第2巻第4章 再婚(承前)
翌年の1930年には,『幸福の獲得』(The Conquest of Happiness/いわゆる『ラッセル幸福論』)という本を出版した。それは,不幸の気質的な原因を克服するために,社会的・経済的制度の変革によってなしうることに対照する(向かい合っている)ものとして,各個人が何をなしうるかということに関する常識的な助言から成っている本であった。この本は,3つの異なった階層の読者によって異なった評価を受けた。素朴な読者は -本書はそれらの人向けに執筆されたものだが- 本書を愛読した。その結果,大変な売れ行きを示した。これと反対に,インテリぶる連中は,この本を軽蔑すべき金儲けのための,現実逃避の本であり,政治以外になされるべきあるいは言われるべき有益なことがあるのだという虚偽(みせかけ)を支持する本だと見なした。しかしながら,またさらに別の階層,即ち専門的な精神科医のレベルにおいては,この本は非常に高い評価を勝ち得た。いずれの評価が正しいのか,私にはわからない。はっきりしていることは,この本が書かれたのは,もし自分が我慢できる程度のいかなる幸福を維持しようとしても,大変な'自制心'や'苦い経験'から学んだ多くのことを必要とした,そういった時期だったということである。 (訳注:そういった意味で,ラッセルにとって「幸福」とは向こうからやってくるものではなく,努力して'獲得する'ものであるゆえに,書名を The Conquest of Happiness としたのである。) |
v.2,chap.4: Second Marriage In 1929, I published Marriage and Morals, which I dictated while recovering from whooping-cough. (Owing to my age, my trouble was not diagnosed until I had infected most of the children in the school.) It was this book chiefly which, in 1940, supplied material for the attack on me in New York. In it, I developed the view that complete fidelity was not to be expected in most marriages, but that a husband and wife ought to be able to remain good friends in spite of affairs. I did not maintain, however, that a marriage could with advantage be prolonged if the wife had a child or children of whom the husband was not the father; in that case, I thought, divorce was desirable. I do not know what I think now about the subject of marriage. There seem to be insuperable objections to every general theory about it. Perhaps easy divorce causes less unhappiness than any other system, but I am no longer capable of being dogmatic on the subject of marriage. In the following year, 1930, I published The Conquest of Happiness, a book consisting of common-sense advice as to what an individual can do to overcome temperamental causes of unhappiness, as opposed to what can be done by changes in social and economic systems. This book was differently estimated by readers of three different levels. Unsophisticated readers, for whom it was intended, liked it, with the result that it had a very large sale. Highbrows, on the contrary, regarded it as a contemptible pot-boiler, an escapist book, bolstering up the pretence that there were useful things to be done and said outside politics. But at yet another level, that of professional psychiatrists, the book won very high praise. I do not know which estimate was right; what I do know is that the book was written at a time when I needed much self-command and much that I had learned by painful experience if I was to maintain any endurable level of happiness. |