克罗齐:论杜威的美学

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克罗齐杜威艺术即经验杂谈 |
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ON THE AESTHETICS OF DEWEY
BENEDETTO CROCE'
论杜威的美学
贝奈戴托·克罗齐
英译:Katharine Gilbert
【译者按】
杜威的《艺术即经验》是一个讲稿,很有即兴的性质。毫无疑问,杜威吸收了克罗齐不少思想,却是用他独特的活泼风格讲出来的。这种风格,如果你亲自听他讲课,是蛮有意思的;但如果你坐下来静读他的书,或许就觉得不满意,因为杜威几乎不用严格的措辞来定义他说的那种“经验”。我不认为杜威抄袭克罗齐,我只相信杜威在最深刻的意义上必定相当同意克罗齐。从精神上说,杜威没有超过克罗齐的美学思想。克罗齐的那本小册子,是极端浓缩的;杜威在某些观点上,只是讲得生动活泼也非常铺张而已。把这两个大哲学家的著作互相对照着研究,必定是一件有趣之事。
文如其人。从文章风格看,我们可以猜得出这两个人的脾气和性格。克罗齐无疑是非常好争辩的;在本文中,他几乎像一个心地狭隘的孩子那样,逼迫杜威承认参考或者借重了他的思想。杜威却是一个循循善诱的老先生,喜欢慢条斯理地讲话,不大喜欢争辩。不知道我猜得对不对。
Dewey's aesthetics is scarcely known at all in Italy; and so far as I am aware, has never been subjected to that detailed critical examination which its intrinsic merits certainly warrant. It furnishes us a new and striking document of the singular mental habit of this thinker – certainly one of the most discerning students of the life of the mind, and possessed of a lively sense of its values, as his ideas on politics and education, and now on art, demonstrate; but at the same time a thinker who continues insistently to call himself an empiricist or pragmatist and to reject and repel, one may almost say with horror, the philosophy commonly called 'idealistic'. Dewey also uses the appreciative term 'organic', but with him it has a touch of mockery. Accustomed as we are in Italy to keep always in mind the history of thought, and to take cognizance of what we call the literature of the subject, in order to become aware of the place which our new conceptions come to occupy in that history and thus confirm their right to it, we feel a certain dissatisfaction in the scarcity or vagueness of such references in Dewey's treatise. In the Preface we read: "I am somewhat embarrassed in an effort to acknowledge indebtedness to other writers on the subject. Some aspects of it may be inferred from authors mentioned or quoted in the text. I have read on the subject for many years, however, more or less widely in English literature, somewhat less in French and still less in German, and I have absorbed much from sources which I cannot now directly recall. Moreover, my obligations to a number of writers are much greater than might be gathered from allusions to them in the volume itself" (p. vii).2 But he must also have availed himself of some Italian authors, though these were perhaps included among the English because read in English translations. However, Dewey expressly mentions my studies more than once in the course of his argument, now to make use of their concepts, for example of my criticism of the separation of the arts from each other; but more often to exorcise with horror, as I said above, my somewhat mad "idealistic" (or rather "organic") way of philosophizing.
