第2章　希腊人

位于地中海一个偏僻角落的一个岩石小半岛，在不到两个世纪的时间里，为我们今天的世界奠定了较完整的文化基础，包括政治、文艺、化学、物理及其他未知的领域，这是怎样实现的呢？多少个世纪以来，人们对这个问题都困惑不解，哲学家也在努力寻找答案。

令人尊敬的历史学家不像化学、物理、天文及医学领域的专家，他们总是以一种恶意隐藏的蔑视态度去看待人们力图发现“古老法则”的一切努力。在研究蝌蚪、细菌和流星中大有用武之地的东西，在人类领域的研究中似乎难有作为。

也许是我大错特错，但我认为这些法则一定存在。事实上，我们至今并没有发现多少东西，我们的探索也不够努力。我们一直忙着积累事实，而没有把它们煮一煮，使它们液化、升华，再从中提炼出智慧——这些智慧对于我们人类这种特殊的哺乳动物也许还真的有些价值。

我诚惶诚恐地投身于这个新的研究领域，在此借用科学家作品中的一页内容，提出如下原理。

根据现代科学家最杰出的研究成果，当所有物理和化学成分都达到形成第一个

elements were present in the ideal proportion necessary for the creation of the first living cell.

Translate this into terms of history and you get this:

“A sudden and apparently spontaneous outbreak of a very high form of civilization is only possible when all the racial, climatic, economic and political conditions are present in an ideal proportion or in as nearly an ideal condition and proportion as they can be in this imperfect world.”

Let me elaborate this statement by a few negative observations.

A race with the brain development of a cave-man would not prosper, even in Paradise.

Rembrandt would not have painted pictures, Bach would not have composed fugues, Praxiteles would not have made statues if they had been born in an igloo near Upernivik and had been obliged to spend most of their waking hours watching a seal-hole in an ice-field.

Darwin would not have made his contributions to biology if he had been obliged to gain his livelihood in a cotton mill in Lancashire. And Alexander Graham Bell would not have invented the telephone if he had been a conscripted serf and had lived in a remote village of the Romanow domains.

In Egypt, where the first high form of civilization was found, the climate was excellent, but the original inhabitants were not very robust or enterprising, and political and economic conditions were decidedly bad. The same held true of Babylonia and Assyria. The Semitic races which afterwards moved into the valley between the Tigris and the Euphrates were strong and vigorous people.There was nothing the matter with the climate. But the political and economic environment remained far from good.

In Palestine the climate was nothing to boast of. Agriculture was backward and there was little commerce outside of the caravan route which passed through the country from Africa to Asia and vice versa.Furthermore, in Palestine politics were entirely dominated

细胞的理想比例时，生命（区别于无生物的有生物）就开始了。

把这句话翻译成历史学概念如下：

“只有当所有种族、气候、经济和政治条件在不健全的世界达到或接近一种理想状态和比例时，高级文明形态才会突然且貌似自发地出现。”

让我举几个反面例子来详尽阐述这句话。

大脑发育尚处于穴居人水平的种族不会繁荣昌盛，即使在天堂也是如此。

如果出生在乌佩尼维克岛附近因纽特人的圆顶茅屋里，醒着的时候大部分时间都必须双眼紧盯着冰上的海豹捕猎洞，那么伦勃朗就不会画画，巴赫就不会作曲，伯拉克西特列斯也不会创作雕像。

如果达尔文必须在兰开夏郡一家棉纺厂谋生，他就不会在生物学上做出贡献。如果亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔是一个没有自由的农奴，住在罗曼诺夫王朝的一个偏僻村子里，他就不会发明电话。

作为第一个现代文明的发祥地，埃及气候宜人，但那里的土著居民体魄却不强健，进取心也不强，政治经济环境也很糟糕。巴比伦和亚述王国同样如此。后来迁居到底格里斯河和幼发拉底河流域的闪米特族倒是身强体壮、精力充沛，气候也没有问题，但政治和经济环境很不理想。

在巴勒斯坦，气候一般，农业落后，除了横穿该国连接亚非两洲的大篷车商业通道之外，其他地区商业凋敝。更何况在巴勒斯坦，政治完全由耶路撒冷寺院的教

by the priests of the temple of Jerusalem and this of course did not encourage the development of any sort of individual enterprise.

In Phoenicia, the climate was of little consequence. The race was strong and trade conditions were good. The country, however, suffered from a badly balanced economic system. A small class of ship owners had been able to get hold of all the wealth and had established a rigid commercial monopoly. Hence the government in Tyre and Sidon had at an early date fallen into the hands of the very rich. The poor, deprived of all excuse for the practice of a reasonable amount of industry, grew callous and indifferent and Phoenicia eventually shared the fate of Carthage and went to ruin through the short-sighted sel fishness of her rulers.

In short, in every one of the early centers of civilization, certain of the necessary elements for success were always lacking.

When the miracle of a perfect balance finally did occur, in Greece in the fifth century before our era, it lasted only a very short time, and strange to say, even then it did not take place in the mother country but in the colonies across the Aegean Sea.

In another book I have given a description of those famous island-bridges which connected the mainland of Asia with Europe and across which the traders from Egypt and Babylonia and Crete since time immemorial had traveled to Europe. The main point of embarkation, both for merchandise and ideas bound from Asia to Europe, was to be found on the western coast of Asia Minor in a strip of land known as Ionia.

A few hundred years before the Trojan war, this narrow bit of mountainous territory, ninety miles long and only a few miles wide, had been conquered by Greek tribes from the mainland who there had founded a number of colonial towns of which Ephesus, Phocaea, Erythrae and Miletus were the best known, and it was along those

士操纵，这当然无助于任何个人事业的发展。

在腓尼基，气候还行，人也强壮，经商条件也不错，但这个国家的经济严重不平衡。由船主形成的小阶层掌握了全部财富，还建立了森严的商业垄断政策。这样，早期的推罗和西顿政府就落入了富人手里。被剥夺了辛勤劳动这一最基本权力的穷人变得冷淡而漠然，腓尼基最终和迦太基一样，由于统治者的短视和自私而毁灭。

简言之，在每个早期文明的中心，成功的必要因素总是有所欠缺。

公元前5世纪，完美平衡的奇迹终于出现在希腊，它只存在很短时间；而且奇怪的是，它并不是出现在希腊本土，而是出现在爱琴海对岸的殖民地。

在另一本书中，我描述了连接亚欧大陆的著名的岛屿桥梁，在人类还没有文字记载的时候，埃及、巴比伦和克里特的商人就经过这些岛桥来到欧洲。他们这一行动既通了商，又把亚洲的文化带到了欧洲，他们的足迹留在了小亚细亚西海岸一个名叫爱奥尼亚的狭长地带。

在特洛伊战争之前几百年，一些来自希腊大陆的部落征服了这块90英里长、仅

cities that at last the conditions of success were present in such perfect proportion that civilization reached a point which has sometimes been equaled but never has been surpassed.

In the first place, these colonies were inhabited by the most active and enterprising elements from among a dozen different nations.

In the second place, there was a great deal of general wealth derived from the carrying trade between the old and the new world, between Europe and Asia.

In the third place, the form of government under which the colonists lived gave the majority of the freemen a chance to develop their talents to the very best of their ability.

If I do not mention the climate, the reason is this; that in countries devoted exclusively to commerce, the climate does not matter much. Ships can be built and goods can be unloaded, rain or shine.Provided it does not get so cold that the harbors freeze or so wet that the towns are flooded, the inhabitants will take very little interest in the daily weather reports.

But aside from this, the weather of Ionia was distinctly favorable to the development of an intellectual class. Before the existence of books and libraries, learning was handed down from man to man by word of mouth and the town-pump was the earliest of all social centers and the oldest of universities.

In Miletus it was possible to sit around the town-pump for 350 out of every 365 days. And the early Ionian professors made such excellent use of their climatic advantages that they became the pioneers of all future scientific development.

The first of whom we have any report, the real founder of modern science, was a person of doubtful origin. Not in the sense that he had robbed a bank or murdered his family and had fied to Miletus from parts unknown. But no one knew much about his antecedents.

数英里宽的多山地带，他们在那里建立了许多殖民城市，其中最著名的有以弗所、福基思、厄立特里亚和米利都。在这些城市，成功的条件最终以非常完美的比例呈现出来，以至于它们的文明发展到了很高程度，其他文明有时最多与之并肩，却从未能超越它们。

首先，这些殖民地居住了来自十多个不同民族的最活跃、最具进取心的人。

其次，这里拥有新老世界和欧亚大陆之间互通贸易所得的大量财富。

第三，代表殖民主利益的政府给了广大自由民机会，以充分发挥他们的个人才华。

如果我没有提到气候，不过是因为对于只从事商业的国家而言，气候无关紧要。无论晴天雨天，都可以造船，都可以卸货，只要不是冷得港口结冰，或者城市被洪水淹没，人们就不会在意每天的天气预报。

除此之外，爱奥尼亚的天气对文化的发展极其有利。在书籍和图书馆出现之前，知识靠人口耳相传，城镇的水井附近就成为最早的社交中心和最老的大学所在地。

在米利都，人们一年中有350天坐在水井周围。早期的爱奥尼亚教授充分利用了他们的气候优势，他们成了科学发展的先驱。

我们有记载的第一个人（现代科学的真正创立者），是一个背景值得怀疑的人物。这并不是说他抢了银行或谋杀了家人，并从无人知晓的地方逃到米利都来的。没有人知道他的祖先，不知道他是比奥夏人还是腓尼基人，或者说（用我们博学的

Was he a Boeotian or a Phoenician, a Nordic（to speak in the jargon of our learned racial experts）or a Semite?

It shows what an international center this little old city at the mouth of the Meander was in those days. Its population（like that of New York today）consisted of so many different elements that people accepted their neighbors at their face value and did not look too closely into the family antecedents.

Since this is not a history of mathematics or a handbook of philosophy, the speculations of Thales do not properly belong in these pages, except in so far as they tend to show the tolerance towards new ideas which prevailed among the Ionians at a time when Rome was a small market-town on a muddy river somewhere in a distant and unknown region, when the Jews were still captives in the land of Assyria and when northern and western Europe were naught but a howling wilderness.

In order that we may understand how such a development was possible, we must know something about the changes which had taken place since the days when Greek chieftains sailed across the Aegean Sea, intent upon the plunder of the rich fortress of Troy. Those farfamed heroes were still the product of an exceedingly primitive form of civilization. They were over-grown children who regarded life as one long, glorified rough-house, full of excitement and wrestling matches and running races and all the many things which we ourselves would dearly love to do if we were not forced to stick to the routine jobs which provide us with bread and bananas.

The relationship between these boisterous paladins and their Gods was as direct and as simple as their attitude towards the serious problems of every-day existence. For the inhabitants of high Olympus, who ruled the world of the Hellenes in the tenth century before our era, were of this earth earthy, and not very far removed from ordinary mortals.Exactly where and when and how man and his Gods had parted company was a more or

人类学专家的行话来说）是北欧人还是闪米特人。

这表明这个坐落于米安德尔山口的小小古城在当时是一个著名的世界中心。它的市民（就像今天的纽约）来自各个地方，因此人们凭表面印象来判断他们的邻居，而不会特别注意其家庭背景。

既然本书不是数学史或哲学手册，因此就不必过多地阐述泰勒斯其人了。但需要说明的是，他倾向于对新思想采取宽容的态度。这种宽容的态度曾盛行于爱奥尼亚，当时罗马还是偏远无名地区一条泥泞小河旁的小商镇，犹太人还是亚述人的俘虏，北欧和西欧还是野兽横行之地。

为了了解发展状况，我们必须了解自从希腊首领们渡过爱琴海，掠夺富庶的特洛伊城以来所发生的变化。当时，那些闻名遐迩的英雄仍然是最初级文明的产物，他们就像早熟的孩子，认为生命就是一场漫长而光荣的搏斗，充满了刺激的角斗、赛跑及诸如此类的竞技，而我们自己若不是为生存所迫而埋头苦干的话，也会乐意去做这些的。

这些热血沸腾的武士对待他们的上帝坦率而质朴，就像对待日常生活中的严肃问题一样。住在高大的奥林匹斯山上的诸神在公元前10世纪曾统治着希腊人的世界，他们都是地球上真实的形象，和普通人区别并不大。人和他们的上帝是在何时、何地及如何分道扬镳的，一直是未解之谜。即使如此，高居云端的上帝对拜倒在地面的臣民所怀有的情谊从未间断，并一直保持着亲切而富有个性的色彩，这赋

less hazy point, never clearly established. Even then the friendship which those who lived beyond the clouds had always felt towards their subjects who crawled across the face of the earth had in no way been interrupted and it had remained flavored with those personal and intimate touches which gave the religion of the Greeks its own peculiar charm.

