前天是228紀念日前夕，黃昏時，出門至敦化誠品書店閒逛，翻閱了一下攝影圖書，然後至哲學類書區中購買了一本由胡百華編譯的中英對照《叔本華雋語與箴言》﹝Counsels and Maxims, by Arthur Schopenhauer﹞一書。這一本書，在過去數年，已買了三本，書頁上也曾做了許多眉批，但現都不在手邊，已先後送給親友閱讀，舍弟和沈大哥手裏各有一冊，第三本不知去向。

閱讀《叔本華雋語與箴言》一書，是讓人極為愉悅的事。尤其，在公車上，無所事事時閱讀更有趣味。購書後，在回家的路上，隨手翻閱第五章“如何對待世道和命運”，其中第48節提到“我們的大腦不是我們身上最聰明的器官。在人生的重大時刻，一個人在決定重要的下一步時，他的行動不大受何為正確之事的明確知識指引，而是由可稱之為直覺的內在衝動所引導...........這個直覺或內在衝動可能是來自某種預言性的夢的無意識作用，當我們醒時就遺忘了，這使我們的生命有一致的調性，戲劇般的統一性，這永遠不會來自有意識之下的不穩定時刻；在意識中，我們極易被引導至錯誤，易於擊出一個錯誤的音符..............每一個人都有某種他自己天生的具體原則---彷彿是他身體靜脈所流血液的一部分，事實上，是他所有思想、感情、意欲的綜合體”。該段文字全文如下：

Our brains are not the wisest part of us. In the great moments of life, when a man decides upon an important step, his action is directed not so much by any clear knowledge of the right thing to do, as by an inner impulse — you may almost call it an instinct — proceeding from the deepest foundations of his being. If, later on, he attempts to criticise his action by the light of hard and fast ideas of what is right in the abstract — those unprofitable ideas which are learnt by rote, or, it may be, borrowed from other people; if he begins to apply general rules, the principles which have guided others, to his own case, without sufficiently weighing the maxim that one man’s meat is another’s poison, then he will run great risk of doing himself an injustice. The result will show where the right course lay. It is only when a man has reached the happy age of wisdom that he is capable of just judgment in regard either to his own actions or to those of others.

It may be that this impulse or instinct is the unconscious effect of a kind of prophetic dream which is forgotten when we awake — lending our life a uniformity of tone, a dramatic unity, such as could never result from the unstable moments of consciousness, when we are so easily led into error, so liable to strike a false note. It is in virtue of some such prophetic dream that a man feels himself called to great achievements in a special sphere, and works in that direction from his youth up out of an inner and secret feeling that that is his true path, just as by a similar instinct the bee is led to build up its cells in the comb. This is the impulse which Balthazar Gracian calls la gran sindéresis  — the great power of moral discernment: it is something that a man instinctively feels to be his salvation without which he were lost.

To act in accordance with abstract principles is a difficult matter, and a great deal of practice will be required before you can be even occasionally successful; it oftens happens that the principles do not fit in with your particular case. But every man has certain innate concrete principles — a part, as it were, of the very blood that flows in his veins, the sum or result, in fact, of all his thoughts, feelings and volitions. Usually he has no knowledge of them in any abstract form; it is only when he looks back upon the course his life has taken, that he becomes aware of having been always led on by them — as though they formed an invisible clue which he had followed unawares.

這一段文字，在今晨閱讀到新聞報導一段有關對林懷民的專訪，而再度浮現在腦海中。該專訪部分內容如下：

訪問者問：當年為何才學了一百個小時的舞，就敢創辦舞團

林懷民答：慾望和夢想自己會跳出來。有些夢想是自己不敢和自己說清楚的。

林懷民表示，年少時他想做很多事，但他相信直覺，而不是依賴頭腦決定。

林懷民稱：腦子會告訴你十個理由左轉，也會告訴你十個理由右轉，那會讓人困惑。

﹝待續﹞