在意大利,杜威的美学几乎不为人知;据我所知,他的美学从来不觉得有必要做那么精细而严格的考究;它内在的价值肯定应该要求这种考究。它为我们提供了一份崭新而显眼的文献,记录了这位思想家独特的思想习惯——他肯定是最有洞察力、具有精神境界的学者当中的一员,而且对这种精神境界的价值具有一种活泼的感受力,这都由他关于政治和教育(以及如今关于艺术)的那些想法展示清楚了。但是,与此同时,一位不断地坚持把自己叫做经验主义者或者实用主义者的思想家,却排斥和厌恶通常被叫做“唯心主义”的那种哲学,你得说这几乎令人惊骇。杜威还褒义地使用“有机”这个术语,但他的用法却有几分可笑之处。在意大利,我们习惯于总是把思想史牢记在心,总是记住关于某一论题的所谓文献的那些东西,以便明白我们自己的新思想会在那个历史中处在什么位置上,因此确知我们的新思想蛮有道理占据那个位置。杜威的论著,很少提及思想史,或者提得含糊不清,对此我们当然不满意。在《前言》中我们读到:“关于这个课题,我尽力承认我对其他著作家的借重,却觉得有些尴尬。关于此课题的某些方面,或许是从文本提及或者引用的那些作者那里推导出来的。关于这个论题,我阅读文献许多年,但在广度上读的东西多少是英语的文献,法语读得有点少,德语的就更少了。我从我现在不能直接想起来的一些材料来源中得益不少。另外,与我在这本书中间接地提到的那些说法相比,我欠好多著作家的更多”(p. vii)。【Art as Experience, by John Dewey. Minton, Balch, New York, 1934. 引文及页码均来自此书,特别注明的例外】但是,他一定也得益于一些意大利著作家,尽管这些益处或许包含在英语读物中,因为他读的是英语的译本。然而,在他论证的过程中,杜威清楚地提到了我的一些研究,提了不止一次,并且利用了我的一些概念,比方说,我对艺术分类的批评;但是,正如我在上文说过的那样,他带着憎恶,更经常地对我那种有些发疯的“唯心主义的”(更确切地说,“有机的”)哲学思路赶尽杀绝。
Even so, an Italian reader is pleasantly surprised to meet on every page observations and theories long since formulated in Italy and familiar to him. For example, that 'expression' in the poetical sense is not to be confused with the expression which goes by the same name but is not expression in and for itself, consisting rather in reflective interpretation of a fact on the part of an observer (p. 61); that the feeling or sentiment in a work of art is not something experienced personally, but has a universal character (p. 68); that the act of expression does not supervene upon an inspiration already complete, but goes along with it (p. 66); that an artist does not conceive his work in mental terms, translating it afterward into artistic form, but, if he is a sculptor, conceives it in clay, marble or bronze, and so on (p. 75); that an aesthetic emotion is a distinct thing, yet at the same time not divided by an abyss from other natural experiences (p. 78); that we must reject the formalists' theories of art, which make beauty consist in lines, colors, lights and shadows, and such, separating it from its psychological content and meaning (p. 88); that one does well to avoid even the word "association" [in aesthetics] since by it traditional psychology assumed that the associated material and the immediate sound and color remain separated from each other (p. 99); that the subject (fable) is one thing and the substance of a work of art another (p. 100); that it is not true that visual qualities are as such, or consciously, central, and other qualities only accessory or associated (p. 123); that technique is one thing and art another (p. 142); that figures have in art the value of musical or pictorial tones. This Dewey says wittily, using the words of Matisse to a lady who criticized one of his female figures: "Madam, that is not a woman; that is a picture" (p. 113). Italians are familiar also with the idea that it is a bad sort of naivet6 to separate rhythm and symmetry, and to divide the arts into spatial and temporal, when in reality we have movements and directions in painting and distances and volumes in music (p. 183-4); that there are not such things as aesthetic contents or non-aesthetic contents (p. 187); that all the other arts are in every art (p. 195); that there are not artistic "things", but only an artistic doing, an artistic producing (p. 214); that the so-called 'modifications of the beautiful' such as the sublime, grotesque, tragic, comic, etc., have practical use but surely not conceptual or dialectical meaning; that the aesthetic process is of great importance for the philosopher, because through it he understands the nature of every psychic process; and therefore aesthetics is indispensable to the work of philosophy (p. 274); that it is impossible in judging art, to forego either of the two elements: the sensitive and the intellectual (p. 290); that aesthetic judgment is not that of a court pronouncing in the light of laws or rules (p. 299-300); that historical knowledge is indispensable for judgment on art.