Of course, all good little Greek boys were duly taught that Zeus was a very powerful and mighty potentate with a long beard who upon occasion would juggle so violently with his flashes of lightning and his thunderbolts that it seemed that the world was coming to an end. But as soon as they were a little older and were able to read the ancient sagas for themselves, they began to appreciate the limitations of those terrible personages of whom they had heard so much in their nursery and who now appeared in the light of a merry family-party-everlastingly playing practical jokes upon each other and taking such bitter sides in the political disputes of their mortal friends that every quarrel in Greece was immediately followed by a corresponding row among the denizens of the aether.

Of course in spite of all these very human short-comings, Zeus remained a very great God, the mightiest of all rulers and a personage whom it was not safe to displease. But he was “reasonable” in that sense of the word which is so well understood among the lobbyists of Washington. He was reasonable. He could be approached if one knew the proper way. And best of all, he had a sense of humor and did not take either himself or his world too seriously.

This was perhaps, not the most sublime conception of a divine figure, but it offered certain very distinct advantages. Among the ancient Greeks there never was a hard and fast rule as to what people must hold true and what they must disregard as false. And because there was no “creed” in the modern sense of the word, with adamantine dogmas and a class of professional priests, ready to enforce them with the help of the secular gallows, the people in different parts of the country were able to reshape their religious ideas and ethical conceptions as best suited their own individual tastes.

予了希腊宗教独特的魅力。

当然，所有出身良好的孩子都知道，宙斯是强大而万能的统治者，留着长胡子，偶尔狂暴地使出法力让电闪雷劈时，世界末日似乎就到了。孩子们稍稍长大并能够被自阅读古老的传说时，就开始分析这些可怕神灵的缺陷。他们还在摇篮时就听过这些神灵的故事，而现在这些神灵却出现在愉快的家庭晚会的灯光下——相互间不断地恶作剧，参与尘世朋友的政治争论，因各自不同观点而激烈争吵。因此，希腊尘世的每次争论必然会立即引起天国诸神之间的纷争。

当然，尽管具有人类的这些弱点，宙斯仍然是非常伟大的上帝、最强大的统治者和神灵，冒犯他可不安全。但他还是“通情达理”的，在华盛顿专门对议员进行游说的说客对这个词的含义了解得很清楚。宙斯通情达理，如果方法得当还可以疏通他。最主要的是，他具有幽默感，不把他自己和他的天国太当回事。

也许这并不是对一位神灵的最好评价，但它有着明显的好处。在古希腊，从未有森严的条例要求人们应该把哪些奉为真理，把哪些视为谬误。由于没有现代意义中的“信条”，没有僵化的教条和职业教士阶层（他们靠绞刑架强制推行教条），全国各地的民众都可以根据自己的喜好来修改他们的宗教思想和天国概念。

住在奥林匹斯山咫尺之遥的塞萨利人对自己可敬的邻居（奥林匹斯山诸神）的崇拜，当然远不如住在拉科尼亚湾一个遥远的村子里的阿索庇人。雅典人认为他们有守护神雅典娜的护佑，就可以对这位女神的父亲（宙斯）放肆随便了；而居住在

The Thessalians, who lived within hailing distance of Mount Olympus, showed of course much less respect for their august neighbors than did the Asopians who dwelled in a distant village on the Laconian Gulf. The Athenians, feeling themselves under the direct protection of their own patron saint, Pallas Athene, felt that they could take great liberties with the lady's father, while the Arcadians, whose valleys were far removed from the main trade routes, clung tenaciously to a simpler faith and frowned upon all levity in the serious matter of religion, and as for the inhabitants of Phocis, who made a living from the pilgrims bound for the village of Delphi, they were firmly convinced that Apollo（who was worshiped at that profitable shrine）was the greatest of all divine spirits and deserved the special homage of those who came from afar and still had a couple of drachmas in their pocket.

The belief in only one God which soon afterwards was to set the Jews apart from all other nations, would never have been possible if the life of Judaea had not centered around a single city which was strong enough to destroy all rival places of pilgrimage and was able to maintain an exclusive religious monopoly for almost ten consecutive centuries.

In Greece such a condition did not prevail. Neither Athens nor Sparta ever succeeded in establishing itself as the recognized capital of a united Greek fatherland.Their efforts in this direction only led to long years of unprofitable civil war.

No wonder that a race composed of such sublime individualists offered great scope for the development of a very independent spirit of thought.

The Iliad and the Odyssey have sometimes been called the Bible of the Greeks. They were nothing of the sort. They were just books. They were never united into “The Book.” They told the adventures of certain wonderful heroes who were fondly believed to be the direct ancestors of the generation then living.Incidentally they contained a certain amount of religious information because the Gods, without exception, had taken sides in the

远离通衢大道的山谷中的阿卡德人却固执地坚持更淳朴的信仰，他们对所有轻浮地对待宗教这一严肃问题的人很不满。至于福西斯的居民，他们靠人们对德尔法村的朝圣维持生计，他们坚信阿波罗（这个在有利可图的圣地接受朝拜的天神）是所有天神中最伟大的，理应得到那些不远千里、口袋里还有几个钱的人的特殊崇拜。

如果犹太人不是聚集在一个城市，势力强大到足以击败所有与之竞争的朝圣地，并保持宗教垄断近千年，那么要让人们只信奉唯一的上帝（这一点使犹太人不久就和其他民族区别开来）是不可能的。

在希腊可没有这种条件。雅典和斯巴达都未能使自己成为希腊人公认的首都。他们的努力只导致了徒劳无益的长期内战。

个性如此强悍的民族能为独立思考精神的发展提供广阔的舞台，也就不足为怪了。

《伊利亚特》和《奥德赛》有时被称为“希腊人的圣经”。其实它们和《圣

quarrel and had neglected all other business for the joy of watching the rarest prize fight that had ever been staged within their domain.

The idea, however, that the works of Homer might either directly or indirectly have been inspired by Zeus or Minerva or Apollo never even dawned upon the Greek mind. These were a fine piece of literature and made excellent reading during the long winter evenings.Furthermore they caused children to feel proud of their own race.

And that was all.

In such an atmosphere of intellectual and spiritual freedom, in a city filled with the pungent smell of ships from all the seven seas, rich with fabrics of the Orient, merry with the laughter of a well fed and contented populace, Thales was born. In such a city he worked and taught and in such a city he died. If the conclusions which he reached differed greatly from the opinions held by most of his neighbors, remember that his ideas never penetrated beyond a very limited circle. The average Miletian may have heard the name of Thales, just as the average New Yorker has probably heard the name of Einstein.Ask him who Einstein is, and he will answer that he is a fellow with long hair who smokes a pipe and plays the fiddle and who wrote something about a man walking through a railroad train, about which there once was an article in a Sunday paper.

That this strange person who smokes a pipe and plays the fiddle has got hold of a little spark of truth which eventually may upset（or at least greatly modify）the scientific conclusions of the last sixty centuries, is a matter of profound indifference to the millions of easy-going citizens whose interest in mathematics does not reach beyond the conflict which arises when their favorite batsman tries to upset the law of gravity.

The text-books of ancient history usually get rid of the difficulty by printing “Thales of Miletus（640～546 B.C.., the founder of modern science.” And we can almost see the

经》毫不相干，它们只是书而已，从未被列入“圣经”。书中讲述了某些传奇英雄的冒险，而这些英雄又总被认为是当时希腊人的祖先。它们包含了许多宗教知识，因为天神们都无一例外地在凡人的争吵中各自支持一方，尽情欣赏在自己版图上发生的罕见大厮杀而将其他事情抛诸脑后。

然而，希腊人的脑子里从未想过，荷马的著作是不是在宙斯、米纳瓦和阿波罗的直接或间接启示下才写成的。荷马史诗是光辉的文学篇章，是漫漫冬夜陪伴人们的优秀读物。此外，它们还使孩子们为自己的民族而感到骄傲。

这就是一切。

在这种知识和精神自由的氛围中，在这座弥漫着来自世界各地的船上发出的呛人气味、点缀着富丽堂皇的东方丝织品、洋溢着心满意足的人们的欢笑声的城市，泰勒斯降生了。他在这座城市工作、学习，并在这个城市离开人世。如果他的结论和大多数人的观点分歧很大，我们就不会忘记他的思想会有很大的局限性这一点。一般的米利都人都知道泰勒斯这个人，就像一般的纽约人都听过爱因斯坦的大名一样。如果问他爱因斯坦是谁，他会回答说爱因斯坦是个留着长头发、叼着烟斗、拉着小提琴的家伙，还写过关于一个人穿越火车的故事，这篇文章曾刊登在一家星期日的报纸上。

这个叼着烟斗、拉着小提琴的怪人抓住了真理那微弱的光芒，最终推翻了（至少大大改变了）过去6000年来的科学结论，但它并没有引起千百万慵懒的市民的注意。只有当他们喜欢的击球手试图推翻万有引力而受阻时，这些市民才会对数学感兴趣。

headlines in the “Miletus Gazette” saying, “Local graduate discovers secret of true science.”

But just how and where and when Thales left the beaten track and struck out for himself, I could not possibly tell you. This much is certain, that he did not live in an intellectual vacuum, nor did he develop his wisdom out of his inner consciousness. In the seventh century before Christ, a great deal of the pioneer work in the realm of science had already been done and there was quite a large body of mathematical and physical and astronomical information at the disposal of those intelligent enough to make use of it.

Babylonian star-gazers had searched the heavens.

Egyptian architects had done considerable figuring before they dared to dump a couple of million tons of granite on top of a little burial chamber in the heart of a pyramid.

The mathematicians of the Nile Valley had seriously studied the behavior of the sun that they might predict the wet and dry seasons and give the peasants a calendar by which they could regulate their work on the farms.

All these problems, however, had been solved by people who still regarded the forces of nature as the direct and personal expression of the will of certain invisible Gods who administered the seasons and the course of the planets and the tides of the ocean as the members of the President's cabinet manage the department of agriculture or the post-office or the treasury.

Thales rejected this point of view. But like most well educated people of his day, he did not bother to discuss it in public. If the fruit vendors along the water front wanted to fall upon their faces whenever there was an eclipse of the sun and invoke the name of Zeus in fear of this unusual sight, that was their business and Thales would have been the last man to try to convince them that any schoolboy with an elementary knowledge of the behavior of heavenly bodies would have foretold that on the 25th of May of the year 585 B.C., at

古代历史教科书通常会绕开这个难题，只印上“米利都的泰勒斯（公元前640～546年），现代科学奠基人”。我们似乎也可以看到《米利都报》上的大字标题：“本地毕业生发现了真正科学的秘密。”

但泰勒斯究竟是何时、何地、怎样超越前人的老路并独自探索出新路的，我也不知道。但有一点是可以肯定的：他不是生活在没有知识的真空里，他的智慧也不是从内心想象出来的。公元前7世纪，科学领域的大量探索工作已经展开，有大量数学、物理学和天文学的资料供学者利用。

巴比伦的星象观察家已经在探索天空了。

埃及的建筑师在仔细计算之后，把一些重达百万吨的花岗石放在了金字塔内部小墓室的顶部。

尼罗河谷的数学家认真研究了太阳的运行，可以预测雨季和旱季，为农民提供了使农业耕作规律化的日历。

然而，解答了这些实际问题的人仍然认为，自然界的力量是某些看不见的神灵意志的直接表现。这些神灵掌管季节、星象运行和海潮，就像总统的内阁成员掌管农业部、邮政部或财政部一样。

泰勒斯反对这种观点。但他和同时代大多数受过良好教育的人一样，不愿在公开场合讨论它。如果海边的水果贩子遇到日食而趴倒在地，因害怕这种怪异的景象而祈求宙斯保佑，那是他自己的事。泰勒斯绝不会告诉他们说，任何稍有天体运行知识的学童都会预测到公元前585年5月25日会有日食，此时此刻月亮会位于地球和

such and such an hour, the moon would find herself between the earth and the sun and that therefore the town of Miletus would experience a few minutes of comparative darkness.

Even when it appeared（as it did appear）that the Persians and the Lydians had been engaged in battle on the afternoon of this famous eclipse and had been obliged to cease killing each other for lack of sufficient light, he refused to believe that the Lydian deities（following a famous precedent established a few years previously during a certain battle in the valley of Ajalon）had performed a miracle, and had suddenly turned off the light of Heaven that the victory might go to those whom they favored.

For Thales had reached the point（and that was his great merit）where he dared to regard all nature as the manifestation of one Eternal Will, subject to one Eternal Law and entirely beyond the personal influence of those divine spirits which man was forever creating after his own image. And the eclipse, so he felt, would have taken place just the same if there had been no more important engagement that particular afternoon than a dog fight in the streets of Ephesus or a wedding feast in Halicarnassus.

Drawing the logical conclusions from his own scientific observations, he laid down one general and inevitable law for all creation and guessed（and to a certain extent guessed correctly）that the beginning of all things was to be found in the water which apparently surrounded the world on all sides and which had probably existed from the very beginning of time.

