我们整个现代世界陷于亚历山德里亚文化的网罗中；
Our whole modern world is entangled in the net of Alexandrian culture.
它所目为理想的人物，是具备最高知识能力，
It proposes as its ideal the theoretical man equipped with the greatest forces of knowledge,
努力为科学效劳的理论家，苏格拉底就是这种人物的原型和始祖。
and laboring in the service of science, whose archetype and progenitor is Socrates.
我们所有教育方法最初就以这种理想为目的；
All our educational methods originally have this ideal in view:
其余一切生存方式都在它旁边艰苦挣扎，仿佛是一种姑且允许的而非其所欲的生存。
every other form of existence must struggle on laboriously beside it, as something tolerated, but not intended.
很长时间，有教养的人只以学者的姿态出现，实属惊人；
In an almost alarming manner the culture man was for a long time found only in the form of the scholar:
甚至我们的诗艺也不得不从渊博的仿作演绎出来，
even our poetical arts have been forced to evolve from scholarly imitations,
即就韵律的主要作用而言，
and in the main effect,
我们也见到我们的诗体不是出自乡土之音，而是源于博学雅言的艺术试作。
that of rhyme, we still recognize the origin of our poetic form from artificial experiments with a nonindigenous, really scholarly language.
浮士德，现代文明人的典型，是可以理解的现象，可是在真正的希腊人看来，定必是多么不可思议：
How unintelligible must Faust, the modern cultured man, who is in himself intelligible, have appeared to a true Greek--Faust,
浮士德贪得无厌地攻究一切学术，为了求知的冲动而献身于巫术与魔鬼。
storming unsatisfied through all the faculties, devoted to magic and the devil from a desire for knowledge;
我们只要把浮士德放在苏格拉底旁边来比较，
Faust, whom we have but to place beside Socrates for the purpose of comparison,
就不难明白：现代人开始预料到这种苏格拉底求知欲的极限，
in order to see that modern man is beginning to divine the limits of this Socratic love of knowledge
所以对着沧茫的知识之海悠然向往彼岸。
and yearns for a coast in the wide waste of the ocean of knowledge.
歌德有一次讲到拿破仑，便对厄克尔曼说：
When Goethe on one occasion said to Eckermann with reference to Napoleon:
“是的，好朋友，在事业方面也有一种创作力。”
"Yes, my good friend, there is also a productiveness of deeds,"
他天真得可爱地提醒我们：对于现代人，非理论家总是可疑可畏的人物。
he reminded us in a charmingly naïve manner that the nontheorist is something incredible and astounding to modern man;
所以，我们还需要有歌德的聪明，才能发现这样一种惊人的生存方式不但是可以理解的，甚至是可以原谅的。
so that we again have need of the wisdom of Goethe to discover that such a surprising form of existence is not only comprehensible, but even pardonable.