尽管如此,在杜威的每一页书上,一个意大利读者且惊且喜地看到,那些议论和理论在意大利早就有人提出了,都耳熟能详。比方说,诗意上的“表现”没有混同于也名为表现的那种表现,不是表现自身,不是为表现而表现,而是对从观察者这一方看的一个事实所做的反思性的解释(p. 61);比方说,一个艺术品中的感情或者情感,不是个人体验到的某种东西,而是有一种普遍的品格(p. 68);比方说,一个表现的行动不发生在一个完整的灵感之后,而是与之相伴而生(p. 66);比方说,一位艺术家并非以理智的方式构想其作品,事后把它转化到艺术形式之中,而是(如果他是一位雕刻家)在粘土、大理石或者青铜等等中构想它(p. 75);比方说,审美感情是一种与众不同的东西,与此同时却也不被一道深渊与其他自然经验隔开(p. 78);比方说,我们必须摒弃形式主义的艺术理论,这种理论把美搞成了存在于线条、颜色、光和影子之类的东西中,把美与它的心理内容和意义分裂开了(p. 88);比方说,你甚至要[在美学中]竭力避开“联想”这个词,因为传统心理学用这个词来设想被联想到的东西和当下的声音和颜色一直是互相分离的(p. 99);比方说,主题(寓言的含义)是一回事,一个艺术品本身是另一回事(p. 100);比方说,说视觉品质如此重要,或者说在意识上是如此重要,其他品质仅仅是附带性的或者联想到的,这说法是不对的(p. 123);比方说,技巧是一回事,艺术是另一回事(p. 142);比方说,在艺术中,形象具有音乐气质或绘画气质这么一种价值。杜威把这一点说得很机智,他借用马蒂斯对一位女士说的话,这位女士批评其所画的女性形象,他说:“女士,那不是一个女人;那是一幅画”(p.113)。意大利人也很熟悉下面这个观点:把节奏和对称性分开,把艺术分裂为空间的东西和时间的东西,是一种糟糕的天真无知,其时实际上我们在绘画中有运动和方向,在音乐中有距离和体积(p. 183-4);比方说,不存在像审美的内容或者非审美的内容这样的东西(p. 187);比方说,全部的其他艺术都存在于每一种艺术之中(p. 195);比方说,不存在艺术性的“东西”,只存在艺术性的做法,只存在艺术的产生活动(p. 214);比方说,所谓“美的东西的变体”,如崇高、怪诞、悲剧性、喜剧性等等,这些说法固然有实际的用处,但确实没有理论上的或论证上的意义;审美过程对哲学家很重要,因为通过审美过程,他能理解每一种心灵过程的本质;因此美学对于哲学研究是必不可少的(p. 274);比方说,把如下两个因素中的任何一个摆在前面,就不可能对艺术下判断:感悟因素和智力因素(p. 290);比方说,审美判断不是按照法律或者规章做出的法庭判词(p. 299-300);比方说,对于判断艺术而言,历史知识必不可少。
And so on, for here I note rapidly only certain points. Nor am I setting them down to put forward a claim to authorship or priority, but rather to observe that whatever kind and however much stimulus Dewey has received from the thought of others, he thinks over problems for himself, so that his observations come out with freshness and spontaneity and sustain the reader's interest; particularly the interest of one who, having arrived earlier and by other routes at the same conclusions, and discovering his own ideas in a new form, finds in this an added proof of their truth.
还有其他的;关于某些观点,在此我仅仅点到为止。我不打算就此申明著作权或者优先权,我更想说的是:杜威从别人的思想那里得到的启发,无论是什么种类,无论有多少,他都是独立思考问题的,因此他的议论的出台,带着新鲜感,带着即时性,使读者兴趣不衰;有一个人对杜威特别感兴趣,这个人早到了目的地,与杜威殊途同归,并且在一种新形式中发现了他自己的思想,发现了证明他自己的思想是对的一份额外的证据。
But precisely because of this obvious agreement of his doctrines with so-called idealistic aesthetic, a disciple of Dewey's, and his co-religionist in pragmatism, has very recently raised a respectful and resolute protest against the new book. The book, he says, is unfaithful to the principles and method of pragmatism, being dominantly idealistic and organistic in its aesthetics and admitting an absolute judgment of value on works of art. This excites his surprise, and he even asks why Dewey does not at once declare himself an Hegelian. The disciple reminds his master that "organicism is a theory of harmony culminating in the great cosmic harmony of the absolute. Pragmatism is a theory of conflict, celebrating struggle and vigorous life in which every solution is the beginning of a new problem, in which every social ideal is an hypothesis of action, in which values thrive on conflicts" (p. 386).3 To this charge, one must admit, Dewey replies weakly, stating that he remains a pragmatist and has not become an idealist because he does not deduce his aesthetic theory, but makes it spring from the examination of the material before him; moreover, that the terms which he uses, even if to be found in idealistic aesthetics, do not carry in his usage the same signification. In this way he tries to pass off a question of ideas as a question of vocabulary.
