon's subjects, exasperated by the high taxes and the despotism of their ruler, had fied into Arabia and again， five hundred years later in 586 B.C., when Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judah, there had been a second wholesale exodus of Jews towards the desert lands of the south.

Judaism, therefore, was well known and furthermore the quest of the Jews after the one and only true God was entirely in line with the aspirations and ideals of the Arabian tribes.

Any one in the least familiar with the work of Mahomet will know how much the Medinite had borrowed from the wisdom contained in some of the books of the Old Testament.

其实，这两个人属于同一个种族，说同一个语系的方言，都把亚伯拉罕奉为始祖，都可以追溯到同一个1000年前就矗立于波斯湾畔的祖籍。

然而，这两位伟大导师的追随者虽是近亲，却一直相互仇视，彼此之间的战争已经持续了12个世纪还多，至今尚未结束。

现在再做“假如”的猜想毫无意义，但的确曾有那么一段时间，罗马的死敌麦加差点儿接受了基督教。

阿拉伯人像所有沙漠民族一样，把大量时间用在放牧上，因此有充裕的时间沉思默祷。城里人可以从终年不断的乡镇集市中获得乐趣，而牧民、渔民和农夫过着孤独的生活，他们需要某种比热闹和刺激更实际的东西。

阿拉伯人在寻求救赎的过程中，尝试过好几种宗教，不过他们明显偏爱犹太教。这很容易解释，因为阿拉伯到处都是犹太人。公元前10世纪，所罗门国王的大批臣民因为对沉重的赋税和统治者的专制感到不满，逃到了阿拉伯。到了500年后的公元前586年，当尼布甲尼撒征服犹大国时，大批犹太人再次涌向南部沙漠地带。

犹太教由此为人们所熟知。而且犹太人只追求唯一真神，这与阿拉伯部落的志向和理想完全一致。

任何稍微读过穆罕默德著作的人都知道，麦地尼特从《旧约》的一些章节中借用了大量智慧。

以实玛利（他与母亲夏甲一起埋葬在阿拉伯中部的至圣所）的后裔并不敌视

Nor were the descendants of Ishmael（who together with his mother Hagar lay buried in the Holy of Holies in the heart of Arabia）hostile to the ideas expressed by the young reformer from Nazareth. On the contrary, they followed Jesus eagerly when he spoke of that one God who was a loving father to all men. They were not inclined to accept those miracles of which the followers of the Nazarene carpenter made so much. And as for the resurrection, they flatly refused to believe in it. But generally speaking, they felt very kindly disposed towards the new faith and were willing to give it a chance.

But Mahomet suffered considerable annoyance at the hands of certain Christian zealots who with their usual lack of discretion had denounced him as a liar and a false prophet before he had fairly opened his mouth. That and the impression which was rapidly gaining ground that the Christians were idol worshipers who believed in three Gods instead of one, made the people of the desert finally turn their backs upon Christianity and declare themselves in favor of the Medinese camel driver who spoke to them of one and only one God and did not confuse them with references to three deities that were “one” and yet were not one, but were one or three as it might please the convenience of the moment and the interests of the officiating priest.

Thus the western world found itself possessed of two religions, each of which proclaimed its own God to be the One True God and each of which insisted that all other Gods were impostors.

Such conflicts of opinion are apt to lead to warfare.

Mahomet died in 632.

Within less than a dozen years, Palestine, Syria, Persia and Egypt had been conquered and Damascus had become the capital of a great Arab empire.

Before the end of 656 the entire coast of northern Africa had accepted Allah as its divine ruler and in less than a century after the flight of Mahomet from Mecca to Medina, the Mediterranean had been turned into a Moslem lake, all communications between Europe

拿撒勒的年轻改革者的思想。相反，当耶稣说只有一个上帝，是所有人的慈父时，他们也热切地接受了他的说法。他们不愿意接受拿撒勒木匠（耶稣）的追随者大肆宣扬的那些奇迹。至于耶稣复活，他们根本就不相信。不过他们总体还是倾向于这一新信仰，愿意给它一席之地。

但是，穆罕默德在一伙基督教狂热分子手里吃了大苦头。这些缺乏判断力的人，没等他开口，就斥责他是骗子和伪先知。这件事再加上迅速广为流传的认为基督徒是崇拜三个而不是一个上帝的偶像崇拜者的说法，终于使沙漠居民放弃了基督教，并宣布自己更喜欢麦地那那个赶骆驼的人，他对他们只讲一个上帝，而不是搬出三个神来糊弄他们，一会儿合为一个上帝，一会儿又分为三个，全凭当时形势和官方教士的利益而定。

这样，西方世界便有了两种宗教，它们都宣称自己信奉的是唯一真神，而把其他神说成是骗子。

这些观点上的冲突很容易导致战争。

公元632年，穆罕默德去世。

and Asia had been cut off and the European continent was placed in a state of siege which lasted until the end of the seventeenth century.