Unfortunately we do not possess anything that Thales himself wrote. It is possible that he may have put his ideas into concrete form（for the Greeks had already learned the alphabet from the Phoenicians）but not a page which can be directly attributed to him survives today. For our knowledge of himself and his ideas we depend upon the scanty bits of information found in the books of some of his contemporaries.From these, however, we

太阳之间，米利都城将会经历几分钟的相对黑暗。

这次著名日食发生（它的确发生过）的下午，波斯人和吕底亚人正在战场上厮杀；由于光线不足，他们停止了相互残杀。但泰勒斯不相信这是吕底亚诸神（效仿几年前在阿迦隆山谷战役中发生的著名先例）创造了奇迹，突然使天国的光芒熄灭，以便让他们支持的一方获胜。

泰勒斯达到了一种境界（这正是他的伟大业绩），那就是他敢于承认一切自然现象都是受永恒法则支配的，是永恒意志的具体体现，绝非人们想象出来的天神的支配所致。他认为，即使那个特殊的下午只有以弗所大街上的狗打架，或在哈利卡纳索斯举办一场婚宴，而没有更重大的事情发生，日食照样会出现。

通过自己的科学观察，泰勒斯得出了一个符合逻辑的结论。他推测（从某种程度上讲是正确的）万物皆起源于从四面八方包围这个世界并自创世之初就与世共存的水。

不幸的是，我们没有任何泰勒斯自己写的东西。他可能将他的思想写成作品

have learned that Thales in private life was a merchant with wide connections in all parts of the Mediterranean.That, by the way, was typical of most of the early philosophers. They were “lovers of wisdom.” But they never closed their eyes to the fact that the secret of life is found among the living and that “wisdom for the sake of wisdom” is quite as dangerous as “art for art's sake” or a dinner for the sake of the food.

To them, man with all his human qualities, good and bad and indifferent, was the supreme measure of all things. Wherefore they spent their leisure time patiently studying this strange creature as he was and not as they thought that he ought to be.

This made it possible for them to remain on the most amicable terms with their fellow citizens and allowed them to wield a much greater power than if they had undertaken to show their neighbors a short cut to the Millennium.

They rarely laid down a hard and fast rule of conduct.

But by their own example they managed to show how a true understanding of the forces of nature must inevitably lead to that inner peace of the soul upon which all true happiness depends and having in this way gained the good-will of their community they were given full liberty to study and explore and investigate and were even permitted to venture within, those domains which were popularly believed to be the exclusive property of the Gods. And as one of the pioneers of this new gospel did Thales spend the long years of his useful career.

Although he had pulled the entire world of the Greeks apart, although he had examined each little piece separately, and had openly questioned all sorts of things which the majority of the people since the beginning of time had held to be established facts, he was allowed to die peacefully in his own bed, and if any one ever called him to account for his heresies, we fail to have record of the fact.

And once he had shown the way, there were many others eager to follow.

（因为希腊人已经从腓尼基人那里学会了字母），但他的文稿一点都没有保存下来。我们对他和他的思想的了解，全仰仗从他同时代人的书中找到的些许资料。然而，就靠这些资料，我们了解到泰勒斯是个商人，和地中海各地区的人有过广泛接触。顺便说一句，这是早期大多数哲学家的一大特征。他们是“智慧的恋人”。但他们从不忽视这一事实：生活的秘密就在生命中，并认为“为智慧而寻求智慧”的观点和“为艺术而艺术”“为食物而吃饭”一样极其危险。

在他们看来，世上各色人等好坏参差不齐，是衡量世间万物的最高标准。因此，他们在空闲时，会耐心地按人的本来面目去研究人这个奇怪的生物，而不是凭想象去研究。

这使他们能和周围的人相处融洽，而且远比让他们向人们指出通往太平盛世的捷径更有影响力。

他们极少提出限制人们行为的森严的清规戒律。

但他们以自己的榜样作用向人们表明，一旦真正理解了自然界的力量，就必然会获得灵魂深处（一切幸福都寄托于此）的安宁。以这种方式获得周围人的好感之后，他们便有了充分的自由去研究、探索和调查，甚至深入到一般被认为只有上帝才有权掌管的领域探险。作为这个新福音的先驱之一，泰勒斯把他有益的一生长期献给了这项事业。

尽管他分解了整个希腊世界，分别考查了每一个细小部分，并公开质疑自古以来大多数人认为天经地义的事情，但人们还是允许他在床上寿终正寝。即便有人曾

There was, for example, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, who left Asia Minor for Athens at the age of thirty-six and spent the following years as a “sophist” or private tutor in different Greek cities. He specialized in astronomy and among other things he taught that the sun was not a heavenly chariot, driven by a God, as was generally believed, but a red-hot ball of fire, thousands and thousands of times larger than the whole of Greece.

When nothing happened to him, when no bolt from Heaven killed him for his audacity, he went a little further in his theories and stated boldly that the moon was covered with mountains and valleys and finally he even hinted at a certain “original matter” which was the beginning and the end of all things and which had existed from the very beginning of time.

But here, as many other scientists after him were to discover, he trod upon dangerous ground, for he discussed something with which people were familiar. The sun and the moon were distant orbs. The average Greek did not care what names the philosopher wished to call them. But when the professor began to argue that all things had gradually grown and developed out of a vague substance called “original matter”—then he went decidedly too far.Such an assertion was in flat contradiction with the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha, who after the great flood had re-populated the world by turning bits of stone into men and women.To deny the truth of a most solemn tale which all little Greek boys and girls had been taught in their early childhood was most dangerous to the safety of established society. It would make the children doubt the wisdom of their elders and that would never do. Hence Anaxagoras was made the subject of a formidable attack on the part of the Athenian Parents'League.

During the monarchy and the early days of the republic, the rulers of the city would have been more than able to protect a teacher of unpopular doctrines from the foolish hostility of the illiterate Attic peasants. But Athens by this time had become a full-fledged democracy and the freedom of the individual was no longer what it used to be.

让他对自己的异端邪说进行解释，我们也无据可查了。

一旦泰勒斯指明了方向，就有许多人热切地追随其后。

例如，克拉佐梅尼的阿那克萨哥拉在36岁时离开小亚细亚来到雅典，后来以“诡辩家”的身份度过余生，还在希腊几座城市当过私人教师。他专攻天文。他告诉学生，太阳不是人们通常认为的由天神驾驭的马车，而是一个又红又烫的火球，比整个希腊要大几千万倍。

结果什么事情都没有发生，天庭也没有因为他的放肆言论而用雷电劈死他。他在理论上又推进了一步，大胆提出，月亮表面被山脉和山谷覆盖着；最后他甚至暗示，自从开天辟地以来，就存在某种“源物”，它是万物的起源和归宿。

但是，正如他之后的其他科学家发现的那样，他进入了一个危险领域，因为他讨论的正是人们熟悉的事情。太阳和月亮太远了，平民百姓并不在乎哲学家如何称呼它们。但当这位教授开始提出世间万物都是从一个叫“源物”的原始物质中逐渐成长发展起来的时候，他就有点显得太过分了。这种论断和天神丢卡利翁和皮拉的故事完全背离——是天神在大洪水后用小石子变成了无数男女，让这个世界重新人丁兴旺起来。所有希腊孩子在童年时代就听过这个故事，因此否认这个无比庄重的故事的真实性，对现存社会的安全造成威胁。它还会让孩子们怀疑长辈的智慧，这绝对不行。于是，阿那克萨哥拉成了雅典父母同盟猛烈攻击的目标。

在君主制和共和制早期，城邦统治者或许有足够的力量保护一个宣扬不受欢迎的教义的老师，使其免受古雅典无知农民的愚蠢迫害。但此时的雅典民主制已发展

Furthermore, Pericles, just then in disgrace with the majority of the people, was himself a favorite pupil of the great astronomer, and the legal prosecution of Anaxagoras was welcomed as an excellent political move against the city's old dictator.

A priest by the name of Diopheites, who also was a ward-leader in one of the most densely populated suburbs, got a law passed which demanded “the immediate prosecution of all those who disbelieved in the established religion or held theories of their own about certain divine things.” Under this law, Anaxagoras was actually thrown into prison. Finally, however, the better elements in the city prevailed.Anaxagoras was allowed to go free after the payment of a small fine and move to Lampsacus in Asia Minor where he died, full of years and honor, in the year 428 B.C.

His case shows how little is ever accomplished by the official suppression of scientific theories. For although Anaxagoras was forced to leave Athens, his ideas remained behind and two centuries later they came to the notice of one Aristotle, who in turn used them as a basis for many of his own scientific speculations.Reaching merrily across a thousand years of darkness, he handed them on to one Abul-Walid Muhammad ibn-Ahmad（commonly known as Averroёs., the great Arab physician who in turn popularized them among the students of the Moorish universities of southern Spain.Then, together with his own observations, he wrote them down in a number of books.These were duly carried across the Pyrenees until they reached the universities of Paris and Boulogne.There they were translated into Latin and French and English and so thoroughly were they accepted by the people of western and northern Europe that today they have become an integral part of every

到了极致，个性自由早已今非昔比。况且当时受大多数人鄙视的伯里克利[2]正是这位伟大天文学家的得意弟子，因此对阿那克萨哥拉的依法治罪受到了人们的欢迎，人们借此掀起了一场反对城邦旧独裁者的声势浩大的政治运动。

一个名叫奥菲特斯的教士（他在一个人口最稠密的郊区当行政长官）使一条法律获得了批准，该法律要求“对一切不相信现存宗教者或对一切神明坚持己见者立即治罪”。根据这条法律，阿那克萨哥拉真的被关入了大牢。但城市的开明势力最终占了上风，阿那克萨哥拉交了很小一笔罚款之后获释，并迁居到小亚细亚的朗萨库斯，在那里活了很长时间，名同皓月，直到公元前428年与世长辞。

他的例子表明，官方压制科学理论只会一无所获。因为阿那克萨哥拉虽然被迫离开了雅典，但他的思想留给了后世；而且在两个世纪之后，引起了一个叫亚里士多德的人的注意，并将它作为他的科学假设的基础。在经过千年的漫长黑暗之后，亚里士多德的思想又传给了伊本-艾默德（通常以阿威罗伊的名字而为人所知）。

primer of science and are considered as harmless as the tables of multiplication.

But to return to Anaxagoras. For almost an entire generation after his trial, Greek scientists were allowed to teach doctrines which were at variance with popular belief. And then, during the last years of the fifth century, a second case took place.

The victim this time was a certain Protagoras, a wandering teacher who hailed from the village of Abdera, an Ionian colony in northern Greece. This spot already enjoyed a doubtful reputation as the birthplace of Democritus, the original “laughing philosopher,” who had laid down the law that “only that society is worth while which offers to the largest number of people the greatest amount of happiness obtainable with the smallest amount of pain,” and who therefore was regarded as a good deal of a radical and a fellow who should be under constant police supervision.

Protagoras, deeply impressed by this doctrine, went to Athens and there, after many years of study, proclaimed that man was the measure of all things, that life was too short to waste valuable time upon an inquiry into the doubtful existence of any Gods, and that all energies ought to be used for the purpose of making existence more beautiful and more thoroughly enjoyable.

This statement, of course, went to the very root of the matter and it was bound to shock the faithful more than anything that had ever been written or said. Furthermore it was made during a very serious crisis in the war between Athens and Sparta and the people, after a long series of defeats and pestilence, were in a state of utter despair.Most evidently it was not the right moment to incur the wrath of the Gods by an inquiry into the scope of their supernatural powers.Protagoras was accused of atheism, of “godlessness,” and was told to submit his doctrines to the courts.

Pericles, who could have protected him, was dead and Protagoras, although a scientist, felt little taste for martyrdom.

这是一位伟大的阿拉伯医学家，他在西班牙南部摩尔大学的学生中大力传播亚里士多德的思想。然后，他结合自己的观察，将它们写成了许多著作。这些书被及时运过比利牛斯山，一直送到巴黎大学和布伦大学。在那里，它们被译成拉丁文、法文和英文，西欧人和北欧人全盘接受了这些思想，以至于今天它们成了科学入门书的一个必要组成部分，被认为和乘法口诀表一样无害。

回到阿那克萨哥拉身上来。在他受审以后经过了几乎整整一代人的时间，希腊科学家获准教授与民众信仰有所分歧的学说。到公元前五世纪末，又发生了第二件事。

这次的受害者是普罗塔哥拉，他是个流浪教师，来自希腊北部殖民地爱奥尼亚的阿布德拉村。该地已因作为德谟克利特的出生地而声誉不佳。德谟克利特是最富创见的“微笑哲学家”，他提出了一条法则：“一个社会只有以最小的代价给绝大多数人提供最大的幸福，才是有价值的。”结果被视为激进分子，应该交给警察持续看管。

普罗塔哥拉深受这一思想的影响。他来到雅典，在那里经过几年研究，便宣称：人是衡量万物的准绳，生命太短暂了，不应耗费宝贵的时间去探讨神灵是否存在的问题，而应将全部精力用于创造更美好、更愉快的生活。

这一论述当然直奔问题的根本，肯定比以往任何文字或言论都更能动摇人们的信仰。何况这一理论是在雅典和斯巴达的战争处于关键时刻提出来的，人们长期遭受失败和疾病的折磨，已经陷入了极度的绝望。很显然，这时因质疑上帝的超凡能

He fled.