但是,正是因为杜威的理论与所谓唯心主义美学的这种明显的一致性,杜威的一个弟子,即他的一位实用主义的教友,在最近提出了一项彬彬有礼也坚决果断的反对意见,反对这本新书。他说,这本书不忠于实用主义的原则和方法,在美学上主要是唯心主义的,是有机论的,并且承认关于艺术品价值的一种绝对判断。这激起了他的惊讶,他甚至发问:为什么杜威不立刻宣布自己是黑格尔主义者?这位弟子提醒他的老师:“有机论是一种关于和谐的理论;和谐最终在绝对者的宇宙大和谐中臻于巅峰。实用主义是一种关于矛盾的理论,颂扬斗争和激越的生活;在这种生活中,每一种解决,都是一个新问题的开端,每一个社会理想都是一种关于行动的假说;在这种生活中,价值在矛盾之上繁荣”(p. 386)。3面对这一指控,你必得承认,杜威的答复软弱无力,说他仍然是一个实用主义者,没有变成一个唯心主义者,因为他的美学理论不是演绎出来的,而是从对他眼前的物质的考察中跳了出来。另外,他用的那些术语,即便会在唯心主义的美学中发现,但他的用法含义不同。如此这般,他试图把关于思想的问题冒充为关于词汇的问题。
But we are not concerned to urge his faults or deviations from pragmatism, except to show that the criticisms he brings against idealistic aesthetics are without foundation. For example, he criticizes Kant for making beauty disinterested, and argues that: "not absence of desire and thought but their thorough incorporation into perceptual experience characterizes esthetic experience in its distinction from experiences that are especially 'intellectual' and 'practical'," and: "the esthetic percipient is free from desire in the presence of a sunset, a cathedral, or a bouquet of flowers in the sense that his desires are fulfilled in the perception itself" (p. 254). This correction is not a correction because it states what Kant stated when he distinguished pleasure from beauty (separated Gefallen from Vergnikgen). Then follows what is intended as a real and proper objection, that is, that "esthetic experience is marked by a greater inclusiveness of all psychological factors than occurs in ordinary experiences, not by reduction of them to a single response. Such a reduction is an impoverishment" (p. 254); but this amounts to a refusal to think, because to think is to distinguish, and one cannot make distinctions without assigning to the mental form thus distinguished its special character of principle; in other words, without using a concept.
但是,我们无意于汲汲于他的那些缺陷或者对实用主义的背离,我们只想表明:他对唯心主义美学的那些批评,是没有根据的。例如,他批评康德把美搞得无利害,争辩说:“并非欲望和思想的缺席,而是把它们统筹进感知经验,才是审美经验的独特之处,由此而特别地区别于‘理智的’或者‘实际的’经验,”以及:“在面对落日、一座大教堂或者一束花的时候,审美感知者超越于欲望,这意思是说他的欲望在这种感知本身中就得到了满足”(p. 254)。这种纠正不算纠正,因为这种纠正说的就是康德所说的(在康德把快适与美甄别开的时候)。接下来的,他着意于一种真实而恰当的反驳,就是说,“审美经验的特点,是与发生在寻常经验的相比,审美经验把全部心理因素都更大地囊括起来,而非把那些因素削减为一种单一的反应。这么一种削减是一种贫乏状态”(p. 254);但是,这等于拒绝思考,因为思考是要甄别;若不指明一种心智形式并因此甄别出它的原则特征,换言之,若不使用一个概念,你就不能把审美经验与其他经验区别开来。
Similarly Dewey, as he proceeds to deny the cognitive character of beauty, agrees that "tangled scenes of life are made more intelligible in esthetic experience; not, however, as reflection and science render things more intelligible by reduction to conceptual form, but by presenting their meanings as the matter of a clarified, coherent, and intensified or 'impassioned' experience" (p. 290).
