様々な自己陶酔者
心身ともに健康な人は,このように自分の関心を自分自身に集中するようなことはしないだろう。彼は,外界を見わたし,外界の中に自分にとって注意に値すると思われる対象を見つけるだろう。 自己陶酔は,一部の人が想像したように,罪深い人(unregenerate man 再生できない人)の自然な状態(罪人が自然に陥る状態)ではない。自己陶酔は,ほとんど常に,自然の衝動を妨げられたためにもたらされる病気である。性的な満足を思ってほくそえむ好色な人間は,通例,何かを奪われた結果生まれるのである。それは,あたかも,食料をため込む(hoards 秘蔵する)人が,通例,飢饉や欠乏の時期を生き延びてきた人であるのと同様である。健康で外界に目を向けるような男女は,自然な衝動を妨げることによって生み出されることはなく,幸福な生活に不可欠なすべての衝動を,平等にバランスよく発達させることによって生み出されるのである。 |
Chapter XX: The Place of Sex among Human Values, n.4I wish to repeat, however, as emphatically as I can, that I regard an undue preoccupation with this topic as an evil, and that I think this evil widespread at the present day, especially in America, where I find it particularly pronounced among the sterner moralists, who display it markedly by their readiness to believe falsehoods concerning those whom they regard as their opponents. The glutton, the voluptuary, and the ascetic are all self-absorbed persons whose horizon is limited by their own desires, either by way of satisfaction or by way of renunciation. A man who is healthy in mind and body will not have his interests thus concentrated upon himself. He will look out upon the world and find in it objects that seem to him worthy of his attention. Absorption in self is not, as some have supposed, the natural condition of unregenerate man. It is a disease brought on, almost always, by some thwarting of natural impulses. The voluptuary who gloats over thoughts of sexual gratification is in general the result of some kind of deprivation, just as the man who hoards food is usually a man who has lived through a famine or a period of destitution. Healthy, outward-looking men and women are not to be produced by the thwarting of natural impulse, but by the equal and balanced development of all the impulses essential to a happy life. |