照照任公留下的人格镜子——梁启超《德育鉴》新序

Look in the Mirror of Personality Left by Liang Qichao: The New Preface to His Reflecting Moral

梁启超提出的清华校训"自强不息,厚德载物",对他本人而言有其确定而厚重的文化内涵,这种理解早被他编写进《德育鉴》中。正是该书所容纳的历千百年不衰的道德话语探讨,构成了中国文化的基调与特色,使得它毋需舶来的独断形态的宗教,而全凭可以靠理性来把握的价值学说,去环环相扣、层层递进和代代相传,就有效地传播了做人的标准,确立了文明的基本纲常。这种过往文明进程的基本支撑力,也正是早期清华国学院神话的真正谜底,更应在今后的历史中被自觉地"接着讲"。

This article is my new foreword of Reflecting Moral,which had been edited and written by Liang Qichao in 1905,and has just been recommended as one of the moral readers of Tsinghua Academy of Chinese Learning.I point that the exhortation of our university proposed by Liang Qichao has its original determination in his mind himself,which had already been compiled in Reflecting Moral more than a century ago.The moral discourse in this book helped to construct the basic character of Chinese culture during the past thousand years,which enable Chinese just making full use of their own rationality,other than any kind of arbitrary religion,to establish their social standards and moral virtues.Such supporting point of the civilizing process is not only the final answer to the magic riddle of our famous institute,but also ought to be insisted in the new practice in contemporary history.