与此相似,杜威进而否认美的认知特点,同意“在审美经验中,混杂的生活场景被搞得更可理解;然而,那却不像反思和科学那样,凭借缩减到概念的形式而把事情搞得更可理解,而是凭借把生活场景的意义呈现为关于一种清晰化了的、条理一贯的以及被强化了的、或者‘充满激情的’经验这么一种东西。”(p. 290)
This is precisely what is called, in philosophical aesthetics, aesthetic or intuitive or pre-logical knowledge (cognitio inferior, clara sed non distincta). There follows an objection which really can be reduced to the preceding one, viz: to a prohibition of the thinking that distinguishes, criticizes, and defines: "The trouble I find with the representative and cognitive theories of the esthetic is that they, like the play and illusion theories, isolate one strand in the total experience, a strand, moreover, that is what it is because of the entire pattern to which it contributes and in which it is absorbed. They take it to be the whole" (p. 290). Dewey's criticism of me is of the same sort: 'The term 'intuition' is one of the most ambiguous in the whole history of thought. In the theories just considered [Aristotle, Plotinus, Hegel, up to the moderns, like Bosanquet], it is supposed to have essence as its proper object. Croce has combined the idea of intuition with that of expression. Their identification with each other and of both with art has given readers a good deal of trouble. It can be understood, however, on the basis of his philosophic background, and it affords an excellent instance of what happens when the theorist superimposes philosophic preconceptions upon an arrested esthetic experience (arrested, let it be noted, because Dewey benevolently grants me, as he does Schopenhauer, greater experience and sensibility in artistic matters than he does to most philosophers). For Croce is a philosopher who believes that the only real existence is mind, that 'the object does not exist unless it is known, that it is not separable from the knowing spirit.' In ordinary perception objects are taken as if they were external to mind. Therefore, awareness of objects of art and of natural beauty is not a case of perception, but of an intuition that knows objects as, themselves, states of mind. 'What we admire in a work of art is the perfect imaginative form in which a state of mind has clothed itself.' 'Intuitions are truly such because they represent feelings.' Hence the state of mind that constitutes a work of art is expression as a manifestation of a state of mind, and is intuition as knowledge of a state of mind. I do not refer to the theory for the purpose of refutation but as indication of the extreme to which philosophy may go in superimposing a preconceived theory upon esthetic experience, resulting in arbitrary distortion" (p. 294-5).
在哲学美学中,这正是所谓审美的或直觉的或前逻辑的知识。此后他提出了一项反驳,这项反驳确实可以归为前一个反驳,即:禁止区分、批判和定义这样的思想方式:“我发现,关于审美的再现论和认知论,其麻烦在于这些理论(如游戏论和幻觉论一样),把整个经验中的一股孤立起来;另外,一股经验之所以是一股经验,是因为它参与其中的那整个的模式,是它被吸收于其中的那个模式。全部的经验把一股经验融进了那个整体”(p. 290)。杜威对我的批判属于同一类:“在全部思想史中,‘直觉’这个术语是最含糊其辞的术语中的一个。在刚才考察的那些理论中[亚里士多德、普罗汀、黑格尔,一直到现代人,如鲍桑葵],直觉被假定为拥有本质,可作为其恰当对象。克罗齐把关于直觉的观念和关于表现的观念结合起来。直觉和表现彼此等同,又都等同于艺术,这为读者带来了大量麻烦。然而,基于他的哲学背景,他的说法是可以得到理解的,也提供了一个精彩的例子,告诉我们这位理论家把哲学的先入之见一层一层地压在一种被捕捉到了的审美经验上的时候,会发生什么事情(被捕捉到的审美经验,让我们注意这说法,因为杜威仁慈地承认我比大多数哲学家都有更精细的经验和敏感力,正如他承认叔本华也是如此)。因为克罗齐是这么一位艺术家,他相信唯一真实的经验是心灵,相信“对象不存在,除非对象为我所知,相信经验不能和能知的精神分离。”在普通的感知中,对象被看作好像是外在于心灵似的。因此,对艺术对象和自然美的知觉,并非一桩感知的事,而是一种直觉的事;直觉知道对象是其自身,是心灵的状态。“我们在一件艺术品中所欣赏的对象,是其完美的想象性的形式构造一个艺术品的心灵状态是表现,即对于一种心灵状态的展现,是作为关于一种心灵状态的知识的直觉。我提到这个理论,不为反驳的目的,而为表明哲学可能走入极端,把一种先入为主的理论强加在审美经验上,结果就是武断的歪曲”(p.294-295)。
