史威夫特、坦普爾、狄佛與耶穌會士

Swift, Temple, Defoe, and the Jesuits

十七世紀耶穌會傳教士對中國的燦爛描述被送回歐洲之後，對啟蒙時代的重要人物，如德國的萊布尼茲、法國的伏爾泰及英國的坦普爾爵士，產生極大的影響。坦普爾的秘書（及遠房親戚）史威夫特是受到坦普爾中國觀點影響的同時期年輕人之一。史威夫特的名著《格里弗遊記》（1726），在主題和詞語上，含有坦普爾的迴響。《格里弗遊記》的第一部和第三部大半是史威夫特對英國的諷刺，第二部和第四部則包含坦普爾所讚揚的儒家系統價值觀──英國顯然缺乏的價值觀──的迴響。儘管如此，卻有些歐洲人對耶穌會的報導無動於衷，尤其是狄佛。他的小說《魯賓遜漂流記的進一步冒險》（1719）嘲笑中國及中國缺乏基督新教的工作倫理。我們可從狄佛和坦普爾（以及，經由推論，史威夫特）對中國態度的差異看到啟蒙時代對儒家理想世界的印象如何隨著狄佛所屬的商業階層得勢，而被近現代對天朝的負面形象所取代。

The glowing accounts of China that Jesuit missionaries in the 17th Century sent back to Europe had great influence on such Enlightenment figures as Leibniz in Germany, Voltaire in France, and Sir William Temple in England. Among Temple's younger contemporaries influenced by his views of China was his secretary (and distant relative) Jonathan Swift, whose masterpiece, Gulliver's Travels (1726), contains thematic and verbal echoes of Temple. While the first and third books of Gulliver's Travels are largely satires of Swift's England, the second and fourth books contain echoes of the Confucian system of values praised by Temple – values conspicuously absent in England. Some Europeans, however, were unimpressed by the Jesuit reports, notably Daniel Defoe, whose novel The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719) mocks China and its lack of a Protestant work ethic. In the contrasting attitudes taken toward China by Defoe and Temple (and, by inference, Swift) we can see how the Enlightenment image of a Confucian Utopia gave way – as Defoe's mercantile class came to power – to the negative image of the Celestial Empire of early modern times.