Unfortunately, on the way to Sicily, his ship was wrecked, and it seems that he was drowned, for we never hear of him again.

As for Diagoras, another victim of Athenian malevolence, he was really not a philosopher at all but a young writer who harbored a personal grudge against the Gods because they had once failed to give him their support in a law-suit. He brooded so long upon his supposed grievance that finally his mind became affected and he went about saying all sorts of blasphemous things about the Holy Mysteries which just then enjoyed great popularity among the people of northern Hellas. For this unseemly conduct he was condemned to death. But ere the sentence was executed, the poor devil was given the opportunity to escape. He went to Corinth, continued to revile his Olympian enemies, and peacefully died of his own bad temper.

And this brings us at last to the most notorious and the most famous case of Greek intolerance of which we possess any record, the judicial murder of Socrates.

When it is sometimes stated that the world has not changed at all and that the Athenians were no more broadminded than the people of later times, the name of Socrates is dragged into the debate as a terrible example of Greek bigotry. But today, after a very exhaustive study of the case, we know better and the long and undisturbed career of this brilliant but exasperating soap-box orator is a direct tribute to the spirit of intellectual liberty which prevailed throughout ancient Greece in the fifth century before our era.

For Socrates, at a time when the common people still firmly believed in a large number of divine beings, made himself the prophet of an only God. And although the Athenians may not always have known what he meant when he spoke of his “daemon”（that inner voice of divine inspiration which told him what to do and say., they were fully aware of

力而激怒上帝实在不是时候。普罗塔哥拉被指控为无神论者，被勒令屈服于法庭。

伯里克利本来可以保护他，但已不在人世。普罗塔哥拉尽管是科学家，却对殉道毫无兴趣。

他逃走了。

不幸的是，在前往西西里的路途中，他的船就失事了。他可能淹死了，因为再也没有他的消息。

至于迪亚哥拉斯（另一个遭到雅典人恶毒迫害的人），其实并不是哲学家，而是一个青年作家。由于神灵在一次官司中没有帮助他，他就把个人怨恨全都倾泻在他们身上。他长时间为自己假想的冤情沉思苦想，最终思想发生变化。他四处奔走，说着各种亵渎的语言，诽谤当时在希腊北部人中间深受敬仰的“神圣玄机”。由于这种不理智行为，他被判处死刑。但在临刑前，这个可怜虫得到机会逃跑了。他来到科林斯，继续诅咒他在奥林匹斯的敌人，终因脾气暴躁而一命呜呼。

我们最终看到了希腊人最臭名昭著、最著名的专制的例子。这就是对苏格拉底的死刑判决。对此我们有记载。

只要谈及世界依然没有改变，谈及雅典人的心胸和后人一样狭隘，人们必然会说出苏格拉底的名字，以此作为希腊人冥顽不化的可怕例证。但是今天经过对这个案例详尽的研究之后，我们了解得更多了。这位富有才华却又令人讨厌的街头演说家平凡的一生，对公元前5世纪盛行于古希腊的自由精神做出了直接贡献。

在普通百姓仍然坚信有许多天神的时代，苏格拉底把自己说成是某位神灵的

his very unorthodox attitude towards those ideals which most of his neighbors continued to hold in holy veneration and his utter lack of respect for the established order of things. In the end, however, politics killed the old man and theology（although dragged in for the benefit of the crowd）had really very little to do with the outcome of the trial.

Socrates was the son of a stone-cutter who had many children and little money. The boy therefore had never been able to pay for a regular college course, for most of the philosophers were practical fellows and often charged as much as two thousand dollars for a single course of instruction.Besides, the pursuit of pure knowledge and the study of useless scientific facts seemed to young Socrates a mere waste of time and energy.Provided a person cultivated his conscience, so he reasoned, he could well do without geometry and a knowledge of the true nature of comets and planets was not necessary for the salvation of the soul.

All the same, the homely little fellow with the broken nose and the shabby cloak, who spent his days arguing with the loafers on the corner of the street and his nights listening to the harangues of his wife（who was obliged to provide for a large family by taking in washing, as her husband regarded the gaining of a livelihood as an entirely negligible detail of existence., this honorable veteran of many wars and expeditions and ex-member of the Athenian senate was chosen among all the many teachers of his day to suffer for his opinions.

In order to understand how this happened, we must know something about the politics of Athens in the days when Socrates rendered his painful but highly useful service to the cause of human intelligence and progress.

All his life long（and he was past seventy when he was executed）Socrates tried to show his neighbors that they were wasting their opportunities; that they were living hollow and shallow lives; that they devoted entirely too much time to empty pleasures and

先知。尽管雅典人并不能完全理解他所谓的“精灵”（即告诉他该说什么和做什么的内心神灵的声音）意味着什么，但他们完全能注意到他对邻居们奉若神明的思想观念是持完全否定态度的，对既有习俗也极其不尊重。最后，当政者杀死了这位老人，而他的神学观点（尽管这种观点被牵强附会地用来说服民众）和审判结果实际上毫无关系。

苏格拉底是石匠的儿子。他父亲的子女很多，但收入微薄，因此苏格拉底没有钱进正规大学读书，因为当时的哲学家大都很现实，教单独一门课程经常要价不菲。此外，对年轻的苏格拉底来说，追求纯粹的知识、研究没用的科学现象只是浪费时间和精力。在他看来，一个人只要善于培植自己的良心，那么即便不懂几何学也会做得很好，了解彗星和行星的自然现象对于拯救灵魂来说也不是必要的。

然而，这个长着塌鼻梁、衣着邋遢的朴实的小个子，白天在街上和无业游民争论不休，晚上则在家听着妻子训斥（她为了养活一大家人而被迫给别人浆洗缝补，可是她丈夫却把谋生视为可以完全忽略的生存细节）；这个曾参加过多次战争和远征的受人尊敬的老兵；这个雅典元老院的前议

vain triumphs and almost invariably squandered the divine gifts with which a great and mysterious God had endowed them for the sake of a few hours of futile glory and self-satisfaction. And so thoroughly convinced was he of man's high destiny that he broke through the bounds of all old philosophies and went even farther than Protagoras. For whereas the latter had taught that “man is the measure of all things,” Socrates preached that “man's invisible conscience is（or ought to be）the ultimate measure of all things and that it is not the Gods but we ourselves who shape our destiny.”

The speech which Socrates made before the judges who were to decide his fate（there were five hundred of them to be precise and they had been so carefully chosen by his political enemies that some of them could actually read and write）was one of the most delightful bits of commonsense ever addressed to any audience, sympathetic or otherwise.

“No person on earth,” so the philosopher argued, “has the right to tell another man what he should believe or to deprive him of the right to think as he pleases,” and further, “Provided that man remain on good terms with his own conscience, he can well do without the approbation of his friends, without money, without a family or even a home. But as no one can possibly reach the right conclusions without a thorough examination of all the pros and cons of every problem, people must be given a chance to discuss all questions with complete freedom and without interference on the part of the authorities.”

Unfortunately for the accused, this was exactly the wrong statement at the wrong moment. Ever since the Peloponnesian war there had been a bitter struggle in Athens between the rich and the poor, between capital and labor.Socrates was a “moderate”—a liberal who saw good and evil in both systems of government and who tried to find a compromise which should satisfy all reasonable people.This, of course, had made him thoroughly unpopular with both sides but thus far they had been too evenly balanced to

员，却被从当时众多的教师中选出来，为了他的信仰而接受惩罚。

为了了解事情的经过，我们必须知道苏格拉底为了人类的进步事业而做出痛苦的牺牲（他后来被认为做出了极其有益的贡献）时，雅典的政治状况。

终其一生（苏格拉底被处死时已年逾七旬），苏格拉底都在试图告诉世人：他们正在浪费机会，他们的生活毫无意义，把过多的时间耗费在空洞的欢乐和虚无的胜利上，为了几小时的虚荣和自满而一味地挥霍伟大而神圣的上帝赐予的礼物。他完全相信人的崇高命运，这就彻底打破了一切旧哲学的藩篱，甚至比普罗塔哥拉走得还远。因为后者只是说：“人是衡量万物的准绳。”苏格拉底却宣称：“人的无形意识是（或应该是）万物的最终准绳；不是上帝，而是我们自己塑造了我们的命运。”

苏格拉底在那些法官面前的演讲（准确地说有500名法官，他们是苏格拉底的政敌精心挑选出来的，他们中有些人还会读书写字），对任何听众来说，都是最鼓舞人心的话语，而不论他们对此是持什么态度。

这位哲学家辩论说：“世界上没有人有权力告诉别人应该信仰什么，或剥夺别人自由思考。”他还说：“只要那个人有良知，那么即使没有朋友的赞同，没有金钱，没有妻小，甚至没有家庭，他也会成功。但若不彻底研究每个问题的来龙去脉，任何人都不可能得出正确的结论。因此人们必须有讨论所有问题的完全的自由，而且不受官方干涉。”

对苏格拉底这个被告来说，他不幸在错误的时间阐述了错误的论断。自从伯罗奔尼撒战争之后，在雅典富人与穷人、主人与仆人之间关系极度紧张。苏格拉底是

take action against him.

When at last in the year 403 B. C.the one-hundred-percent Democrats gained complete control of the state and expelled the aristocrats, Socrates was a doomed man.

His friends knew this. They suggested that he leave the city before it was too late and this would have been a very wise thing to do.

For Socrates had quite as many enemies as friends. During the greater part of a century he had been a sort of vocal “columnist,” a terribly clever busy-body who had made it his hobby to expose the shams and the intellectual swindles of those who regarded themselves as the pillars of Athenian society.As a result, every one had come to know him. His name had become a household word throughout eastern Greece.When he said something funny in the morning, by night the whole town had heard about it.Plays had been written about him and when he was finally arrested and taken to prison there was not a citizen in the whole of Attica who was not thoroughly familiar with all the details of his career.

Those who took the leading part in the actual trial（like that honorable grain merchant who could neither read nor write but who knew all about the will of the Gods and therefore was loudest in his accusations）were undoubtedly convinced that they were rendering a great service to the community by ridding the city of a highly dangerous member of the so-called “intelligentsia,” a man whose teaching could only lead to laziness and crime and discontent among the slaves.

It is rather amusing to remember that even under those circumstances, Socrates pleaded his case with such tremendous virtuosity that a majority of the jury was all for letting him go free and suggested that he might be pardoned if only he would give up this terrible habit of arguing, of debating, of wrangling and moralizing, in short, if only he would leave his neighbors and their pet prejudices in peace and not bother them with his eternal doubts.

个“温和分子”——一个既看到两种政权体系的利弊，又力图找到折中方案以满足所有理智人士的自由主义者。这当然让他在双方都不受欢迎，但他们那时候势均力敌而顾不上对付他。

终于到了公元前403年，彻头彻尾的民主派完全控制了国家，赶走了贵族，苏格拉底就难逃厄运了。

他的朋友知道了这事。他们建议他最好离开这座城市，不要太晚了，而且这样做是很明智的。

苏格拉底的敌人和朋友一样多。在大半个世纪里，他一直是个“口头评论家”，一个绝顶聪明的大忙人，以揭穿那些将自己标榜为雅典社会支柱的人的伪装和思想骗术为嗜好。结果，他的大名在整个希腊东部家喻户晓。他上午说的趣事，到晚上全城就都知道了。有人写了关于他的戏剧。当他最终被捕入狱时，整个雅典没有一人不对他一生的各个细节极其熟悉。

在实际审判中占主角的人（如那个既不会读又不会写，只因为知道上帝各项旨意，因此在起诉中最卖力的可敬的粮贩子），深信他们是在为社会做出伟大贡献，是在为城市除掉一个所谓“知识界”高度危险的人，一个其学说只能让奴隶学会懒惰、犯罪和不满的人。

非常有趣的是，即使在这种情况下，苏格拉底仍以精湛的口才为自己辩护，竟使得陪审团绝大多数人倾向于释放他，并且提出只要苏格拉底放弃辩论、争吵、说教的可怕习惯——简言之，只要他不再干涉别人，不再用他那无止境的疑问去打搅

But Socrates would not hear of it.

“By no means,” he exclaimed.“As long as my conscience, as long as the still small voice within me, bids me go forth and show men the true road to reason, I shall continue to buttonhole whomsoever I happen to meet and I shall say what is on my mind, regardless of consequences.”

After that, there was no other course but to condemn the prisoner to death.

