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新奇的地点和环境，新知故旧相逢的兴奋，高山仰止的天才和资历，人们亲切友好，和谐相处；情绪激昂，交流思想，好奇心无处不在；早晨聚谈，户外锻炼，精心布置的周到食宿，不失风度的狂欢，傍晚的聚会；精彩的演讲，大家巨擘之间的演讲、争论和观点碰撞，讲述科学过程中的希望、失望、冲突和成功，精彩的颂词；年度庆典中的这些以及类似的组成部分，被认为是为知识进步做出了实质性的贡献，别无其他途径。当然这些只是间歇举办，需要特殊理由，比如大学每年的演出、毕业典礼或纪念活动。但它们具有大学的性质；我坚信其有效性。出发点是促进一种生活方式，就好像知识在个体之间流转，思想被广泛交换，学科之间进行比较和调整，思维、智力和社交得到扩展，人们选择对某个特定研究领域自发产生强烈的热爱并真诚投入。
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我得反复说明，这样的周期性会议只能部分代表一所大学的理念。随之而来的喧嚣和忙乱不符合严肃智识教育的秩序和重心。我们亟需不受日常习惯干扰的教育方式，倒也不必寻找太久，在我们讨论不休时，它会随着时机成熟自然出现。在每一个伟大的国家，大城市本身就是一所必要的大学，不以意志为转移。因为它是法院、上层社会、政治、法律的中心，所以自然也是文学中心；在这个时代，伦敦和巴黎多年来实际上都是运行着的大学，即使巴黎著名的大学已经不复存在，而伦敦的大学也基本只有执行董事会的功能。在这里，报纸、杂志、学刊、博物馆和学院随处可见，学术及科学社团的存在必然使其具备了大学的功能；那种思想的氛围，此前只存在于牛津或者博洛尼亚或者萨拉曼卡，现在随着时代的变迁，都来到了政府的中心。那里有来自全国各地的年轻人，有法律、医学以及艺术专业的学生，有文学工作者和相关业者。他们因机遇而停留，对自己的临时家园深感满意，因为他们在其中找到被兑现的承诺。就其自身的目标而言，他们没有白来一趟。他们没有学习某种具体的宗教，但得以充分了解自己特定的专业，而且，熟悉了所在地的习俗、行为规范和舆论，并为这种传统的传承做出自己的贡献。我们不能没有虚拟大学；一座都市就是一所虚拟大学：一个简单的问题是，需求和供给的教育是否具有原则基础、成型规范和最高的目标指向，因为如果让大师和学院随意地你方唱罢我登场，思想被可悲的浪费，真理亦岌岌可危。
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宗教教育本身在某种程度上提供了说明主题的例子。它并不会将自己放置在世界中心，这从本质上来说也是不可能的。其目标指向大众，而非少数人。其论题是人们需要的真理，而不是深奥罕见的。它和大学的原则在以下方面保持一致：它的重要手段，或者说媒介工具是所有教育本应具备的，即老师的在场，或者以神学语言来说，口授的传统。这是活生生的声音、呼吸和丰富的表情在传授和问答宣讲。真理，一种微妙、无形、多面的精神存在，通过视觉、听觉、情感、想象和推理涌入到学者的头脑中，并通过提问和重复，不断的质疑、修正和解释、演进与归原而永久留存在头脑中，这些就是“问答宣讲”这个词所指的一切方式。在初始阶段，要耗费少则数月多则数年的时间，改变早期基督徒思想上的异教谬误，并树立基督教信仰。的确，能够获取圣经的人执掌了圣经的研究，但圣爱任纽斯在不能阅读圣经的情况下也毫不犹豫地为所有皈依的基督徒发声。在那时，不具备读写能力并不是缺乏学识的证明：沙漠中的隐士，从字面意义来说，就是文盲；然而伟大的圣安东尼虽然目不识丁，在博学的哲学家前来挑战时，也是位毫不逊色的辩手。还有迪代默斯，亚历山大时代伟大的神学家，是位盲人。古代“Discip1ina Arcani”即所谓“秘密教规”的训练，涉及相同的原则。更神圣的骑士教义并不出现在书本中，而是通过延续不断的传统来传承。对神圣的三位一体和圣餐的教学似乎就是这样流传数百年，最终在其诉诸文字后，相关文献已经汗牛充栋，离穷尽其奥义却还遥遥无期。
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我想我已经解释详尽了；结束语和开头所言一样，大学是来自四面八方的师生为各种知识而汇聚一堂的地方。最好的东西不可能俯拾皆是；你必须到大城市或者商业中心区寻觅。在那里自然和人工的顶尖产品荟萃一处，而在原产地你只能发现孤零零的一种特产。全国和全世界的财富都被运往该处；最佳的市场，最好的工匠都在那里；那是贸易的中心，时尚的最高鉴定处，竞争人才的公断所，还是珍奇宝物的评判标准。它是观赏一流画作的场所，也是聆听美妙歌喉、欣赏超凡演出的殿堂。那里汇聚着伟大的传道者、演说家、贵族和政治家。世间万物，伟大与完整并行；卓越常常指向核心。这个核心，我再三指出，就是大学；希望读者莫要厌烦我的多次重复；成百上千的学校为成就大学做出贡献，使它成为知识分子可以自由探查研究、建构思想的所在，他们定会在此遭逢挑战和对手，并在真理的裁判所接受检验。在大学里，通过心灵的激荡和学术的碰撞，人们质疑、修正和完善，消解鲁莽之失，揭示谬误之陋。在这里，能言善辩的教授传道授业解惑，满怀对学科的深爱，用最全面可信的方式展示科学，点燃听众胸中的热情。在这里，教授在问答宣讲中以扎实的脚步前行，将真理灌注到学生的记忆宝库，并不断楔入和夯实在他们日益增长的理性中。这是一处以佳誉赢得青年的仰慕，以美好点燃中年的热爱，以通达锁定老年的忠诚的场所。这里是智慧源泉、世界灯塔、信仰之门，是新一代人的母校。大学还是除此之外的林林总总，需要比我更加善思决断之人才能备述其妙。
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（张萍 译）
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[1]典出莎士比亚《皆大欢喜》（As You Like It）第二幕第一景，此处所引为梁实秋译文。
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西南联大英文课（英汉双语版） [:1705033872]
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42 THE THEORY OF THE LIBERAL COLLEGE
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By Alexander Meiklejohn
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THE THEORY OF THE LIBERAL COLLEGE, by Alexander Meiklejohn, from his Freedom and the College , New York, The Century Company, 1923, pp. 155-189.
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Alexander Meiklejohn （1872-1964）, American educator and teacher of philosophy.
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This was his inaugural address as president of Amherst College, Massachusetts, October 16, 1912.