Under those circumstances it had been impossible for the Church to carry her doctrines eastward. All she could hope to do was to hold on to what she already possessed.Germany and the Balkans and Russia and Denmark and Sweden and Norway and Bohemia and Hungary had been chosen as a profitable field for intensive spiritual cultivation and on the whole, the work was done with great success.Occasionally a hardy Christian of the variety of Charlemagne, well-intentioned but not yet entirely civilized, might revert to strong-arm methods and might butcher those of his subjects who preferred their own Gods to those of the foreigner. By and large, however, the Christian missionaries were well received, for they were honest men who told a simple and straightforward story which all the people could understand and because they introduced certain elements of order and neatness and mercy into a world full of bloodshed and strife and highway robbery.

But while this was happening along the frontier, things had not gone so well in the heart of the pontifical empire.Incessantly（to revert to the mathematics explained in the first pages of this chapter）the line of worldliness had been lengthened until at last the spiritual element in the Church had been made entirely subservient to considerations of a purely political and economic nature and although Rome was to grow in power and exercise a tremendous influence upon the development of the next twelve centuries, certain elements of disintegration had already made their appearance and were being recognized as such by the more intelligent among the laity and the clergy.

We modern people of the Protestant north think of a “church” as a building which stands empty six days out of every seven and a place where people go on a Sunday to hear a sermon and sing a few hymns. We know that some of our churches have bishops and occasionally

在不到12年的时间里，巴勒斯坦、叙利亚、波斯和埃及相继被征服，大马士革成为大阿拉伯帝国的首都。

到公元656年底之前，整个北非沿海都把安拉奉为神圣主宰。穆罕默德从麦加逃到麦地那之后不到一个世纪，地中海变成了伊斯兰教的一个内湖，欧洲和亚洲的一切交往都被切断了。直到17世纪末期，欧洲大陆一直处于被包围的状态。

在这种环境下，教会不可能把教义传到东方。它希望保住自己已经取得的成果。它选中了德国、巴尔干半岛诸国、俄罗斯、丹麦、瑞典、挪威、波希米亚和匈牙利，作为进行深入精神开发的肥沃土地，这项工作大获成功。偶尔也有像查理曼那样强悍的基督徒，虽然为了教会的利益，却用暴力手段屠杀了更喜欢异教神而不是外来上帝的臣民。不过，基督传教士大都是受欢迎的，因为他们是诚实的人，宣讲的东西简单明确，所有人都能理解，而且为充满流血、斗殴和拦路抢劫的世界带来了某些秩序、整洁和仁慈的因素。

虽然前方进展顺利，但是教会帝国内部却诸事不顺。（用本章开头的数学来讲）世俗的线条不断变长，直到最后教会的精神因素完全从属于纯政治和经济因素的考虑；尽管罗马的权力日益增加，对以后12个世纪的发展有巨大影响，但是土崩瓦解的某些因素已经显现，老百姓和教士当中的智者也看出了这一点。

现在，北方的新教徒把教堂看成一座房子，每七天中有六天空荡无人。到了星期日，人们去那里听布道和唱赞美诗。我们知道一些教堂有主教，这些主教偶尔在城里开会，那时我们周围就会有一群衣领翻到后面的和蔼的老绅士。我们可以从报纸上得

these bishops hold a convention in our town and then we find ourselves surrounded by a number of kindly old gentlemen with their collars turned backwards and we read in the papers that they have declared themselves in favor of dancing or against divorce, and then they go home again and nothing has happened to disturb the peace and happiness of our community.

We rarely associate this church（even if it happens to be our own）with the sum total of all our experiences, both in life and in death.

But in the Middle Ages this was altogether different. Then, the Church was something visible and tangible, a highly active organization which breathed and existed, which shaped man's destiny in many more ways than the State would ever dream of doing.Very likely those first Popes who accepted pieces of land from grateful princes and renounced the ancient ideal of poverty did not foresee the consequences to which such a policy was bound to lead. In the beginning it had seemed harmless enough and quite appropriate that faithful followers of Christ should bestow upon the successor of the apostle Peter a share of their own worldly goods.Besides, there was the overhead of a complicated administration which reached all the way from John o'Groat's to Trebizond and from Carthage to Upsala.Think of all the thousands of secretaries and clerks and scribes, not to mention the hundreds of heads of the different departments, that had to be housed and clothed and fed.Think of the amount spent upon a courier service across an entire continent; the traveling expenses of diplomatic agents now going to London, then returning from Novgorod; the sums necessary to keep the papal courtiers in the style that was expected of people who foregathered with worldly princes on a footing of complete equality.