Socrates was given a respite of thirty days. The holy ship which made an annual pilgrimage to Delos had not yet returned from its voyage and until then, the Athenian law did not allow any executions. The whole of this month the old man spent quietly in his cell, trying to improve his system of logic.Although he was repeatedly given the opportunity to escape, he refused to go. He had lived his life and had done his duty. He was tired and ready to depart.Until the hour of his execution he continued to talk with his friends, trying to educate them in what he held to be right and true, asking them to turn their minds upon the things of the spirit rather than those of the material world.

Then he drank the beaker of hemlock, laid himself upon his couch and settled all further argument by sleep everlasting.

For a short time, his disciples, rather terrified by this terrible outburst of popular wrath, thought it wise to remove themselves from the scene of their former activities.

But when nothing happened, they returned and resumed their former occupation as public teachers, and within a dozen years after the death of the old philosopher, his ideas were more popular than ever.

The city meanwhile had gone through a very difficult period. It was five years since the struggle for the leadership of the Greek peninsula had ended with the defeat of Athens and the ultimate victory of the Spartans. This had been a complete triumph of brawn over brain.Needless to say that it did not last very long. The Spartans, who never wrote a line

他们，他就可以被赦免。

但苏格拉底不听这一套。

“没门儿！”他喊道，“只要我的良心和我体内微弱的心声，还在推动我前进，给人们指明通向理智的道路，我就要继续拉住我遇见的每一个人，说出我内心的想法，不论后果怎样。”

既然这样，就没有别的办法，只能判处这个囚犯死刑。

苏格拉底被缓刑30天。每年一度去朝拜戴洛斯的圣船还没有返航，雅典法律规定期间不准行刑。这位老人在单人牢房里安静地待了整整一个月，努力改进他的逻辑体系。虽然人们给了他多次逃跑的机会，但他都拒绝了。他已经尽了自己的职责，不枉此生。他累了，准备走了。直到行刑之际，他还在和朋友们谈话，用自己追求的真理教导他们，要求他们多考虑精神世界，而不是物质世界。

然后，他喝下毒药，躺在床上，让所有争论都随着他的长眠而宣告结束。

苏格拉底的门徒曾一度被公众可怕的愤怒吓坏了，觉得离开他们过去的活动场所不失为明智之举。

但什么都没发生，他们又回来了，重操旧业公开讲学。在这位老哲学家死后的

worth remembering or contributed a single idea to the sum total of human knowledge（with the exception of certain military tactics which survive in our modern game of football）thought that they had accomplished their task when the walls of their rival had been pulled down and the Athenian fleet had been reduced to a dozen ships. But the Athenian mind had lost none of its shrewd brilliancy. A decade after the end of the Peloponnesian war, the old harbor of the Piraeus was once more filled with ships from all parts of the world and Athenian admirals were again fighting at the head of the allied Greek navies.

Furthermore, the labor of Pericles, although not appreciated by his own contemporaries, had made the city the intellectual capital of the world—the Paris of the fourth century before the birth of Christ. Whosoever in Rome or Spain or Africa was rich enough to give his sons a fashionable education, felt flattered if the boys were allowed to visit a school situated within the shadow of the Acropolis.

For this ancient world, which we modern, people find so difficult to understand properly, took the problem of existence seriously.

Under the influence of the early Christian enemies of pagan civilization, the impression has gained ground that the average Roman or Greek was a highly immoral person who paid a shallow homage to certain nebulous Gods and for the rest spent his waking hours eating enormous dinners, drinking vast bumpers of Salernian wine and listening to the pretty prattle of Egyptian dancing girls, unless for a change he went to war and slaughtered innocent Germans and Franks and Dacians for the pure sport of shedding blood.

Of course, both in Greece and even more so in Rome, there were a great many merchants and war contractors who had accumulated their millions without much regard for those ethical principles which Socrates had so well defined before his judges. Because these people were very wealthy, they had to be put up with.This, however, did not mean that they

10多年里，他的思想比以前更受欢迎了。

与此同时，雅典经历了一段非常困难的时期。争夺希腊半岛领导权的战争已经五年了，战争以雅典人失败而斯巴达人最后获胜告终。这是一场体力战胜智力的胜利。不用说这是难以持久的。斯巴达人从未写过一句值得记住的话，也没有对人类的文化发展有过任何贡献（除了一些军事战术，它们保留在了我们当今的足球比赛中）。他们认为自己已经大功告成，因为对手的围墙被推倒了，雅典舰队也大大减少了。但雅典人丝毫没有丧失敏捷的才华。伯罗奔尼撒战争结束10年之后，古老的比雷埃夫斯港重新聚集了世界各地的船只，雅典海军将领在希腊联合舰队中再次冲锋在前。

何况伯里克利的努力虽然没有得到赏识，却使雅典成为世界文化的中心——正如公元前4世纪的巴黎一样。不管是罗马、西班牙或非洲的富人，只要想让他的孩子接受时髦的教育，那么即使孩子只被允许参观卫城附近的学校，家长也会飘飘然的。

我们现代人要正确理解古代社会非常困难，但那时候生存问题被看得很重要。

在异教文明早期基督教敌人的影响下，罗马人和希腊人被视为极其不道德的人。他们肤浅地崇拜一些古怪的神灵，剩下来的清醒时间就大吃大喝、暴餮天物，欣赏埃及舞女的妙歌曼舞；有时纯粹为了嗜血的乐趣，他们还出去打打仗，屠杀无辜的日耳曼人、法兰克人和达西雅人。

当然，希腊和罗马都有大量的商人和战争贩子（罗马甚至更多）。这些人积攒了百万财富，完全不顾苏格拉底在法官面前精辟阐述的伦理道德。因为这些人非常

enjoyed the respect of the community or were regarded as commendable representatives of the civilization of their day.

We dig up the villa of Epaphroditus, who amassed millions as one of the gang who helped Nero plunder Rome and her colonies. We look at the ruins of the forty room palace which the old profiteer built out of his ill-gotten gains. And we shake our heads and say, “What depravity!”

Then we sit down and read the works of Epictetus, who was one of the house slaves of the old scoundrel, and we find ourselves in the company of a spirit as lofty and as exalted as ever lived.

I know that the making of generalizations about our neighbors and about other nations is one of the most popular of indoor sports, but let us not forget that Epictetus, the philosopher, was quite as truly a representative of the time in which he lived as Epaphroditus, the imperial flunkey, and that the desire for holiness was as great twenty centuries ago as it is today.

Undoubtedly it was a very different sort of holiness from that which is practiced today. It was the product of an essentially European brain and had nothing to do with the Orient. But the “barbarians” who established it as their ideal of what they held to be most noble and desirable were our own ancestors, and they were slowly developing a philosophy of life which was highly successful if we agree that a clear conscience and a simple, straightforward life, together with good health and a moderate but sufficient income, are the best guarantee for general happiness and contentment. The future of the soul did not interest these people overmuch. They accepted the fact that they were a special sort of mammal which by reason of its intellectual application had risen high above the other creatures which crawled upon this earth. If they frequently referred to

富有，人们才被迫接受他们。但这并不等于他们拥有社会的尊重，或者被认为是当时值得赞扬的文化代表。

我们挖掘了埃帕菲罗迪特的别墅。作为帮助尼禄洗劫罗马及其殖民地的歹徒之一，这个人大发了横财。我们看着这个老投机商用不义之财建起来的有40间房屋的宫殿废墟，摇头叹道：“多么腐败啊！”

然后，我们坐下来，读爱比克泰德[3]（他曾是埃帕菲罗迪特这个老恶棍的家奴）的著作，我们会发现自己在和人类最崇高的灵魂对话。

我知道，人们最喜欢在背后评论自己的邻居或邻国，但我们不要忘记，哲学家爱比克泰德是他所生活的那个时代的真正代表，正如埃帕菲罗迪特这个朝廷走狗也具有其代表性一样；而且2000年前人们追求尽善尽美的欲望和今天一样强烈。

毫无疑问，那是一种与今天迥然不同的尽善尽美，是一种基本上欧化的产物，和东方社会毫不相干。但那些建立了自己的理想并把它作为最崇高目标的“野蛮人”正是我们的祖先，他们慢慢发展出了一种生活哲学。如果我们赞同纯正的良心、简朴的生活，再加上健康的身体和适度而充足的收入是幸福和满足的最好保障的话，那么这种哲学就会被广为接受。这些人不会对灵魂的归宿很感兴趣，他们只是接受这样一个事实：自己是有文化的特殊动物，高居地球上的其他生物之上。他们常常谈到上帝，就像我们今天使用“原子”“电子”或“乙醚”等词一样。万物

the Gods, they used the word as we use “atoms” or “electrons” or “aether.” The beginning of things has got to have a name, but Zeus in the mouth of Epictetus was as problematical a value as x or y in the problems of Euclid and meant just as much or as little.

Life it was which interested those men and next to living, art.

Life, therefore, in all its endless varieties, they studied and following the method of reasoning which Socrates had originated and made popular, they achieved some very remarkable results.

That sometimes in their zeal for a perfect spiritual world they went to absurd extremes was regrettable, but no more than human. But Plato is the only one among all the teachers of antiquity who from sheer love for a perfect world ever came to preach a doctrine of intolerance.

This young Athenian, as is well known, was the beloved disciple of Socrates and became his literary executor.

In this capacity he immediately gathered all that Socrates had ever said or thought into a series of dialogues which might be truthfully called the Socratian Gospels.

When this had been done, he began to elaborate certain of the more obscure points in his master's doctrines and explained them in a series of brilliant essays. And finally he conducted a number of lecture courses which spread the Athenian ideas of justice and righteousness far beyond the confines of Attica.

In all these activities he showed such whole-hearted and unselfish devotion that we might almost compare him to St. Paul. But whereas St.Paul had led a most adventurous and dangerous existence, ever traveling from north to south and from west to east that he might bring the Good Tidings to all parts of the Mediterranean world, Plato never budged from his comfortable garden chair and allowed the world to come to him.

之源必须有一个名称，因此爱比克泰德口中的宙斯只是一切疑难问题的代号，就像欧几里得数学题中的X和Y，既可以含义很广，也可以很小。

那些人最感兴趣的是生活，仅次于生活的是艺术。

因此，他们研究包罗万象的生活，并遵循由苏格拉底创造并普及的推理方法，取得了优异的成绩。

他们有时因为追求完美的精神世界而走到荒唐的极端，这不免令人遗憾。但人无完人。不过，柏拉图是古代众多学者中唯一因对完美世界的挚爱而走向鼓吹不宽容教义人。

正如人们知道的那样，这个年轻的雅典人是苏格拉底的得意门生，也是他的思想的记录者。

他利用这一优势，随时将苏格拉底曾说过或想过的一切编成对话，这些完全可以被称为《苏格拉底福音书》。

完成这项工作之后，他开始详尽阐释老师的理论中比较深奥难解的观点，并写

Certain advantages of birth and the possession of independent wealth allowed him to do this.

In the first place he was an Athenian citizen and through his mother could trace his descent to no one less than Solon. Then as soon as he came of age he inherited a fortune more than sufficient for his simple needs.

And finally, his eloquence was such that people willingly traveled to the Aegean Sea if only they were allowed to follow a few of the lectures in the Platonic University.

For the rest, Plato was very much like the other young men of his time. He served in the army, but without any particular interest in military affairs. He went in for outdoor sports, became a good wrestler, a fairly good runner, but never achieved any particular fame in the stadium.Again, like most young men of his time, he spent a great deal of his time in foreign travel and crossed the Aegean Sea and paid a short visit to northern Egypt, as his famous grandfather Solon had done before him.After that, however, he returned home for good and during fifty consecutive years he quietly taught his doctrines in the shadowy corners of a pleasure garden which was situated on the banks of the river Cephissus in the suburbs of Athens and was called the Academy.

He had begun his career as a mathematician, but gradually he switched over to politics and in this field he laid the foundations for our modern school of government. He was at heart a confirmed optimist and believed in a steady process of human evolution. The life of man, so he taught, rises slowly from a lower plane to a higher one.From beautiful bodies, the world proceeds to beautiful institutions and from beautiful

了一系列才华横溢的文章来解释它们。最后他开了许多演讲课，将雅典人关于公正和正义的理想传播到了雅典以外的世界。

他在所有这些活动中表现出来的全力以赴和无私奉献精神，我们几乎可以将他和圣徒保罗相媲美。但圣徒保罗过着极其漂泊的日子，不停地从北到南、从西到东，把上帝的福音带到地中海各个地区；而柏拉图从未离开过他舒适花园的座椅，他让全世界都来向他请教。

良好的家世和足以使其独立的财产，让他能做到这点。

首先，他是雅典公民，从他母亲的血统可以直接追溯到梭伦[4]。其次，他一到法定年龄就继承了一笔足以过上优裕生活的财产。

最后，他口才非常出众，以至于那些获准在柏拉图大学哪怕只听他讲过几次课的人都情愿长途跋涉来到爱琴海。

至于其他方面，柏拉图和他那个时代的其他年轻人非常像。他当过兵，但对军事没有任何特殊的兴趣。他参加户外运动，是个摔跤赛跑好手，却从未在运动场上取得过好名次。和当时大多数年轻人一样，他也花了很多时间去国外旅行，曾横渡爱琴海，到埃及北部短暂观光，就像他著名的外祖父梭伦在他之前曾做过的那样。但他自从回国后再也没有外出过，在后来的50年内，他在一个景致宜人的花园的阴凉角落里

institutions to beautiful ideas.

