Ignorance Makes One Happy
Guidance for Reciting
Ignorance is bliss？No，knowing your ignorance is bliss！
It is as though each of us investigated and made his own a tiny circle of facts. Knowledge outside the day's work is regarded by most men as a gewgaw. Still we are constantly in reaction against our ignorance. We rouse ourselves at intervals and speculate. We revel in speculations about anything at all. One of the greatest joys known to man is to take such a flight into ignorance in search of the knowledge. The great pleasure of ignorance is，after all，the pleasure of asking questions. The man who has lost this pleasure or exchanged it for the pleasure of dogma，which is the pleasure of answering，is already beginning to stiffen. Most of us have lost the sense of our ignorance long before that age. We even become vain of our squirrel's hoard of knowledge and regard increasing age itself as a school of omniscience. We forget that Socrates was famed for wisdom not because he was omniscient but because he realized at the age of seventy that he still knew nothing.
Notes
gewgaw [5gju：gR：] n. 便宜货，华而不实的东西
dogma [5dRgmE] n. 教条
fame [feim] vt. 使闻名，使有名望
无知常乐
诵读导言
无知是福？错，知道自己的无知才算得上。
我们每个人似乎都只钻研、弄懂很小范围内的一些事情。大多数人都认为日常生活之外的知识是花里胡哨的东西。然而，我们也在不停地抗拒着我们的无知。有时，我们会振奋起来，进行思考。我们会信手拈来一个问题，然后沉浸在思考中。在寻找知识的过程中陷入无知，是人类的一大乐事。无知的快乐，说到底，是提问题的快乐。一个已经不会提问的人，一个用教条的答案回答问题并以此为乐的人，他的头脑已经开始僵化了。我们甚至会为我们的一点浅薄的知识而沾沾自喜，甚至觉得，流逝的时光本身就会自然地给我们所有的知识。我们忘了，苏格拉底之所以流芳百世，不是因为他什么都懂，而是他发现在他七十岁的时候，仍然什么都不懂。
注：本段节选，有删节。作者罗伯特.林德（Robert Lynd，1879―1949），英国近代散文名家，生于爱尔兰，曾任伦敦《新闻报》文学编辑，工作之余著作颇丰，在散文创作方面有较高成就。