Now, without doubt, I hold that poetry and the other arts have for their material not external things (nobody knows what and where such things are) but the "sentiments" or human passion, and I hold that nothing can exist separated from knowing. As I hold these propositions to be true, it is natural that I should use them to establish the place of art in the system of mind. Dewey does not undertake to refute these doctrines of mine because he considers that he has already refuted their very foundation: viz. philosophical reflection. He says in another book: "Reason, as a Kantian faculty that introduces generality and regularity into experience, strikes us more and more as superfluous-the unnecessary creation of men addicted to traditional formalism and to elaborate terminology. Concrete suggestions arising from past experiences, developed and matured in the light of the needs and deficiencies of the present, employed as aims and methods of specific reconstruction, and tested by success or failure in accomplishing this task of readjustment, suffice. To such empirical suggestions used in constructive fashion for new ends the name intelligence is given" (p. 95-96) .4
现在,毫无疑问,我主张诗和其他艺术不把其材料搞成外在之物(没有人知道外在之物是什么、在哪里),而是把其材料搞成“情感”或者人类激情,我还主张没有什么东西能够与知道分离而存在。由于我把这些命题视为真实的,那么我利用这些命题以确立艺术在心灵系统中的位置,就是自然的了。杜威并不着手反驳关于心灵的这些理论,因为他认为他已经反驳了其基础:即哲学性的反思活动。他在另一本书中说:“理智,作为一种康德式的能力,把一般性和规律性带进了经验,把我们搞得越来越多余无当——这是热衷于传统形式主义、热衷于炮制术语的人类的一些不必要的创造物。以往的经验是按照目前的需求与不足而发展和成熟起来的;起于以往经验的那些具体的提示,被用作目标和方法,以进行具体的重建工作,以这种重新调整的工作任务来检验其成功或者失败,这就足够了。就这种被用于为新目的而进行的建设模式的经验性的提示而言,理智这个名称就得到了”(p. 95-96)。4
It is certainly strange that a mind so keen and a genius so acute as Dewey's should turn in such vicious circles and positivistic tautologies; and I often ask myself how it could have happened. Perhaps his thought is dominated by the traditional Anglo-Saxon empiricism. Perhaps also the fanaticism and emptiness of the orthodoxy of the Kantians and Hegelians who were his first masters in America stirred in him a revolt which has not yet quieted down. Perhaps this feeling of revolt has prevented him from seeing that the Hegelian and related structures have fallen to pieces and that the Absolute which he found so forbidding, no longer exists as such, but has become one with the world, experience, and history; that the new philosophy has rejected the static elements of Hegelianism in order to preserve and develop the dynamic ones. For the new philosophy is a theory of perpetual conflict, of solutions that generate new problems, of a continual enrichment, such as pragmatism claims to be but cannot logically become. However that may be, his philosophical position is such as I have described above.
像杜威这么一个如此敏锐的心灵,一个如此敏锐的天才,竟然陷入这样一个恶性循环,陷入实证主义的同义反复,肯定是怪事一桩;我常常问我自己,这怎么可能发生。或许他的思想被传统的英国经验主义统治着。也或许康德与黑格尔(他在美国的最早的老师)的正统思想的那种异想天开和空虚无聊,刺激他造了反,至今还没有平静下来。或者这种造反情绪使他看不到黑格尔及其相关的理论构造已经分崩离析,看不到他觉得如此令人生畏的“绝对者”不再令人生畏了,而是变成了一个与世界、经验和历史同在的东西;他看不到这种新哲学已经摒弃了黑格尔主义的那些静态的因素,以便保存和发展出那些动态的因素,因为这种新哲学是一种关于永恒矛盾、关于产生新问题的解决方式、关于一种不断的丰富过程的理论,就像实用主义声称要成为的、但在逻辑上不可能成为的那种哲学。然而尽管可能是如此,他的哲学地位若何,我在上文已经说过。
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我自鸣得意,觉得我的译文“就是不错”!难道不是吗?http://www/uc/myshow/blog/misc/gif/E___6726EN00SIGG.gif
【我的建议】
一个非常好的学位论文的题目:
《克罗齐美学与杜威美学之比较》,
研究一番朱光潜译的克罗齐《美学原理·美学概要》,
研究一番高建平译的杜威《艺术即经验》,
差不多就可以动笔了。
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在网上可以找到电子的。
山大内外的研究生们,请随便采纳这个建议,如果你认为这个建议不算馊主意。
但在事后把你的论文发给我看看,我会很高兴。