“深刻”一词人们常常提及，那么什么是深刻，人们却很少思考，结果在现实生活中，人们往往是被“深刻”所迷惑，将本不深刻的东西视为深刻，将原本深刻的东西视为不深刻。
Shenke is a word often on people's tongue, but most people hardly ever think what the word really means and often get confused by it. And more often than not, many people take things not profound for being profound or the other way round.
《现代汉语词典》是这样解释深刻的，一是“达到事情或问题的本质的”，二是“内心感受程度很大的”。这两个方面告诉我们，深刻一是指思维，二是指感受。感受，人们好理解，一辈子没见过红颜色，第一次看见，那肯定是印象深刻。但是，思维就不那么简单，因为要达到事物或是某一问题的本质，不是眼见为真。我们眼睛看到的常常只是表象，不是本质。
The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary explains the word Shenke as: one, get to the essence of matter or problem; two, deeply impressed. We can see from the above explanations that Shenke means "profoundness", referring to two aspects: thinking and impression. It is not difficult to understand impression. Suppose someone sees the color red for the first time in his life, he will surely have a deep or profound impression. However, thinking is not so simple. One may not get to the essence of things by just seeing them, because what we see is often the superficial presentation, not the essence itself.
我们常说鲁迅杂文写得深刻，深刻在什么地方，就是揭露了中国封建社会的本质，就是“吃人”二字。也许有人会说，封建社会怎么吃人呢？谁也没看见封建社会这个血盆大口。殊不知，这个血盆大口不是长着獠牙，它是用一种无形的东西，即封建的意志，更进一步说就是皇帝个人的意志束缚着你的行为、你的思想，而且它还口口声声说一切都是为你着想，让你心甘情愿做奴才。无形之枷锁有时比獠牙还厉害，它剥夺了一个人方方面面的权力。人类有时也很麻木，一旦习惯了某种生活方式，他就会不觉得这种生活方式让他失去了什么，长期不在自由下生活的人，并不知道自由的可贵，长期不思考的人，也并不知道思考的意义，结果就是你不让我自由，我就不要自由，你不让我思考，我就不思考，只要让我吃饱饭就行。此种麻木的思想，被鲁迅意识到了，就是本该我们作为人应有的东西被专制者拿走了，这和吃人有什么两样，这也就是说鲁迅看见了我们看不见的地方。
We often say Lu Xun's essays were written in a profound way. Their profoundness lies in exposing the essence of China's feudal society—men-eating. Perhaps some people may ask: How could a feudal society eat men? Nobody has ever seen that it had a bloody mouth. Such people hardly realize that the so-called "bloody mouth" did not have fiendish teeth in it but is rather something invisible: It implemented the will of feudalism, or the personal will of the emperor to fetter people's thinking as well as their behavior while claiming that it was all for their own good, so that they would be willing slaves. Invisible fetters are often more terrible than fiendish teeth as they would deprive people of every right. Sometimes human beings are quite insensitive. Once getting used to a certain way of life, most people would not feel that anything has been taken away from them; those who have lived without freedom would not know the value of freedom; and those who had not been engaged in thinking for a long time would not know the meaning of thinking. Consequently, such people would not ask for freedom if freedom was not given them nor would they engage themselves in thinking if thinking was not allowed. Everything might seem alright to them as long as they were permitted to have their meals. Lu Xun discovered such insensitiveness. That is, as human beings, they were deprived of something inherently belonging to them by autocrats. There was no difference between such practice and men-eating. This tells us Lu Xun saw things many people did not.
深刻绝不是奇谈怪论，不是谁喊叫和辱骂声大谁就深刻，不是你想到了我没有想到就是深刻，也不是你敢说我不敢说就是深刻，更不是因为你看的书多能引用几句名人的话就是深刻，深刻与这些统统都无关。深刻存在于事物自身，任何事物都有它自身运动的规律，改造规律必定受规律的惩罚，人类社会也如此。在过去的六十年中，我们曾一度改造人的灵魂，结果是自己害了自己。这主要原因，还是自己对自己认识的不足，自己没有把自己看成是正常人，而看成是超人。从事物的本质上认识事物，我们就会离真理更近一些。
Profoundness by no means refers to strange tales or absurd arguments. Shouting or hurling abuse is not a manifestation of profoundness, nor is hitting upon something before others or daring to speak out something when others are not. The fact that one has read more books than others, thus able to quote famous people, is not a reflection of profoundness either. None of these has anything to do with real profoundness, which exists in things themselves. Everything has its own rules. Anyone who tries to change such rules will be punished. And this is also true with human society. In the past sixty years we had for a time tried to transform people's souls, only to have brought harms to ourselves. This is mainly because we didn't have enough understanding of ourselves, or in a sense, had deemed ourselves as supermen rather than as normal persons. We shall come nearer to truth if we see things from their essence.
这个世界不缺少深刻，就跟不缺少美一样，缺少的是发现深刻和美的眼睛。比如万有引力，它本身就存在，不过是你认识不到，而牛顿认识到了，我们就应该说牛顿是深刻的。布鲁诺说地球是围着太阳转，这是本身存在的事实，所以他是深刻的，而且深刻得让许多人不相信他的深刻，他的悲剧就是恰恰与世俗观念的背叛。这样说来深刻并不是玄而又玄的东西，它是既简单又朴素的：一是事物本身存在的动因，二是我们要能准确地说出这种存在的动因。
This world does not lack profoundness, just as it does not lack beautifulness. What is lacking is eyes capable of discovering profoundness and beautifulness. Take gravity for example. It has always existed but for a long time not recognized by common people. But Newton recognized it. We must say Newton was of profound learning. Bruno said that our Earth goes round the sun. This is a plain fact so he was also of profound learning. But his view was so profound that many people did not believe in his profoundness. His tragedy was caused by the fact that his profoundness went against the then worldly views. In this sense, profoundness is not something extremely mysterious or abstruse. On the contrary, it is plain and simple: first, there is the motivation of the existence of things; second, we must be able to account for such motivation precisely.