Friends, when you are most pessimistic and disappointed, that is when you must muster up strong faith. Be convinced that there is no wasted effort in the world. Success does not have to be in me, and the skill must not be donated.
- Hu Shi
Today is the 60th anniversary of Mr. Hu Shi's death, sharing this speech delivered by Hu Shi, then dean of the School of Letters of Peking University, to graduates, "Gift to this year's university graduates" for remembrance. Two years later, when he attended other college graduation ceremonies, he said: "What I want to say in my heart, I want to come and go, it is just these three sentences, to find problems, to cultivate amateur interests, to have confidence." 」 ”
He further explained: "First, we must always look for one or two problems worth studying. A young person leaves the environment of learning, and it is difficult to maintain the enthusiasm for the pursuit of knowledge in his student years without one or two difficult questions worth answering in his mind.
Second, there is always a need to develop a little amateur interest. The career the graduate finds may not be suitable for him; Or what he learned, but not necessarily what he liked. The best relief is to develop more legitimate interests and activities outside of his profession.
Third, there must always be a little confidence. The failures of today's nations are due to the inactivity of the past; Our efforts today are bound to have a great harvest in the future. On June 18, 1960, Hu Shi, then president of Taiwan's Academia Sinica, summed up the three herbs as "problem Dan, interest scattering, and confidence soup" in his speech at the graduation ceremony of Taiwan's Chenggong University.
Gifted to this year's college graduates
—
Hu Shiwen
In a week or two, there are graduation shifts at universities everywhere, and many graduates leave school to start their adult careers.
The life of students is a life of special preferential treatment, may be childish, may be noisy, society can indulge them, not strictly hold them responsible for their behavior. Now they have to prop up their shoulders to carry their own burdens. In this most urgent year of national disaster, their burden is really not light! We wish them success, but we also can't bear not to give them a few words of farewell based on their own experience - although it may not be a life-saving hair, maybe it is a self-defense tip!
After you graduate, there are only a few paths that you can take: a very small number of people can continue to do academic research in domestic or foreign research institutes, a small number of people can find considerable careers, in addition to the three roads of becoming an official, running a party, and revolution, in addition, they are living in the family or unemployed.
Those who take the other paths cannot be without the danger of depravity. There are many ways of falling, and in summary, there are about two main categories:
The first is that it is easy to abandon the desire for knowledge in the student age. When you go to the actual society, you often learn things that are not useful, often all that you have learned is useless, and you can often not use your studies at all, but you can eat indiscriminately and eat as officials. In this environment, even those who have always held the pursuit of knowledge and learning cannot help but be discouraged and lazy, and the desire for knowledge will gradually become cold. Moreover, learning requires considerable equipment, books, laboratories, teachers and friends to guide, leisure work, is not a person who usually has to support the family can easily do. Without an environment of learning, who can blame us for abandoning learning?
The second is that it is easy to abandon the pursuit of the ideal life of the student era. When young people first come into contact with a cold society, it is easy to feel that the ideal and the facts are too far apart, and it is easy to be pessimistic and disappointed. The ideals of life, the enthusiasm for transformation, and the courage to struggle that have been embraced for many years, at this point, it seems that this is not the same thing at all. In that intense social fire, the small individual often melts down without withstanding a long period of roasting, and a little noble ideal is soon disillusioned. Those who come with the dream of transforming society often abandon their armor and leave the army, or become prisoners of the evil forces. In that prison, when you think back to all the idealism of that youthful and vigorous era, it seems that you have become a dream of self-misleading people! From now on, you will be willing to give up the pursuit of an ideal life and be willing to be a submissive citizen of the current society. To defend against the fall of these two aspects, we must maintain our desire for knowledge on the one hand, and on the other hand, we must maintain our pursuit of life.
Mr. Hu Shi took a photo as the president of the Academia Sinica
What's the best way? From my personal observation and experience, there are three self-defense prescriptions that are worth trying.
The first square has only one sentence: "Always look for one or two problems worth studying!" "The problem is the ancestor of knowledge, and all the knowledge produced and accumulated throughout the ages is because of the need to answer the problem -- to answer the practical difficulties and the theoretical difficulties. The so-called "seeking knowledge for the sake of knowledge" is actually just a curiosity to pursue the solution of a certain problem, but because the nature of that problem does not have to be directly applied, people feel that this is an indifferent search for knowledge.
