译/ 文谦
要知道，任何工作的开始部分都是最重要的，尤其是针对年轻稚嫩之事。因为这是他们的性格养成时期，此时他们渴望什么，相应的铭印就更容易形成. . . . . . 我们会漫不经心地允许孩子们听那些随便的人写出的马马虎虎的故事吗？对那些故事中大部分是同我们期许孩子们在长大成人后拥有的美德相反的理念，我们应该允许它们进入孩子们的思想中吗？
我们不能。 所有进入他们年幼思想的都可能会难以擦掉并不可改变， 因此最重要的就是让孩子们最先听到故事应该是种种品德高尚的思想的典范. . . . . .
如此，则我们的青少年将常驻于健康之地，耳闻目及之事将俱皆澄澈，并会尽享万物之美好；澄澈物事之美将会充盈我们的眼睛和双耳，就如同来自更洁净之处的颐养健康的微风拂面，不知不觉中将早年幼稚的心灵，带入与理性之美共鸣与相近的境界。
没有比这些更尊贵的培育了。
原文欣赏
You know that the beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken. . . . Shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which may be devised by casual persons, and to receive into their minds ideas for the most part the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they are grown up?
We cannot. . . . Anything received into the mind at that age is likely to become indelible and unalterable; and therefore it is most important that the tales which the young first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts. . . .
Then will our youth dwell in a land of health, amid fair sights and sounds, and receive the good in everything; and beauty, the effluence of fair works, shall flow into the eye and ear, like a health-giving breeze from a purer region, and insensibly draw the soul from the earliest years into likeness and sympathy with the beauty of reason.
There can be no nobler training than that.
-PLATO’S Republic
责任编辑：章勤