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In the discussions concerning college education there is one voice which is all too seldom raised and all too often disregarded. It is the voice of the teacher and scholar, of the member of the college faculty. It is my purpose here to consider the ideals of the teacher, of the problems of instruction as they present themselves to the men who are giving instruction. And I do this not because I believe that just now the teachers are wiser than others who are dealing with the same questions, but rather as an expression of a definite conviction with regard to the place of the teacher in our educational scheme. It is, I believe, the function of the teacher to stand before his pupils and before the community at large as the intellectual leader of his time. If he is not able to take this leadership, he is not worthy of his calling. If the leadership is taken from him and given to others, then the very foundations of the scheme of instruction are shaken. He who in matters of teaching must be led by others is not the one to lead the imitative undergraduate, not the one to inspire the confidence and loyalty and discipleship on which all true teaching depends. If there are others who can do these things better than the college teacher of to-day, then we must bring them within the college walls. But if the teacher is to be deemed worthy of his task, then he must be recognized as the teacher of us all, and we must listen to his words as he speaks of the matters intrusted to his charge.
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In the consideration of the educational creed of the teacher I will try to give, first, a brief statement of his belief;second, a defense of it against other views of the function of the college; third, an interpretation of its meaning and significance; fourth, a criticism of what seem to me misunderstandings of their own meaning prevalent among the teachers of our day; and finally, a suggestion of certain changes in policy which must follow if the belief of the teacher is clearly understood and applied in our educational procedure.
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I.
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First, then, What do our teachers believe to be the aim of college instruction? Wherever their opinions and convictions find expression there is one contention which is always in the foreground, namely, that to be liberal a college must be essentially intellectual. It is a place, the teachers tell us, in which a boy, forgetting all things else, may set forth on the enterprise of learning. It is a time when a young man may come to awareness of the thinking of his people, may perceive what knowledge is and has been and is to be. Whatever light-hearted undergraduates may say, whatever the opinions of solicitous parents, of ambitious friends, of employers in search of workmen, of leaders in church or state or business—whatever may be the beliefs and desire and demands of outsiders—the teacher within the college, knowing his mission as no one else can know it, proclaims that mission to be the leading of his pupil into the life intellectual. The college is primarily not a place of the body, nor of the feeling, nor even of the will; it is, first of all, a place of the mind.
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II.
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Against this intellectual interpretation of the college our teachers find two sets of hostile forces constantly at work. Outside the walls there are the practical demands of a busy commercial and social scheme; within the college there are the trivial and sentimental and irrational misunderstandings of its own friends. Upon each of these our college teachers are wont to descend as Samson upon the Philistines, and when they have had their will, there is little left for another to accomplish.