After we leave school, we leave the environment of doing learning, and if there is no one or two questions worth answering in our minds, it is difficult to maintain the enthusiasm for learning. However, if you have a really interesting problem to make you think about him, every day to lure you to solve him, every day to provoke you, you have no choice but to do with him - at this time, you will be in love with a woman crazy, can not sit down, sleep restlessly, have no time to steal work to accompany her, no money to shrink the diet to seduce her. Without books, you will become a seller to buy books privately; without instruments, you will take clothes to buy instruments; without teachers and friends, you will travel thousands of miles to find teachers and friends. As long as you have difficult problems to force you to use your brain at all times, you will naturally maintain your interest in learning, and even in the poorest knowledge, you will slowly gather a small library, or set up a small laboratory. So I say, the first thing to do is to look for problems. The day when there is no problem in your mind is when your intellectual life comes to an end! The ancients said, "Those who are prosperous for king Wen are also the people." The man of Ruofu Haojie, although there is no King Wen Yuxing." Imagine how many books Galileo and Newton had? How many instruments are there? They just have problems. When they have a problem, they will build their own instruments to solve their problem. People who have no problems will not use books in the library, and they will not find anything in the laboratory.
The second formula also has only one sentence: "There is always a need to develop a little non-professional interest." "After leaving school, everyone always looked for a career to eat. But the career you find may not be what you have learned, it may not be what you like, or what you have learned is not close to your temperament. In this case, the work often becomes hard work, and there is no interest. To do the kind of work that is not "close to sex and can be encouraged" in order to make a living is difficult to maintain an interest in knowledge and the idealism of life. The best remedy is to develop more legitimate interests and activities outside of the profession.
Hu Shi's 1911 diary
A person should have his profession, and he should also have his non-professional gadgets, which can be called homework activities. Often his leisure activities are more important than his profession, because how well a man achieves is often determined by how he uses his leisure time. He uses his leisure to play mahjong, and he becomes a gambler; you use your leisure to do social service, you may become a social reformer; or you use your leisure to study history, you may become a historian. Your leisure time is often set for your life. Two British philosophers of the 19th century, Miller served all his life as secretary to the East India Company, but his amateur work gave him a high place in the history of philosophy, economics, and political thought; Spencer was a surveying engineer, but his amateur work made him an important center of world thought in the late pre-century. Gu Laicheng University asked, and there was hardly a single one who did not make good use of his leisure time. Especially in this unorthodox Chinese society, occupation is not easy to suit our temperament, and if we want to live without suffering and degeneration, we can only develop in many ways.
With this beloved thing, you don't feel bored doing six hours of tablewashing, because you know that after six hours of wiping your desk, you can go home and do your chemistry research, or finish your large landscapes, or write your novels and operas, or continue your historical evidence, or do your social reform cause. With this kind of satisfactory activity, life will not be dull, and the spirit will not be bored.
The third method is only one sentence: "You have to have a little faith." "We were born in this unfortunate era, and what we see in our eyes and hear in our ears is nothing more than pessimism and disappointment. Especially those of you who graduated at this age, seeing your own country and nation sink to this step of the field, seeing that the world is only a world of power, looking at the sky seems to be unable to see a glimmer of light - in this year, it is already a blessing not to commit suicide in a frenzy, how can you still maintain a little inner composure and ideal trust? I say to you: This is the time for us to cultivate our faith! As long as we have faith, we still have salvation.
The ancients said, "Faith can move mountains." He also said, "As long as the work is deep, the pig iron is ground into an embroidery needle." "Don't you believe it? When Napoleon's army conquered Prussia and occupied Berlin, a professor named Fichte exhorted his people every day in the lecture hall to have faith, to believe that their people had a special mission of the world and were bound to be revived. At the time of Fichte's death, no one could predict when the unified German Empire would be realized. However, within fifty years, the new unified German Empire was realized.
