Chapter 16 Remembrance twenty-five [1]

I have seen Yan Youling[2] comment on some book, but I have forgotten the title and original text.The general idea is: "On Beijing Road, I saw many children tossing and turning between the wheels and horses. I was afraid that I would kill them, and I was very scared when I thought about what they would do in the future." In fact, it is the same in other places, but Chariots and horses are somewhat different.Now that I am in Beijing, the situation has not changed, and I have such worries from time to time; on the one hand, I admire that Yan Youling actually "made" Huxley's "Evolution of Heaven"[3], which is indeed different: he is a Sensitive people in China at the end of the nineteenth century.

The children of the poor walked around the streets unkempt, while the children of the rich walked around the house with a coquettish appearance and a coquettish voice.When they get too big, they all move around in society in a daze, just like their father, or not as good. So if you look at children in their teens, you can predict the situation in China twenty years later; if you look at young people in their twenties—they probably have children and they are respected as fathers—you can speculate on their sons and grandchildren. The situation in China in fifty years and seventy years. Chinese children, as long as they are born, it doesn't matter whether they are good or not, as long as they are many, it doesn't matter whether they are talented or not.The person who gave birth to him is not responsible for teaching him.Although the phrase "there is a large population" can be conceited with closed eyes, but these many people are just tossing around in the dust. When they are young, they are not regarded as human beings, and when they grow up, they will not be able to be human beings.

In China, it is a blessing to have a wife, and it is also a blessing to have many sons.All children are just the material of their parents' blessings, not the buds of future "human beings", so they go around casually and no one cares about them, because no matter what, the number and qualifications of materials still exist.Even if he is sent to school occasionally, the habits of society and family, the temper of his elders and his partner are often contrary to education, and still make him out of tune with the new era.When he grows up, he survives fortunately, but "is still the same" [4]. As usual, he is the guy who makes the child, not the father of the "person".

Otto Weininger (Otto Weininger), the Austrian who looked down on women the most, once divided women into two categories: one is "mothers" and the other is "whores".According to this classification, men can also be divided into two categories: "father men" and "prostitute men".But this category of father and man can be divided into two types: one is the father of children, and the other is the father of "people".The first kind can only give birth, can't teach, and has a bit of whoring men's breath.The second is that after giving birth to a child, one still needs to think about how to educate the child so that the child will become a complete human being in the future.

At the end of the Qing Dynasty, when a normal school was first opened in a certain province, an old gentleman was very surprised when he heard it, and said angrily, "Why do teachers still need to be taught? From this point of view, there should be a father's school!" An old gentleman, he thought that the qualifications of a father, as long as he can give birth.If this thing can happen, it will happen naturally, why do you need to be taught.But I don't know that China is now in need of a father's school; this gentleman must be enrolled in the first grade of elementary school.

Because there are so many fathers of children in China, so in the future there will only be fathers of "people"! [1] This article was originally published on September 15, 1918, No. 3, Volume 5, Beijing "New Youth", signed by Tang Qi. 〔2〕Yan Youling (1858-1921), whose name is Fu, whose characters are Youling and Jidao, was born in Minhou (now Fuzhou), Fujian, and was an enlightenment thinker and translator in the late Qing Dynasty.In 1877 (the third year of the reign of Emperor Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty), he was sent to England to study the navy. After returning to China in 1879, he served as the chief instructor of the Beiyang Naval Academy.After the defeat of China in the Sino-Japanese War in 1894, he advocated reform and reform, devoted himself to the introduction of Western natural science and bourgeois social science thoughts, and translated T.H. Huxley's "Tianyanlun" successively. , Adam Smith's "Original Rich", and French Montesquieu's "Fa Yi" and other books had a great influence on the Chinese intellectual circles at that time.However, after the Reform Movement of 1898, he became increasingly conservative politically. In 1915, he participated in the "Preparation Meeting" and supported Yuan Shikai to proclaim himself emperor.The passage mentioned here by Lu Xun can be found in the translator's note of the twenty-fifth chapter of the eighteenth volume of Montesquieu's "Fa Yi", which is strictly translated. The original text is: "Everywhere I go, I see dozens of My son, toddling between the feet of chariots and horses, always wearing a thorn on the back, not worrying about its fall, how popular will the people be after thirty years of reading. Woohoo, China is really not easy to be a country!"

〔3〕The term "doing" "Tianyanlun" here means that Yan Fu's translation of "Tianyanlun" did not follow the meaning of the original text completely faithfully.At that time, Yan Fu himself also called his work "Da [忄志]", not translation.He said in the book's "Example of Translation": "between words and sentences, there are times when they are used to benefit. Don't focus on the words and sentences, but the meaning is not as good as the text. The title is Da [忄 Purpose], not Yunbi translation." "Tianyanlun", the title of the first two articles of Huxley's "Theory of Evolution and Ethics and Other Treatises" translated by Yan Fu in 1895, was printed by Lu's woodblock in Mianyang, Hubei in 1898 Row.

〔4〕 "How is it still consistent?" see "The Analects of Confucius Advanced": "The people of Lu are the governor's house, and Min Ziqian said: 'It is still consistent, how is it? Why change it!'" [5] Warninger (1880-1903) Austrian, feminist.He is in 190 News Limited〗