Good Taste in Knowledge英文资料.docxVIP

Good Taste in KnowledgeTHE aim of education or culture is merely the development of good taste in knowledge and good form in conduct. The cultured man or the ideal educated man is not necessarily one who is well-read or learned, but one who likes and dislikes the right things.To know what to love and what to hate is to have taste in knowledge. ... I have met such persons, and found that there was no topic that might come up in the course of the conversation concerning which they did not have some facts or figures to produce, but whose points of view were deplorable. Such persons have erudition, but no discernment, or taste. Erudition is a mere matter of cramming of facts or information, while taste or discernment is a matter of artistic judgment.??In speaking of a scholar, the Chinese generally distinguish between a mans scholarship, conduct, and taste or discernment.? This is particularly so with regard to historians; a book of history may be written with the most fastidious scholarship, yet be totally lacking in insight or discernment, and in the judgment or interpretation of persons and events in history, the author may show no originality or depth of understanding. Such a person, we say, has no taste in knowledge. To be well-informed, or to accumulate facts and details, is the easiest of all things. There are many facts in a given historical period that can be easily crammed into our mind, but discernment in the selection of significant facts is a vastly more difficult thing and depends upon ones point of view. CD Huefi (scholarship); hsin^ (conduct); ^hih or ^hihchien (discernment, or real insight) . Thus ones shih, or power of insight into history or contemporary events may be higher than anothers.This is what we call power of interpretation, or interpretative in An educated man, therefore, is one who has the right loves and hatreds. This we call taste, and with taste comes charm. Now to have taste or discernment requires a capacity for thinking things throug