The strength and weakness of a country are not accidental, and neither can escape the iron law of cause and effect. The suffering and shame we suffer today are only the consequences of the evil causes of the past. If we want to reap the good fruits of the future, we must strive to plant new causes for the present. Grain by grain, there will be a full house of harvest, which is the confidence we should have today. We must be convinced that today's failures are due to past inexperiencies. We must be convinced that today's efforts will lead to a great harvest in the future.
There is a saying in the Buddhist scriptures: "Blessings do not donate." "Tang Donation was lost in vain." We should also say, "Don't donate!" "No effort is lost in vain. When we can't see the unexpected, in the direction we can't see, you see! The seeds you have planted have already taken root and blossomed! Don't you believe it? After France was defeated by Prussia, it cut off two provinces and paid half a million francs in reparations. At this time, there was a hard-working scientist Pasteur who spent his days in his chemistry laboratory doing his chemical experiments and microbiological research. He was a most patriotic man, yet he was convinced that only science could save the country. He spent his life demonstrating three scientific problems:
1. Each fermentation effect is due to the development of a microorganism;
2. Every infectious disease is the development of a microbacterium in the organism;
3. Microbes of infectious diseases can reduce their virulence under special culture, so that they can change from germs to disease-proof seedlings.
On the surface, none of these three issues seems to have much to do with the great cause of national salvation. However, as evidenced by the first question, Pasteur set out a new law for making vinegar wine, which reduced the country's wine and vinegar industry from great losses every year. As evidenced by the second question, Pasteur taught the silk industry throughout the country how to choose seeds to prevent disease, to teach the country's livestock farmers how to prevent bovine and sheep plague, and to teach the world how to pay attention to disinfection to reduce surgical mortality. As evidenced by the third question, Pasteur invented the cure for the splenic fever of livestock, which reduced the loss of twenty million francs a year for the French peasants; and invented the treatment of mad dog bites, which saved countless lives. So the British scientist Huxley praised Pasteur's exploits in the Royal Society: "France has given Germany half a million francs of reparations, and Mr. Pasteur's achievements in science alone are enough to pay off this reparation." Pasteur had great confidence in science, so he refused to abandon his microscope and laboratory when the country was humiliated and humiliated. He never expected to be able to repay the reparations of half a million francs under his microscope, but when he could not see it, he had already reaped the miracle of scientific salvation.
Louis Pasteur, French microbiologist, chemist, and one of the founders of microbiology. He was the first scientist to create a vaccine for rabies and anthrax, known for rejecting the theory of natural generation through biogenesis, advocating the bacteriological theory of disease, and inventing vaccination methods and pasteurization methods. He is praised by the world as "the most perfect person who has entered the kingdom of science".
Friends, when you are most pessimistic and disappointed, that is when you must muster up strong faith. Be convinced that there is no wasted effort in the world. Success does not have to be in me, and the skill must not be donated.
Hu shi
Scholar, historian, and intellectual historian, born in Chuansha County, Songjiang Province, Jiangsu Province, entered the family school since childhood, was admitted to the Chinese public school at the age of fifteen, and was admitted to the Gengzi Compensation Official Fee At the age of nineteen, studied in the United States, first entered Cornell University to study agriculture, in 1915 entered the Columbia University Research Institute, studied pragmatism (experimentalism) philosophy, and returned to China after passing the doctoral examination in philosophy in the summer of 1917, and was hired as a professor at Peking University. In 1918, he joined the editorial board of New Youth, and at the same time engaged in vernacular literature creation, in 1922 he became the provost and acting dean of liberal arts of Peking University, in 1920 he founded "Effort Weekly" and "Modern Review", in 1927 he received a doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University, in 1928, he founded "New Moon" magazine, in 1932 he became the dean of the School of Letters of Peking University and the head of the Department of Chinese Literature, and founded the "Independent Review". In 1946, he became the president of Peking University, in 1958 he was the president of Taiwan's "Academia Sinica", in 1960 he signed a petition with Lei Zhen and others against Chiang Kai-shek's three consecutive terms, and died in Taipei in 1962. Hu Shi's major works include Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy (Part I), Collection of Attempts, History of Vernacular Literature (Part I), and Four Volumes of Hu Shi Wencun.
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