* 下イラスト出典:B. Russell's The Good Citizen's Alphabet, 1953. |
The second of our four maxims, to the effect that it is unwise to over-estimate your own merits, is covered, so far as morals are concerned, by what we have already said. But merits other than moral should equally not be over-estimated. The playwright whose plays never succeed should consider calmly the hypothesis that they are bad plays; he should not reject this out of hand as obviously untenable. If he finds that it fits the facts, he should, as an inductive philosopher, adopt it. It is true that there are in history cases of unrecognised merit, but they are far less numerous than the cases of recognised demerit. If a man is a genius whom the age will not recognise, he is quite right to persist in his course in spite of lack of recognition. If, on the other hand, he is an untalented person puffed up with vanity, he will do well not to persist. There is no way of knowing to which of these two categories one belongs if one is afflicted with the impulse to produce unrecognised masterpieces. If you belong to the one category, your persistence is heroic; if to the other, ludicrous. When you have been dead a hundred years, it will be possible to guess to which category you belonged. In the meantime, there is a test, not perhaps infallible, if you suspect that you are a genius while your friends suspect that you are not. The test is this: do you produce because you feel an urgent compulsion to express certain ideas or feelings, or are you actuated by the desire for applause? In the genuine artist the desire for applause, while it usually exists strongly, is secondary, in the sense that the artist wishes to produce a certain kind of work, and hopes that that work may be applauded, but will not alter his style even if no applause is forthcoming. The man, on the other hand, to whom the desire for applause is the primary motive, has no force within himself urging him to a particular kind of expression, and could therefore just as well do work of some wholly different kind. Such a man, if he fails to win applause by his art, had better give it up. And, speaking more generally, whatever your line in life may be, if you find that others do not rate your abilities as highly as you do yourself, do not be too sure that it is they who are mistaken. If you allow yourself to think this, you may easily fall into the belief that there is a conspiracy to prevent the recognition of your merit, and this belief is pretty sure to be the source of an unhappy life. To recognise that your merit is not so great as you had hoped may be more painful for a moment, but it is a pain which has an end, beyond which a happy life again becomes possible. |
(掲載日:2005.10.03/更新日:2010.4.10)