けれども,このようなことは全て,我々が単に他の人間に対する態度に関心を持つ限りにおいてのみ真理となります。土地がいやいやながら,わずかばかりの作物しか産み出さないという理由で,あなたは土地を敵とみなすかも知れません。人は母なる自然一般を敵とみなして,人間の生活を母なる自然に打ち克つための闘いだとみなすかも知れません。もし人間が人生をこのように見れば,全人類の協力は容易になるかも知れません。そして,学校,新聞,政治家がこの目的のために献身的になるならば,人々は容易に人生をこのように見るようになるでしょう。しかし,(実際は)学校は進んで愛国心を教え,新聞は進んで興奮をかき立て,政治家は進んで再選されようとします(注:再選されるためならウソ偽りをいうことも平気)。従って、この三者のうちのいずれも,人類を相互自殺から救うことに対し,何もすることができないのです。 |
Interwoven with many other political motives are two closely related passions to which human beings are regrettably prone: I mean fear and hate. It is normal to hate what we fear, and it happens frequently, though not always, that we fear what we hate. I think it may be taken as the rule among primitive men, that they both fear and hate whatever is unfamiliar. They have their own herd, originally a very small one. And within one herd, all are friends, unless there is some special ground of enmity. Other herds are potential or actual enemies; a single member of one of them who strays by accident will be killed. An alien herd as a whole will be avoided or fought according to circumstances. It is this primitive mechanism which still controls our instinctive reaction to foreign nations. The completely untravelled person will view all foreigners as the savage regards a member of another herd. But the man who has travelled, or who has studied international politics, will have discovered that, if his herd is to prosper, it must, to some degree, become amalgamated with other herds. If you are English and someone says to you, "The French are your brothers", your first instinctive feeling will be, "Nonsense. They shrug their shoulders, and talk French. And I am even told that they eat frogs." If he explains to you that we may have to fight the Russians, that, if so, it will be desirable to defend the line of the Rhine, and that, if the line of the Rhine is to be defended, the help of the French is essential, you will begin to see what he means when he says that the French are your brothers. But if some fellow-traveller were to go on to say that the Russians also are your brothers, he would be unable to persuade you, unless he could show that we are in danger from the Martians. We love those who hate our enemies, and if we had no enemies there would be very few people whom we should love. All this, however, is only true so long as we are concerned solely with attitudes towards other human beings. You might regard the soil as your enemy because it yields reluctantly a niggardly subsistence. You might regard Mother Nature in general as your enemy, and envisage human life as a struggle to get the better of Mother Nature. If men viewed life in this way, cooperation of the whole human race would become easy. And men could easily be brought to view life in this way if schools, newspapers, and politicians devoted themselves to this end. But schools are out to teach patriotism; newspapers are out to stir up excitement; and politicians are out to get re-elected. None of the three, therefore, can do anything towards saving the human race from reciprocal suicide. |