This sounded well on parchment, but when Plato tried to lay down certain definite principles upon which his perfect state was to be founded, his zeal for righteousness and his desire for justice were so great that they made him deaf and blind to all other considerations. His Republic, which has ever since been regarded as the last word in human perfection by the manufacturers of paper Utopias, was a very strange commonwealth and reflected and continues to reflect with great nicety the prejudices of those retired colonels who have always enjoyed the comforts of a private income, who like to move in polite circles and who have a profound distrust of the lower classes, lest they forget “their place” and want to have a share of those special privileges which by right should go to the members of the “upper class.”

Unfortunately the books of Plato enjoyed great respect among the medieval scholars of western Europe and in their hands the famous Republic became a most formidable weapon in their warfare upon tolerance.

For these learned doctors were apt to forget that Plato had reached his conclusions from very different premises than those which were popular in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

For instance, Plato had been anything but a pious man in the Christian sense of the word. The Gods of his ancestors he had always regarded with deep contempt as ill-mannered rustics from distant Macedonia. He had been deeply mortified by their scandalous behavior as related in the chronicles of the Trojan War. But as he grew older and sat and sat and sat in his little olive grove and became more and more exasperated by the foolish quarrels of the little city-states of his native land, and witnessed the utter failure of the old democratic ideal, he grew convinced that some sort of religion was necessary for the average citizen, or his imaginary Republic would at once degenerate into a state of

安静地传授他的教义，这个花园位于雅典郊区赛菲萨斯河畔，柏拉图学园由此得名。

柏拉图最初是一位数学家，但他逐渐转向政治学，并在这个领域为我们现代政治学说奠定了基础。他是个坚定的乐观主义者，相信人类进化是持续不断的。他教导说，人的生命是由较低级向较高级缓慢发展的，世界也从美好的实体发展为美好的制度，再从美好的制度上升为美好的思想。

这种思想写在羊皮纸上倒是不错，但当柏拉图试图制定某些具体原则，以此作为他的理想国的理论基础时，他追求公正、正义的热情和愿望就变得非常强烈，以至于他不能接受其他的想法。他所谓的共和国一直被纸上谈兵的乌托邦建设者们认为是适合人类生存最完美的世界。它是一个很奇特的共和国，已经并将继续反映那些退伍上校的微妙偏见，他们一直过着有充裕个人收入的舒适生活，喜欢参与政治，对下层社会非常不信任，免得忘了自己的“地位”，并想分享那些只有“上流社会”才有的特权。

不幸的是，柏拉图的书在西欧中世纪的学者中备受尊崇。在这些人手里，著名的共和国成了他们向宽容开战的非常可怕的武器。

这些知识渊博的学者健忘的是，柏拉图得出其结论的前提条件完全不同于12、13世纪。

例如，就基督教教义来说，柏拉图根本不是一个虔诚的人。对于他的祖先敬仰的神灵，他一直深恶痛绝，认为它们是来自偏远的马其顿的粗俗的乡巴佬。他曾为特洛伊战争纪年表中记载的有关神灵的丑恶行径深感羞辱。但当他走向成年，年复

rampant anarchy. He therefore insisted that the legislative body of his model community should establish a definite rule of conduct for all citizens and should force both freemen and slaves to obey these regulations on pain of death or exile or imprisonment. This sounded like an absolute negation of that broad spirit of tolerance and of that liberty of conscience for which Socrates had so valiantly fought only a short time before, and that is exactly what it was meant to be.

The reason for this change in attitude is not hard to find.Whereas Socrates had been a man among men, Plato was afraid of life and escaped from an unpleasant and ugly world into the realm of his own day dreams. He knew of course that there was not the slightest chance of his ideas ever being realized. The day of the little independent city-states, whether imaginary or real, was over. The era of centralization had begun and soon the entire Greek peninsula was to be incorporated into that vast Macedonian Empire which stretched from the shores of the Maritsa to the banks of the Indus River.

But ere the heavy hand of the conqueror descended upon the unruly democracies of the old peninsula, the country had produced the greatest of those many benefactors who have put the rest of the world under eternal obligation to the now defunct race of the Greeks.

I refer of course to Aristotle, the wonder-child from Stagira, the man who in his day and age knew everything that was to be known and added so much to the sum total of human knowledge that his books became an intellectual quarry from which fifty successive generations of Europeans and Asiatics were able to steal to their hearts'content without exhausting that rich vein of pure learning.

At the age of eighteen, Aristotle had left his native village in Macedonia to go to Athens and follow the lectures in Plato's university. After his graduation he lectured in a number of places until the year 336 B.C.when he returned to Athens and opened a school of his own in a garden near the temple of Apollo Lyceus, which became known as the Lyceum

一年地坐在他的小橄榄树园子里，被家乡各个小城邦之间的愚蠢争吵越来越激怒，并看到旧的民主理想彻底失败时，他逐渐相信，宗教对平民百姓是必不可少的，否则他的理想国就会立即陷于混乱状态。于是，他坚持认为，他的模范社会的立法机构应该制定出规范所有公民行为的明确准则，自由人和奴隶都必须遵守这些规范，否则就要被处死、流放或监禁。这像是对苏格拉底不久前还为之英勇奋斗的宽容精神和信仰自由的彻底否定，其实这正是柏拉图理论的本意。

这一态度变化的原因并不难找，因为苏格拉底扎根于大众，而柏拉图害怕生活，并且从令人厌烦的丑陋世界躲进了他自己臆想的王国。他当然知道，他的理想没有任何实现的可能。独立的小城邦时代——不论想象的还是实际的——已经过去了。中央集权的时代已经开始，不久，整个希腊半岛就将并入从马里查河岸一直延伸到印度河畔的广阔的马其顿帝国。

但在征服者的巨掌尚未征服这个古老半岛上难以驾驭的民主国家的时候，这个国家诞生了一位最伟大的思想家，他使整个世界永远怀念那个如今已消失的希腊民族。

我指的当然是亚里士多德，一个来自斯塔吉拉的神童，一个在当时就已经通晓许多不为人知的事情，并为人类知识宝库增添了丰富宝藏的人。他的书成为智慧的温泉，他以后的50代欧洲人和亚洲人都不必绞尽脑汁地学习，就可以从中获得让他们满意的精神食粮。

18岁时，亚里士多德离开马其顿的家乡，来到雅典，在柏拉图学园听课。毕业

and soon attracted pupils from all over the world.

Strangely enough, the Athenians were not at all in favor of increasing the number of academies within their walls. The town was at last beginning to lose its old commercial importance and all of her more energetic citizens were moving to Alexandria and to Marseilles and other cities of the south and the west.Those who remained behind were either too poor or too indolent to escape. They were the hidebound remnant of those old, turbulent masses of free citizens, who had been at once the glory and the ruin of the long-suffering Republic. They had regarded the “goings on” in Plato's orchard with small favor.When a dozen years after his death, his most notorious pupil came back and openly taught still more outrageous doctrines about the beginning of the world and the limited ability of the Gods, the old fogies shook their solemn heads and mumbled dark threats against the man who was making their city a by-word for free thinking and unbelief.

If they had had their own way, they would have forced him to leave their country. But they wisely kept these opinions to themselves. For this short-sighted, stoutish gentleman, famous for his good taste in books and in clothes, was no negligible quantity in the political life of that day, no obscure little professor who could be driven out of town by a couple of hired toughs. He was no one less than the son of a Macedonian court-physician and he had been brought up with the royal princes. And furthermore, as soon as he had finished his studies, he had been appointed tutor to the crown prince and for eight years he had been the daily companion of young Alexander. Hence he enjoyed the friendship and the protection of the most powerful ruler the world had ever seen and the regent who administered the Greek provinces during the monarch's absence on the Indian front watched carefully lest harm should befall one who had been the boon companion of his imperial master.

No sooner, however, had news of Alexander's death reached Athens than Aristotle's life

后，他在许多地方授课，直到公元前336年返回雅典，在阿波罗神庙附近一座花园开办了自己的学校，这就是亚里士多德讲学的学园，它很快就吸引了来自世界各地的学生。

奇怪的是，雅典人对于在自己的城堡兴建学园之事根本不感兴趣。当时的城邦开始丧失传统的商业重要地位，它所有精力旺盛的市民都搬到了亚历山大、马赛和其他城市。那些留下来的人，或者一贫如洗，或者懒惰成性。他们是老一辈狂暴自由民最墨守成规的残余分子，他们曾是苦难深重的共和国的荣耀，却也导致了它的毁灭。他们对柏拉图学园正在发生的事情没有好感。在柏拉图去世10多年后，他最著名的学生又回来了，公开讲授仍不被人们所接受的关于世界起源和神灵威力有限的教义。于是，老保守派严肃地摇着头，低声咒骂那个正在将他们的城邦变成思考自由和不拘信仰的场所的人。

如果按他们的意愿行事，他们就会把亚里士多德赶出国境。但他们明智地克制了自己。因为这位眼睛近视、身体矮胖的绅士以知识和衣着上的良好修养而闻名，在当时的政治生活中具有不可忽视的作用，而不是一两个雇用的打手就能把他赶出城邦的无名小教授。他不仅是马其顿宫廷医生的儿子，而且和王子们一起受过教育。更重要的是，他刚完成学业，就被任命为王太子的家庭教师。8年来，他和年轻的亚历山大日夜相伴。这样，他就赢得了有史以来最强大的统治者的友谊和保护。在亚历山大去印度前线期间，掌管希腊各省的摄政王对他照看周到，以免这位帝国主

was in peril. He remembered what had happened to Socrates and felt no desire to suffer a similar fate.Like Plato, he had carefully avoided mixing philosophy with practical politics. But his distaste for the democratic form of government and his lack of belief in the sovereign abilities of the common people were known to all. And when the Athenians, in a sudden outburst of fury, expelled the Macedonian garrison, Aristotle moved across the Euboean Sound and went to live in Calchis, where he died a few months before Athens was reconquered by the Macedonians and was duly punished for her disobedience.

At this far distance it is not easy to discover upon what positive grounds Aristotle was accused of impiety. But as usual in that nation of amateur orators, his case was inextricably mixed up with politics and his unpopularity was due to his disregard of the prejudices of a few local ward-bosses, rather than to the expression of any startlingly new heresies, which might have exposed Athens to the vengeance of Zeus.

Nor does it matter very much.

The days of the small independent republics were numbered.

Soon afterwards, the Romans fell heir to the European heritage of Alexander and Greece became one of their many provinces.

Then there was an end to all further bickering, for the Romans in most matters were even more tolerant than the Greeks of the Golden Age had been and they permitted their subjects to think as they pleased, provided they did not question certain principles of political expediency upon which the peace and prosperity of the Roman state had, since time immemorial, been safely built.

All the same there existed a subtle difference between the ideals which animated the contemporaries of Cicero and those which had been held sacred by the followers of such a man as Pericles. The old leaders of Greek thought had based their tolerance upon certain

宰的挚友受到伤害。

然而，亚历山大去世的消息刚传到希腊，亚里士多德的生命便陷入了危险中。他回想起苏格拉底的遭遇，不想遭受同样的下场。他像柏拉图那样，小心翼翼地避免把哲学和现实政治混为一谈。但他对民主政府的厌恶和对平民执政能力的不信任是众所周知的。当雅典人勃然大怒地赶走马其顿驻军时，亚里士多德便渡过尤比亚海峡，在卡尔基斯住了下来。在雅典再次被马其顿征服，并因其叛乱而受到惩罚之前几个月，他在卡尔斯基离开了人世。

已经过去这么久了，要找出亚里士多德被指控为不忠的确切背景可不容易。但通常情况下，在一个到处都是业余演说家的国度，他的活动必然会和政治盘根错节地纠缠在一起；而且他不受欢迎，是因为他对少数几个地方实力派的偏见的蔑视，而不是因为他散布了什么会使雅典遭到宙斯严厉惩罚的骇人听闻的新异端邪说。

但这已经无关紧要。

独立小城邦的日子已经屈指可数了。

不久，罗马人继承了亚历山大在欧洲的遗产，希腊成为他们众多行省中的一个。

然后，所有的争吵结束了，因为罗马人在许多事情上甚至比黄金时代的希腊人还要宽容。他们容许其臣民自由思考，但前提是臣民不能质疑政治上的某些随机应变原则，因为罗马政权自远古以来之所以能保持安定繁荣，全都有赖于这些原则。

西塞罗同时代的人所具有的思想，和伯里克利的追随者们所推崇的理想之间存

definite conclusions which they had reached after centuries of careful experiment and meditation. The Romans felt that they could do without the preliminary study. They were merely indifferent, and were proud of the fact. They were interested in practical things. They were men of action and had a deep-seated contempt for words.

