バートランド・ラッセル「感受性」

* 原著: On Education, 1926, by Bertrand Russell. pt.I, chap.2
* 出典：牧野力(編/著)『ラッセル思想辞典』

---

　物事を感知するのは、認識の面では知性に属するけれども、ここで言う感受性(sensitiveness)は感情に属する。子供の、ほめられたい、良く思われたいという願望は、生涯もち続ける程強力な動機の一つである。これが喜ばしい行動への刺激となり、さらに貪欲な衝動への抑制として甚だ貴重となる。だから、賢いほめ方が非常に貴重である。
　望ましい形の感受性の発達段階の中に、同感共鳴(sympathy)がある。人間には純粋に生理的な同感がある。幼児は兄や姉が泣き出すと、見ただけで自分も泣き出す。ここから'二つの方向'に分れる。
　第一は、自分が特に愛していない他人の苦しみに同感共鳴する方向、第二は、ある事柄に自分は直接全く苦痛を感じなくても、確かに気の毒に苦しんでいると感じとる方向である。 後者は、大部分'知性の働きによる結果'だが、この抽象的に同感する能力は甚だ重要で、生々しく描かれた場面から、さらに統計的数字から事柄の意味を感じとれる能力である。戦争の恐ろしさは、子供か兄弟が死傷すれば直接感受できるが、百万人死傷という報道には百万倍の恐ろしさは感じない。
　教育の力で、この抽象的に同感できる能力が万人に備われば、現在の世界に横行する災害の大半は後を断つだろう。なぜ弱少民族が大規模な先進国の産業主義の残酷な犠牲となるかを、抽象的共感の教育で万人に理解させたい。
(The cognitive aspect, however, comes under the head of intelligence; sensitiveness, in the sense in which I am using the term, belongs to the emotions. ... ) every child loves praise and hates blame. Usually the wish to be thought well of remains one of the dominant motives throughout life. It is certainly very valuable as a stimulus to pleasant behaviour, and as a restraint upon impulses of greed. If we were wiser in our admirations, it might be much more valuable. ... The next stage in the development of a desirable form of sensitiveness is sympathy. There is a purely physical sympathy: a very young child will cry because a brother or sister is crying. This, I suppose, affords the basis for the further developments. The two enlargements that are needed are: first, to feel sympathy even when the sufferer is not an object of special affection; secondly, to feel it when the suffering is merely known to be occurring, not sensibly present. The second of these enlargements depends largely upon intelligence. It may only go so far as sympathy with suffering which is portrayed vividly and touchingly, as in a good novel; it may, on the other hand, go so far as to enable a man to be moved emotionally by statistics. This capacity for abstract sympathy is as rare as it is important. Almost everybody is deeply affected when someone he loves suffers from cancer. Most people are moved when they see the sufferings of unknown patients in hospitals. Yet when they read that the death-rate from cancer is such-and-such, they are as a rule only moved to momentary personal fear lest they or someone dear to them should acquire the disease. The same is true of war: people think it dreadful when their son or brother is mutilated, but they do not think it a million times as dreadful that a million people should be mutilated. ... A large proportion of the evils in the modern world would cease if this could be remedied. Science has greatly increased our power of affecting the lives of distant people, without increasing our sympathy for them. ...