All the same, looking back upon what the Church came to stand for and contemplating what it might have been under slightly more favorable circumstances, this development seems a great pity. For Rome rapidly grew into a gigantic super-state with a slight religious tinge and the pope became an international autocrat who held all the nations of western Europe in a

知他们已宣布提倡跳舞或反对离婚；然后他们又回到家里，我们的生活依然平静而幸福，没有任何干扰。

我们现在极少把这种教堂（即使它是我们自己的教堂）与我们的生死及所有活动相联系。

但是在中世纪情况完全不同。那时候，教会看得见摸得着，是一个高度活跃的组织，它会呼吸，也存在着，用国家做梦也不会想到的各种办法决定人的命运。第一批从慷慨的诸侯那里接受馈赠土地并放弃了古老的贫穷理想的教皇，很可能没有预见到这个政策会导致的后果。起初，基督的忠诚追随者向圣徒彼得的后继者赠送一些世俗礼物似乎很有益而且合情合理。然而，从约翰·奥格罗斯到特莱比赞德、从迦太基到乌普拉沙，到处都有复杂的监督管理体制。想想还有成千上万的秘书、牧师和抄写员，更不用说各个部门数以百计的大小头目，他们都要住房、穿衣、吃饭。还有横穿整个大陆的信使的费用，今天去伦敦、接着从诺夫哥罗德返回的外交使臣的旅行费用，以及为了保持教皇信使与世俗诸侯在一起时穿着体面、平起平坐所必需的总开支。

即使是这样，回顾一下教会本来代表什么，想想如果环境再好一些会出现什么情况，这种发展似乎是极大的遗憾。因为罗马很快变成了一个超级国家，而宗教色彩却只剩下一点点了，教皇则成了一位世界专制君主，控制着西欧各国的命运。与他相比，古代皇帝的统治反而显得温和大度。

bondage compared to which the rule of the old emperors had been mild and generous.

And then, when complete success seemed within certain reach, something happened which proved fatal to the ambition for world dominion.

The true spirit of the Master once more began to stir among the masses and that is one of the most uncomfortable things that can happen to any religious organization.

Heretics were nothing new.

There had been dissenters as soon as there had been a single rule of faith from which people could possibly dissent and disputes, which had divided Europe and Africa and western Asia into hostile camps for centuries at a time, were almost as old as the Church herself.

But these sanguinary quarrels between Donatists and Sabellianists and Monophysites and Manichaeans and Nestorians hardly come within the scope of this book. As a rule, one party was quite as narrow-minded as the other and there was little to choose between the intolerance of a follower of Arius and the intolerance of a follower of Athanasius.

Besides, these quarrels were invariably based upon certain obscure points of theology which are gradually beginning to be forgotten. Heaven forbid that I should drag them out of their parchment graves.I am not wasting my time upon the fabrication of this volume to cause a fresh outbreak of theological fury.Rather, I am writing these pages to tell our children of certain ideals of intellectual liberty for which some of their ancestors fought at the risk of their lives and to warn them against that attitude of doctrinary arrogance and cocksureness which has caused such a terrible lot of suffering during the last two thousand years.

But when I reach the thirteenth century, it is a very different story.

Then a heretic ceases to be a mere dissenter, a disputatious fellow with a pet hobby of his own based upon the wrong translation of an obscure sentence in the Apocalypse or the mis-spelling of a holy word in the gospel of St. John.

Instead he becomes the champion of those ideas for which during the reign of Tiberius a certain carpenter from the village of Nazareth went to his death, and behold!he stands revealed as the only true Christian!

就在教会似乎成功在望时，却出现了一些问题，它对教会统治世界的野心是致命的一击。

主的真正精神又一次在民众中崛起，这对于任何宗教组织都是很不舒服的事。

异教徒已经不是什么新事物了。

一旦出现人们可能反对的单一信仰统治，就会有持异见者。他们的争执与教会一样古老，它使欧洲、非洲和西亚在数世纪内成了相互敌视的阵营。

但是多纳特斯教派、撒比利乌教派、莫诺菲赛特教派、摩尼教派和尼斯特里教派之间的血腥争斗本书是不会讨论的。一般来讲，阿修斯的追随者的不宽容与阿塔那修斯信徒的不宽容都是一样的。

此外，这些争执总是围绕着一些模糊的神学问题，这些问题现在已经被逐渐遗忘了。我可不想把它们再从羊皮纸的坟墓中挖出来，也不想耗时费力地写出一本书来挑起神学的战火。我写这些只是想告诉子孙后代自由的信念，他们的祖先曾不惜牺牲为之奋斗。我还想告诫他们，不要养成教条主义的独断专行的态度。因为这种态度已经导致过去2000年来许多沉痛的灾难。

可是到了13世纪，情况大不一样了。

那时候的异教徒不再只是持不同见解的人，不再只是为《启示录》中哪句高深的话的误译或《圣约翰福音书》中哪个神圣字母的拼写错误而固执己见。

相反，他成了某些思想的斗士，在提庇留当政时期，一个来自拿撒勒村庄的木匠曾为之而死，而且，他站在那里，似乎他才是唯一真正的基督徒！