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熱意の意味を理解するには,たぶん,人びとが食事のためにテーブルについたときの行動の違いを考えてみるのが最良の方法であろう。食事など退屈以外の何物でもない人びとがいる。彼らは,料理（食べ物）がたとえどんなにすばらしくても,料理など興味をひかないと感じる。彼らは,今まで,おそらくほとんど毎食,すばらしい料理を食べてきた。'空腹'が激しい情熱になるまで何も食べないでいるとはどういうことか,彼らはまったく知らない（経験をしたことがない）ので,食事を,彼らが住んでいる社会の慣習によって定められた習慣的な出来事にすぎないと見なしている。他のすべてと同様,食事はめんどくさいが,大騒ぎしてもはじまらない,なぜなら,他のすべても,（同様に）やはりわずらわしいからである。次に,義務感から食事をする病弱者がいる。なぜなら,体力を維持するためには少し栄養をとらないといけない,と医者に言われたから（そうしないといけないと思っているから）である。それから,美食家がいる。彼らは,期待をもって食べはじめるが,ありうべく上手に料理されたものは何ひとつないのに気づく。また,大食漢がいる。彼らは,非常に貪欲に食物に襲いかかり,そして食べすぎて'多血症'になり,'いびき'をかくようになる。最後に,健康な食欲をもって食べはじめる人たちがいる。食べ物を喜び,十分に食べれば,それでおしまいにする。 
人生の饗宴の前にすわる人たちも,人生が提供する良きものに対して同じような態度をとる。幸福な人は,最後の食べ方（健康な食欲をもって食事）をする人に相当する。'空腹'の'食べ物'に対する関係は,'熱意'の'人生'に対する関係に似ている。食事に退屈している人は,バイロン風の不幸の犠牲者に相当する。義務感から食べる病弱者は,禁欲主義者に,大食漢は,享楽主義者に相当する。美食家は,人生の快楽の半分は美的でないとぶつぶつ言う気むずかし屋に相当する。奇妙なことに,これらのタイプの人たちは全て－－大食漢は別かも知れないが－－健康な食欲の持ち主を軽蔑し,自分たちのほうが優れた人間だと思っている。お腹がすいたから食事を楽しむとか,おもしろい見ものや驚くべき経験をいろいろ提供するから人生を楽しむというのは,彼らには低俗であると思われる。彼らは,'幻滅の高み'から,それらの人々を単純な人間だと軽蔑し,見下す。私としては,そういう見方には共感しない。'幻滅'はすべて,私には,一種の病気であると思われる。この病気は,確かに事情によっては避けがたいかもしれないが,それでもなお,この病気にかかったときには,できるだけすぐに治療するべきであり,知恵の高尚な形式だなどとみなすべきでない。
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https://www.animationlibrary.com/a-l/
In this chapter I propose to deal with what seems to me the most universal and distinctive mark of happy men, namely zest. Perhaps the best way to understand what is meant by zest will be to consider the different ways in which men behave when they sit down to a meal. There are those to whom a meal is merely a bore; no matter how excellent the food may be, they feel that it is uninteresting. They have had excellent food before, probably at almost every meal they have eaten. They have never known what it was to go without a meal until hunger became a raging passion, but have come to regard meals as merely conventional occurrences, dictated by the fashions of the society in which they live. Like everything else, meals are tiresome, but it is no use to make a fuss, because nothing else will be less tiresome. Then there are the invalids who eat from a sense of duty, because the doctor has told them that it is necessary to take a little nourishment in order to keep up their strength. Then there are the epicures, who start hopefully, but find that nothing has been quite so well cooked as it ought to have been. Then there are the gormandisers (gormandizers), who fall upon their food with eager rapacity, eat too much, and grow plethoric and stertorous. Finally there are those who begin with a sound appetite, are glad of their food, eat until they have had enough, and then stop. 
Those who are set down before the feast of life have similar attitudes towards the good things which it offers. The happy man corresponds to the last of our eaters. What hunger is in relation to food, zest is in relation to life. The man who is bored with his meals corresponds to the victim of Byronic unhappiness. The invalid who eats from a sense of duty corresponds to the ascetic, the gormandiser to the voluptuary. The epicure corresponds to the fastidious person who condemns half the pleasures of life as unaesthetic. Oddly enough, all these types, with the possible exception of the gormandiser, feel contempt for the man of healthy appetite and consider themselves his superior. It seems to them vulgar to enjoy food because you are hungry or to enjoy life because it offers a variety of interesting spectacles and surprising experiences. From the height of their disillusionment they look down upon those whom they despise as simple souls. For my part I have no sympathy with this outlook. All disenchantment is to me a malady, which, it is true, certain circumstances may render inevitable, but which none the less, when it occurs, is to be cured as soon as possible, not to be regarded as a higher form of wisdom. Suppose one man likes strawberries and another does not; in what respect is the latter superior? There is no abstract and impersonal proof either that strawberries are good or that they are not good. To the man who likes them they are good; to the man who dislikes them they are not. But the man who likes them has a pleasure which the other does not have; to that extent his life is more enjoyable and he is better adapted to the world in which both must live. What is true in this trivial instance is equally true in more important matters. The man who enjoys watching football is to that extent superior to the man who does not. The man who enjoys reading is still more superior to the man who does not, since opportunities for reading are more frequent than opportunities for watching football. The more things a man is interested in, the more opportunities of happiness he has, and the less he is at the mercy of fate, since if he loses one thing he can fall back upon another. Life is too short to be interested in everything, but it is good to be interested in as many things as are necessary to fill our days. We are all prone to the malady of the introvert, who, with the manifold spectacle of the world spread out before him, turns away and gazes only upon the emptiness within. But let us not imagine that there is anything grand about the introvert's unhappiness. |
（掲載日：2006.02.05／更新日：2010.4.29）
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