纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 030中国青铜钟（7）

In Europe we rarely listen to music that is more than five or six hundred years old,

现在我们能听到的欧洲音乐，历史通常都不超过五六百年。

but the music of the ancient Chinese bells has been resonating harmoniously for over two and a half thousand years, symbolising not only the sound of an era but the underlying political ideals of an ancient society and its modern successors.

但中国古代铜钟的音乐，两千五百多年来一直和谐地回荡。它不只代表了一个时代的声音，也代表了一个古代社会及其现代继承者的深层政治理想。

It's a Confucian principle that China once again finds very appealing today-although that hasn't always been the case.

孔子的思想在中国的传播曾遭中断，今天又重新流行起来。

Here's Isobel Hilton again:

伊莎贝尔希尔顿说道：

"Confucianism was really the soul of the Chinese state for the best part of two thousand years but,

在过去两千年中的绝大部分时期，孔子的思想都是中国的灵魂。

in the early twentieth century, it was really very strongly criticised by the modernisers, the revolutionaries, the people who blamed Confucianism for the decline of China in the previous two hundred years, and it fell out of favour.

但在二十世纪早期，革命者和运动家曾激烈地批判孔子，认为他是造成中国过去两百年衰退的主因。

But Confucianism never really went away.

孔子学说受到冷落，但它从未消失。

Curiously enough, harmonious society is what we hear today on the lips of Chinese leaders.

如今，我们又从当代政治家的口中听到了和谐社会。

What the leadership today wants is a society that is more content, in which people are content, if you like, with their station, so no more class struggle;

领导人希望人民对社会更满意，满足于自己的现状，不再有阶级斗争，

in which the leaders are seen to embody virtue as in the old Confucian idea.

而依据古老的孔子思想，领导人自身亦应体现出美德。

And it is their virtue that makes people accept their right to rule. So we've seen the taking of this very old idea of harmony, and we're seeing it in a modern form to justify a static political system, a system in which the right to rule is not questioned."

是政府的德行使得百姓接受政府的管理。因此，我们看到古老的“和”的观念被重新接纳, 转化为一种维护政治稳定的现代形式，让人民顺从地接受政府管理。