前些天,从网上买了一本约翰·密尔的《论自由》,是商务印书馆的权威版本。版权页上这样写道:本书是1959年2月出的第1版,2014年11月印刷,迄今已再版17次。《论自由》这本书,早在1903年(清光绪二十九年)就由思想家严复翻译成汉语了,当时也是由商务印书馆出版的。所以,1959年2月这次出版是重印版,此版本开篇就有一篇《重印〈论自由〉序言》(以下简称《序言》),而在笔者所买的这本书中,依然重排了这篇序言。我读完后,感到十分惊讶:如此观念陈旧、不合时宜的序言,怎么会 A few days ago, bought from the Internet a John Mill’s “On Freedom” is the authoritative version of the Commercial Press. The copyright page states: “This book is the first edition of February 1959, printed in November 2014 and has been reprinted so far for 17 times. The book ”On Freedom“ was translated into Chinese by Yan Fu as early as 1903 (Emperor Guangxu twenty-nine years ago), and was published by the Commercial Press at the time. Therefore, in February 1959 this publication was a reprinted version, and there was a ”Preface to the Reprinting of Freedom“ (hereinafter referred to as the ”Preface") at the beginning of this edition, which was still rearranged in the book the author bought This preface. After reading it, I was very surprised: how can such an outdated, out-of-date preface