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As against the immediate practical demands from without, the issue is clear and decisive. College teachers know that the world must have trained workmen, skilled operatives, clever buyers and sellers, efficient directors, resourceful manufacturers, able lawyers, ministers, physicians, and teachers. But it is equally true that in order to do its own work, the liberal college must leave the special and technical training for these trades and professions to be done in other schools and by other methods. In a word, the liberal college does not pretend to give all the kinds of teaching which a young man of college age may profitably receive; it does not even claim to give all the kinds of intellectual training which are worth giving. It is committed to intellectual training of the liberal type, whatever that may mean, and to that mission it must be faithful. One may safely say, then, on behalf of our college teachers, that their instruction is intended to be radically different from that given in the technical school or even in the professional school. Both these institutions are practical in a sense which the college, as an intellectual institution, is not. In the technical school, the pupil is taught how to do some one of the mechanical operations which contribute to human welfare. He is trained to point, to weave, to farm, to build; and for the most part he is trained to do these things by practice rather than by theory. His possession when he leaves the school is not a stock of ideas, of scientific principles, but a measure of skill, a collection of rules of thumb. His primary function as a tradesman is not to understand but to do, and in doing what is needed he is following directions which have first been thought out by others and are now practiced by him. The technical school intends to furnish training which, in the sense in which we use the term, is not intellectual but practical.
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In a corresponding way the work of the professional school differs from that of the liberal college. In the teaching of engineering, medicine or law, we are or may be beyond the realm of mere skill and within the realm of ideas and principles. But the selection and the relating of these ideas is dominated by an immediate practical interest which cuts them off from the intellectual point of view of the scholar. If an undergraduate should take away from his studies of chemistry, biology, and psychology only those parts which have immediate practical application in the field of medicine, the college teachers would feel that they had failed to give the boy the kind of instruction demanded of a college. It is not their purpose to furnish applied knowledge in this sense. They are not willing to cut up their sciences into segments and to allow the students to select those segments which may be of service in the practice of an art or a profession. In one way or another the teacher feels a kinship with the scientist and the scholar which forbids him to submit to this domination of his instruction by the demands of an immediate practical interest. Whatever it may mean, he intends to hold the intellectual point of view and to keep his students with him if he can. In response, then, to demands for technical and professional training our college teachers tell us that such training may be obtained in other schools; it is not to be had in a college of liberal culture.
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In the conflict with the forces within the college our teachers find themselves fighting essentially the same battle as against the foes without. In a hundred different ways the friends of the college, students, graduates, trustees, and even colleagues, seem to them so to misunderstand its mission as to minimize or to falsify its intellectual ideals. The college is a good place for making friends; it gives excellent experience in getting on with men; it has exceptional advantages as an athletic club; is a relatively safe place for a boy when he first leaves home; on a whole it may improve a student’s manners;it gives acquaintance with lofty ideals of character, preaches the doctrine of social service, exalts the virtues and duties of citizenship. All these conceptions seem to the teacher to hide or to obscure the fact that the college is fundamentally a place of the mind, a time for thinking, an opportunity for knowing. And perhaps in proportion to their own loftiness of purpose and motive they are the more dangerous as tending all the more powerfully to replace or to nullify the underlying principle upon which they all depend. Here again when misconception clears away, one can have no doubt that the battle of the teacher is a righteous one. It is well that a boy should have four good years of athletic sport, playing his own games and watching the games of his fellows; it is well that his manners should be improved; it is worth while to make good friends; it is very desirable to develop the power of understanding and working with other men; it is surely good to grow in strength and purity of character, in devotion to the interests of society, in readiness to meet obligations and opportunities of citizenship. If any one of these be lacking from the fruits of a college course we may well complain of the harvest. And yet is it not true that by sheer pressure of these, by the driving and pulling of the social forces within and without the college, the mind of the student is constantly torn from its chief concern? Do not our social and practical interests distract our boys from the intellectual achievement which should dominate their imagination and command their zeal? I believe that one may take it as the deliberate judgment of the teachers of our colleges to-day that the function of the college is constantly misunderstood, and that it is subjected to demands which, however friendly in intent, are yet destructive of its intellectual efficiency and success.
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III.
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But now that the contention of the teacher has been stated and reaffirmed against objections, it is time to ask, What does it mean? And how can it be justified? By what right does a company of scholars invite young men to spend with them four years of discipleship? Do they, in their insistence upon the intellectual quality of their ideal intend to give an education which is avowedly unpractical? If so, how shall they justify their invitation, which may perhaps divert young men from other interests and other companionships which are valuable to themselves and to their fellows? In a word, what is the underlying motive of the teacher, what is there in the intellectual interests and activities which seems to him to warrant their domination over the training and instruction of young men during the college years?
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