If other people wished to spend their afternoons underneath an old olive tree, discussing the theoretical aspects of government or the influence of the moon upon the tides, they were more than welcome to do so.

If furthermore their knowledge could be turned to some practical use, then it was worthy of further attention. Otherwise, together with singing and dancing and cooking, sculpture and science, this business of philosophizing had better be left to the Greeks and to the other foreigners whom Jupiter in his mercy had created to provide the world with those things which were unworthy of a true Roman's attention.

Meanwhile they themselves would devote their attention to the administration of their ever increasing domains; they would drill the necessary companies of foreign infantry and cavalry to protect their outlying provinces; they would survey the roads that were to connect Spain with Bulgaria; and generally they would devote their energies to the keeping of the peace between half a thousand different tribes and nations.

Let us give honor where honor is due.

The Romans did their job so thoroughly that they erected a structure which under one form or another has survived until our own time, and that in itself is no mean accomplishment. As long as the necessary taxes were paid and a certain outward

在微妙的差别。希腊思想的老一代领袖把他们的宽容建立在某些明确的结论基础之上，这些结论是他们经过几个世纪的认真实践和冥思苦想才总结出来的。罗马人则认为，他们不必进行这方面的初步研究。他们对此毫不关心，而且对自己的行为引以为豪。他们对实用的东西感兴趣，注重行动，尤其蔑视空谈。

如果其他人愿意下午在老橄榄树下讨论统治理论或月亮对海潮的影响，罗马人是很欢迎的。

此外，如果外国人的知识有实践价值，那就会受到罗马人的进一步关注。至于哲学探讨，以及唱歌、跳舞、烹调、雕塑和科学等没有价值的事情，最好是留给希腊人或其他外国人，好心的朱庇特创造了他们，就是为了让他们去摆弄这些不值得正统罗马人关注的东西。

与此同时，罗马人要倾尽全力掌管日益扩大的领土；他们还要训练足够数量的外籍步兵和骑兵，以保卫他们的边沿各省，巡查连接西班牙和保加利亚的交通要道。他们通常要花很大精力，以维持几百个不同部落和民族之间的和平。

我们应该将荣誉送给值得送的人。

罗马人工作很精心，他们创建了一个政治体系，这个体系以这样或那样的形式一直延续至今，这本身就是个很伟大的成就。罗马的臣民只要缴纳必要的赋税，表

homage was paid to the few rules of conduct laid down by their Roman masters, the subject-tribes enjoyed a very large degree of liberty. They could believe or disbelieve whatever they pleased. They could worship one God or a dozen Gods or whole temples full of Gods. It made no difference. But whatever religion they chose to profess, these strangely assorted members of a world-encircling empire were forever reminded that the “pax Romana” depended for its success upon a liberal application of the principle of “live and let live.” They must under no condition interfere either with their own neighbors or with the strangers within their gates. And if perchance they thought that their Gods had been insulted, they must not rush to the magistrate for relief.“For,” as the Emperor Tiberius remarked upon one memorable occasion, “if the Gods think that they have just claims for grievance, they can surely take care of themselves.”

And with such scant words of consolation, all similar cases were instantly dismissed and people were requested to keep their private opinions out of the courts.

If a number of Cappadocian traders decided to settle down among the Colossians, they had a right to bring their own Gods with them and erect a temple of their own in the town of Colossae. But if the Colossians should for similar reasons move into the land of the Cappadocians, they must be granted the same privileges and must be given an equal freedom of worship.

It has often been argued that the Romans could permit themselves the luxury of such a superior and tolerant attitude because they felt an equal contempt for both the Colossians and the Cappadocians and all the other savage tribes who dwelled outside of Latium. That may have been true.I don't know. But the fact remains that for half a thousand years, a form of almost complete religious tolerance was strictly maintained within the greater part of civilized and semi-civilized Europe, Asia and Africa and that the Romans developed a technique of statecraft which produced a maximum of practical results together with a

面上尊重罗马统治者定下的为数不多的行动准则，就可以享受广泛的自由。他们可以随心所欲地相信或不相信某事，可以信仰一个上帝或十几个上帝，甚至所有充斥各种神灵的庙宇，这都没有关系。但是，不管人们选择信仰什么，混居在这个世界性大帝国的形形色色的人们必须永远记住，“罗马和平”的实现有赖于公正地实施这样一条原则：“待人宽者，人亦待己宽。”在任何情况下，他们都不得干涉别人或自己大门内陌生人的事情。即使他们偶然认为自己信仰的神灵被亵渎了，也不必跑到官府那里去寻找解脱。“因为，”正如提庇留大帝在一次值得纪念的场合所说的：“如果这些神灵认为必须补偿他们遭受的损失，他们一定会照顾好自己的。”

正是有了这句不足道的安慰话，法庭可以拒绝处理所有这类案子，并要求人们不要为个人见解之类的问题打官司。

如果一群卡帕多西亚商人决定在哥罗西人的土地上定居，有权力信仰自己的上帝，并在哥罗西镇建造自己的庙宇。那么，如果哥罗西人为了类似的原因而搬到卡帕多西亚人的土地上居住时，他们也必须得到同样的权力和同等的信仰自由。

人们经常争辩说，罗马人之所以能够摆出这样一副至高无上的宽容姿态，是因为他们对哥罗西人、卡帕多西亚人及其他所有野蛮部落都同样轻视。这可能是正确的。我不能肯定。但事实是在500年中，近乎彻底的宗教宽容一直在文明和半文明的欧洲、亚洲和非洲绝大部分地区得到了严格维护；而且罗马人发展出了一种统治艺术：以最低限度的摩擦，换取巨大的实际成果。

minimum of friction.

To many people it seemed that the millennium had been achieved and that this condition of mutual forbearance would last forever.

But nothing lasts forever. Least of all, an empire built upon force.

Rome had conquered the world, but in the effort she had destroyed herself.

The bones of her young soldiers lay bleaching on a thousand battle fields.

For almost five centuries the brains of her most intelligent citizens had wasted themselves upon the gigantic task of administering a colonial empire that stretched from the Irish Sea to the Caspian.

At last the reaction set in.

Both the body and the mind of Rome had been exhausted by the impossible task of a single city ruling an entire world.

And then a terrible thing happened. A whole people grew tired of life and lost the zest for living.

They had come to own all the country-houses, all the town-houses, all the yachts and all the stage-coaches they could ever hope to use.

They found themselves possessed of all the slaves in the world.

They had eaten everything, they had seen everything, they had heard everything.

They had tried the taste of every drink, they had been everywhere, they had made love to all the women from Barcelona to Thebes. All the books that had ever been written were in their libraries. The best pictures that had ever been painted hung on their walls. The cleverest musicians of the entire world had entertained them at their meals.And, as children, they had been instructed by the best professors and pedagogues who had taught them everything there was to be taught.As a result, all food and drink had lost its taste, all books had grown dull, all women had become uninteresting, and existence itself

对许多人而言，太平盛世似乎来临了，相互宽容的状况似乎会持续到永远。

但没有什么东西能永远存在。至少建立在武力基础上的帝国是不能长久的。

罗马征服了世界，但同时毁灭了自己。

罗马帝国年轻战士的尸骨遍布上千个战场。

在近五个世纪中，社会精英们都把精力浪费在管理从爱尔兰海到黑海的殖民帝国这个庞大的工作中。

最后，副作用出现了。

以一个城市的体力和脑力统治全世界，这项事业拖垮了罗马。

随后，发生了一件可怕的事。人们逐渐厌恶了生活，失去了生活的热情。

他们已经占有了所有的乡村和城镇住房，拥有了他们曾希望使用的所有游艇和马车。

他们拥有了全世界的奴隶。

他们吃遍了每一样食物，看遍了所有美景，听到了所有妙音。

他们尝遍了每一种美酒，踏遍了所有的地方，玩遍了从巴塞罗那到底比斯的所有女人。世间所有用文字写成的书籍进入了他们的图书室，世界上画得最好的图画挂在他们墙上。全世界最卓越的音乐家在他们吃饭时为他们演奏。他们在童年时就接受最出色的教育。结果，所有的美味佳肴都失去了味道，所有的图书都变得枯燥乏味，所有的女人都失去了魅力，甚至生存本身也成为一种负担，许多人情愿寻找

had developed into a burden which a good many people were willing to drop at the first respectable opportunity.

There remained only one consolation, the contemplation of the Unknown and the Invisible.

The old Gods, however, had died years before. No intelligent Roman any longer took stock in the silly nursery rhymes about Jupiter and Minerva.

There were the philosophic systems of the Epicureans and the Stoics and the Cynics, all of whom preached charity and self-denial and the virtues of an unsel fish and useful life.

But they were so empty. They sounded well enough in the books of Zeno and Epicurus and Epictetus and Plutarch, which were to be found in every corner store library.

But in the long run, this diet of pure reason was found to lack the necessary nourishing qualities. The Romans began to clamor for a certain amount of “emotion” with their spiritual meals.

Hence the purely philosophical “religions”（for such they really were, if we associate the idea of religion with a desire to lead useful and noble lives）could only appeal to a very small number of people, and almost all of those belonged to the upper classes who had enjoyed the advantages of private instruction at the hands of competent Greek teachers.

To the mass of the people, these finely-spun philosophies meant less than nothing at all. They too had reached a point of development at which a good deal of the ancient mythology seemed the childish invention of rude and credulous ancestors. But they could not possibly go as far as their so-called intellectual superiors and deny the existence of any and all personal Gods.

Wherefore they did what all half-educated people do under such circumstances. They paid a formal and outward tribute of respect to the official Gods of the Republic and then

一个体面的机会离开人世。

剩下一种兴趣，就是对未知世界的冥想。

然而，旧的上帝已在许多年前死了，聪明的罗马人不会再沉醉在幼儿园对丘比特和米纳瓦的愚蠢赞歌中。

伊壁鸠鲁学派[5]、斯多葛派[6]和昔尼克学派[7]的哲学体系已经出现，所有这些哲学体系都宣扬仁爱、克己、无私和有意义生活的美德。

但它们太空泛了。它们在齐诺、伊壁鸠鲁、爱比克泰德和普卢塔克的书中讲得倒是很动听，这些书在街头书店里比比皆是。

但从长远来看，这种纯理性的教义缺乏必要的营养成分。罗马人开始追求一种可以作为精神食粮的“情感”。

因此，这种纯哲学色彩的“宗教”（如果我们把宗教思想和追求有益的高尚生活的愿望联系起来，它们的确是哲学色彩的宗教）只能取悦一小部分人，这些人几乎全都属于上流社会，他们早已经享受到了能干的希腊教师个别授课的特殊待遇。

betook themselves for real comfort and happiness to one of the many mystery religions which during the last two centuries had found a most cordial welcome in the ancient city on the banks of the Tiber.

The word “mystery” which I have used before was of Greek origin. It originally meant a gathering of “initiated people”—of men and women whose “mouth had been shut” against the betrayal of those most holy secrets which only the true members of the mystery were supposed to know and which bound them together like the hocus-pocus of a college fraternity or the cabalistic incantations of the Independent Order of Sea-Mice.

During the first century of our era, however, a mystery was nothing more nor less than a special form of worship, a denomination, a church. If a Greek or a Roman（if you will pardon a little juggling with time）had left the Presbyterian church for the Christian Science church, he would have told his neighbors that he had gone to “another mystery.” For the wo rd “church,” the “kirk,” the “house of the Lord,” is of comparatively recent origin and was not known in those days.

If you happen to be especially interested in the subject and wish to understand what was happening in Rome, buy a New York paper next Saturday. Almost any paper will do.Therein you will find four or five columns of announcements about new creeds, about new mysteries, imported from India and Persia and Sweden and China and a dozen other countries and all of them offering special promises of health and riches and salvation everlasting.

对普通百姓而言，这些冠冕堂皇的哲学思想却什么都不是。他们也发展到了这样一个阶段，认为大部分古代神话似乎都是粗俗而愚昧的祖先孩童般的发明。但他们还不可能赶上那些所谓的有智慧的人，还不能否认上帝的存在。

因此，他们做了所有知识浅薄的人在这种环境下会做的事情：表面上很正规地推崇共和国官方的上帝，实际上却为了寻求真正的安慰和幸福而信仰某些神秘宗教，这些宗教过去两个世纪在台伯河畔的古老城市中受到了最真诚的欢迎。

我上面用的“神秘”这个词源于希腊。它原来意味着一群“受到启示的人”——这些男女必须“守口如瓶”，不得把他们最神圣的秘密泄露出去。这些秘密只有他们才能知道，而且像大学兄弟会的咒语或海鼠独立教的秘密咒语一样，使人们结合在一起。

然而，在公元1世纪期间，神秘宗教只不过是一种特殊的崇拜形式、一种派别。如果一个希腊人或罗马人（请原谅时间上的小小混淆）已经离开长老会而加入基督科学教会，他就会告诉他的邻居，说他已经参加“另一个宗教”了。“教堂”“苏格兰长老会”和“贵族院”是比较新的词语，当时人们还不知道。

如果你碰巧对这个问题特别感兴趣，想知道当时罗马的情况，下周六就买一份纽约报纸，任何报纸都行。在这些报纸上，你会看到四五栏从印度、波斯、瑞典、中国及其他十多个国家引进的关于新教旨和新神秘宗教的广告，这些广告全都给人

Rome, which so closely resembled our own metropolis, was just as full of imported and domestic religions. The international nature of the city had made this unavoidable.From the vine-covered mountain slopes of northern Asia Minor had come the cult of Cybele, whom the Phrygians revered as the mother of the Gods and whose worship was connected with such unseemly outbreaks of emotional hilarity that the Roman police had repeatedly been forced to close the Cybelian temples and had at last passed very drastic laws against the further propaganda of a faith which encouraged public drunkenness and many other things that were even worse.

Egypt, the old land of paradox and secrecy, had contributed half a dozen strange divinities and the names of Osiris, Serapis and Isis had become as familiar to Roman ears as those of Apollo, Demeter and Hermes.

As for the Greeks, who centuries before had given unto the world a primary system of abstract truth and a practical code of conduct, based upon virtue, they now supplied the people of foreign lands who insisted upon images and incense with the far-famed “mysteries” of Attis and Dionysus and Orpheus and Adonis, none of them entirely above suspicion as far as public morals were concerned, but nevertheless enjoying immense popularity.

The Phoenician traders, who for a thousand years had frequented the shores of Italy, had made the Romans familiar with their great God Baal（the arch-enemy of Jehovah）and with Astarte his wife, that strange creature to whom Solomon in his old age and to the great horror of all his faithful subjects had built a “high place” in the very heart of Jerusalem; the terrible Goddess who had been recognized as the official protector of the city of Carthage during her long struggle for the supremacy of the Mediterranean and who finally after the destruction of all her temples in Asia and Africa was to return to Europe in the shape of a

们以健康、财富和灵魂永恒拯救的特殊许诺。

和我们的大都市相似，罗马充斥着外来的和本地的宗教。由于罗马的世界性地位，使这一点难以避免。从小亚细亚北部青藤覆盖的山坡上产生了对自然女神的崇拜，弗里吉亚人把自然女神尊崇为众神之母。伴随着崇拜自然女神而来的，是一些不合乎礼仪的感情狂欢。于是，罗马当局被迫一再关闭自然女神庙，最后还通过了一项果断的法律，禁止任何宗教活动，因为这种宗教只会鼓励公众喝得酩酊大醉，并做出其他更糟的事情。

埃及这块自相矛盾而又神秘的古老土地，产生了五六个怪诞不经的天神，奥赛利斯、塞拉皮斯和伊希斯的名字在罗马时代就像阿波罗、得墨忒耳和赫耳墨斯一样为人熟知。

至于希腊人，他们在几个世纪之前就为世人献上了抽象真理和行为法典的雏形体系。这时他们出于道德考虑，又向坚持偶像崇拜的外国居民提供了声名远播的艾蒂斯、狄俄尼索斯、俄耳甫斯和阿多尼斯等“神秘宗教”。从道德角度来说，这些神灵没有一个是尽善尽美的，但他们却颇受欢迎。

腓尼基商人在整整1000年的时间里经常去意大利海岸，使罗马人熟悉了他们伟大的上帝巴力（耶和华不共戴天之敌）和巴力的妻子阿斯塔特。为了这位神奇的女神，所罗门老年时在耶路撒冷中心建造了一个“高坛”，使他所有忠诚的臣民大为震惊。在争夺地中海最高权力的漫长斗争中，这个令人敬畏的女神一直被公认为是迦太基城的庇护者，她在亚洲和非洲的庙宇全被摧毁以后，又以最令人尊敬的基督

most respectable and demure Christian saint.

But the most important of all, because highly popular among the soldiers of the army, was a deity whose broken images can still be found underneath every rubbish pile that marks the Roman frontier from the mouth of the Rhine to the source of the Tigris.

This was the great God Mithras.

Mithras, as far as we know, was the old Asiatic God of Light and Air and Truth, and he had been worshiped in the plains of the Caspian lowlands when our first ancestors took possession of those wonderful grazing fields and made ready to settle those valleys and hills which afterwards became known as Europe.To them he had been the giver of all good things and they believed that the rulers of this earth exercised their power only by the grace of his mighty will. Hence, as a token of his divine favor, he sometimes bestowed upon those called to high offices a bit of that celestial fire by which he himself was forever surrounded, and although he is gone and his name has been forgotten, the kindly saints of the Middle Ages, with their halo of light, remind us of an ancient tradition which was started thousands of years before the Church was ever dreamed of.

But although he was held in great reverence for an incredibly long time, it has been very difficult to reconstruct his life with any degree of accuracy.There was a good reason for this. The early Christian missionaries abhorred the Mithras myth with a hatred infinitely more bitter than that reserved for the common, every day mysteries. In their heart of hearts they knew that the Indian God was their most serious rival. Hence they tried as hard as possible to remove everything that might possibly remind people of his existence. In this task they succeeded so well that all Mithras temples have disappeared and that not a scrap of written evidence remains about a religion which for more than half a thousand years was as popular in Rome as Methodism of Presbyterianism is in the United States of today.

教圣人的形象回到了欧洲。

但在所有神灵中还有一个最重要的神，他在军队中极受欢迎。在从莱茵河口到底格里斯河源头的罗马边界线的每一堆残砖破瓦下面，都会发现他的破碎金身。

这就是伟大的密斯拉神。

据我们所知，密斯拉是掌管光、空气和真理的古老的亚洲神，在里海低地平原受人崇拜。当时我们最早的祖先占有了那片牧草肥沃的土地，准备在山峰峡谷之间定居下来，这里后来成了人所共知的欧洲。密斯拉给了人类各种美好的东西，人们认为这块土地的统治者之所以能施展权力，完全是依靠他万能的旨意。密斯拉终日处在天火之中，作为天恩的象征，他有时会把一缕天火降在身居高职的人身上。虽然他早已离去，名字也被人们忘记了，但是中世纪那些仁慈的圣人头上的光环向我们提示了一个早在教堂问世1000年之前就已经形成的古老传统。

尽管密斯拉在相当长的时间里深受人们的崇敬，但要稍微准确地再现他的一生却非常困难。这是有其原因的。早期基督教传教士对密斯拉神话的仇恨要比对一般神话的仇恨更甚。他们明白，印度神是他们最凶恶的对手，因此他们竭尽所能地毁掉一切可能使人们想起他的存在的东西。他们的努力大见成效，所有的密斯拉神庙荡然无存，关于这一宗教的文字证据没有留下任何东西。这个宗教在500年中曾盛行于罗马，就像今天长老会和卫理公会在美国盛行一样。

不过，得益于一些亚洲资料，以及人们对一些废墟的仔细搜索（在炸药还没有发明之前，建筑物不可能被彻底摧毁），我们已经填补了这个空白，现在掌握了

However with the help of a few Asiatic sources and by a careful perusal of certain ruins which could not be entirely destroyed in the days before the invention of dynamite, we have been able to overcome this initial handicap and now possess a fairly accurate idea about this interesting God and the things for which he stood.

Ages and ages ago, so the story ran, Mithras was mysteriously born of a rock. As soon as he lay in his cradle, several nearby shepherds came to worship him and make him happy with their gifts.

As a boy, Mithras had met with all sorts of strange adventures. Many of these remind us closely of the deeds which had made Hercules such a popular hero with the children of the Greeks. But whereas Hercules was often very cruel, Mithras was forever doing good.Once he had engaged in a wrestling match with the sun and had beaten him. But he was so generous in his victory, that the sun and he had become like brothers, and were often mistaken for each other.

When the God of all evil had sent a drought which threatened to kill the race of man, Mithras had struck a rock with his arrow, and behold!plentiful water had gushed forth upon the parched fields.When Ahriman（for that was the name of the arch-enemy）had thereupon tried to achieve his wicked purpose by a terrible flood, Mithras had heard of it, had warned one man, had told him to build a big boat and load it with his relatives and his flocks and in this way had saved the human race from destruction.Until finally, having done all he could to save the world from the consequences of its own follies, he had been taken to Heaven to rule the just and righteous for all time.

Those who wished to join the Mithras cult were obliged to go through an elaborate form of initiation and were forced to eat a ceremonious meal of bread and wine in memory of the famous supper eaten by Mithras and his friend the Sun. Furthermore, they

关于这个有趣天神及其轶事的相当准确的情况。

密斯拉的故事要追溯到很久很久以前。密斯拉神秘地从一块岩石中出生了。他还睡在摇篮里，附近的几个牧羊人就来祭拜他，还送礼物逗他高兴。

密斯拉在孩提时代就经历了各种怪异的冒险，其中很多冒险使我们想起了一些事情，这些事情使赫拉克勒斯成了希腊孩子们最欢迎的英雄。但赫拉克勒斯总是那么残酷，而密斯拉总是与人为善。有一次他与太阳神角逐，把对方打翻在地。但是他胜而不骄，而是宽容大度地和太阳神成为手足兄弟，以至于人们经常将他们搞错。

当罪恶之神意欲毁灭整个人类而降下一场干旱的时候，密斯拉用他的箭射向一块岩石，顿时，泉涌般的水冲向了干裂的土地。当艾赫里曼（这是密斯拉不共戴天之敌、罪恶之神的名字）又想以一场可怕的洪水达到其卑鄙目的时，密斯拉得知了此事。他告诉了一个人，让他造一艘大船，把他的亲属和家禽都带上船，这样又把人类从毁灭中救了出来。最后，为了拯救世界，使其不致因自身的各种弊病而遭到恶报，他竭尽了力气，然后又升入天国，永远掌握着正义和公正。

were obliged to accept baptism in a font of water and do many other things which have no special interest to us, as that form of religion was completely exterminated more than fifteen hundred years ago.

Once inside the fold, the faithful were all treated upon a footing of absolute equality. Together they prayed before the same candle-lit altars.Together they chanted the same holy hymns and together they took part in the festivities which were held each year on the twenty-fifth of December to celebrate the birth of Mithras.Furthermore they abstained from all work on the first day of the week, which even today is called Sun-day in honor of the great God. And finally when they died, they were laid away in patient rows to await the day of resurrection when the good should enter into their just reward and the wicked should be cast into the fire everlasting.

The success of these different mysteries, the widespread influence of Mithraism among the Roman soldiers, points to a condition far removed from religious indifference.Indeed the early centuries of the empire were a period of restless search after something that should satisfy the emotional needs of the masses.

But early in the year 47 of our own era something happened. A small vessel left Phoenicia for the city of Perga, the starting point for the overland route to Europe.Among the passengers were two men not overburdened with luggage.

Their names were Paul and Barnabas.

They were Jews, but one of them carried a Roman passport and was well versed in the wisdom of the Gentile world.

It was the beginning of a memorable voyage.

Christianity had set out to conquer the world

那些想加入密斯拉崇拜行列的人，必须通过一种仪式，必须隆重吃一顿面包和酒作为礼餐，以纪念密斯拉和他的朋友太阳神一起享用的著名晚餐。还有，他们必须在圣水前接受洗礼，做很多在我们看来毫无特殊意义的事情，这种宗教形式早在1500年前就不见了。

一旦加入密斯拉崇拜的行列，所有虔诚信徒都会被同等相待。他们一起在同一个烛光明亮的祭台前祷告，一起唱同一首赞美诗，一同参加每年12月25日举行的庆祝密斯拉生日的节日。而且他们在每周的第一天不做任何工作，直到今天，我们仍然称这一天为“星期日”，以纪念这位伟大的天神。他们死后，尸体要摆放整齐，以等待末日审判。那时，好人会得到公正的报答，而恶人则被投入永恒的烈火中。

这形形色色的神话的成功，以及密斯拉在罗马士兵中的广泛影响，表明了人们对宗教的极大兴趣。实际上，罗马帝国在早期的几个世纪里，一直在不停地寻找某种能够满足民众精神需求的东西。

但是在公元47年，发生了一件事。一艘小船从腓尼基驶向佩加城，该城是通往欧洲的陆路起点。在乘客中有两个没有带行李的人。

他们的名字是保罗和巴拿巴。

他们是犹太人，但其中一人持有罗马护照，还通晓非犹太人的智慧。

这是一次值得纪念的旅程的开始。

基督教开始征服世界了。