バートランド・ラッセル「結婚」
* 原著：Marriage and Morals, 1929, chap.10
* 出典：牧野力(編)『ラッセル思想辞典』索引
下記は牧野力氏による要旨訳（注：ただし、少し字句を修正）に原文を追加したものです。
結婚は法律上及び宗教上の制度である。専門家によれば、類人猿の間では、宗教の助けもなく、宗教の罪も自覚せずに、本能だけで十分に一夫一婦制の美徳を保つ由。アフリカのブッシュマンは厳格な一夫一婦制を守る。文明人の本能にもかすかなその痕跡はある。・・・。原始的な一夫一婦制が最初に破壊されたのは経済的動機が導入されてかららしい。本能に基づく関係を、奴隷とその購入者との関係に置きかえたからである。一夫多妻制は酋長や金持の特権である。しかし、 文明の低い所では、概して姦通は黙認されている。
キリスト教の出現と共に、古代の男女関係の見方が変った。結婚への宗教の役割が大きくなった。結婚は終生の聖礼典となり、結婚外の性関係は一切神にそむく罪となり、離婚も許されなかった。ただ尼になるためならば 夫のもとを去ることができた。
現代文明の中では、結婚後二、三年たつと文明と結びついた原因から、結婚の幸福は傷つく。誤った性教育が 主な原因で、都会人や上流階級に多く見られる。女性の解放は、結婚を一層むずかしくしている。
愛が自由で自発的な場合にだけ蕾は開き、満足すべきものとなるが、義務的な場合、愛は押しつぶされやすい。 法で愛がしばられると結婚生活は中途半端になりやすい。
文明諸国での結婚生活の幸福はいくつかの条件が満たされれば可能である。夫婦双方の完全に平等な意識、双方の自由への不干渉、心身の和合と価値観の同質性などの条件である。これは、子供との関係や事情を問題の外に置いての話である。子供のことを考えると話は違ってくる。
( Marriage differs, of course, from other sex relations by the fact that it is a legal institution. It is also in most communities a religious institution, but it is the legal aspect which is essential. The legal institution merely embodies a practice which exists not only among primitive men but among apes and various other animals. Animals practise what is virtually marriage, wherever the co-operation of the male is necessary to the rearing of the young. As a rule, animal marriages are monogamic, and according to some authorities this is the case in particular amongst the anthropoid apes. It seems, if these authorities are to be believed, that these fortunate animals are not faced with the problems that beset human communities, since the male, once married, ceases to be attracted to any other female, and the female, once married, ceases to be attractive to any other male. Among the anthropoid apes, therefore, although they do not have the assistance of religion, sin is unknown, since instinct suffices to produce virtue. There is some evidence that among the lowest races of savages a similar state of affairs exists. Bushmen are said to be strictly monogamous, and ...
It seems probable that what first broke up primitive monogamy was the intrusion of the economic motive. This motive, wherever it has any influence upon sexual behaviour, is invariably disastrous, since it substitutes relations of slavery or purchase for relations based upon instinct. In early agricultural and pastoral communities both wives and children were an economic asset to a man. ...
With the coming of Christianity this outlook was changed. The part of religion in marriage was very greatly augmented, and infractions of the marriage law came to be blamed on grounds of taboo rather than of property. To have intercourse with another man's wife remained, of course, an offence against that man, but to have any intercourse outside marriage was an offence against God, and this, in the view of the Church, was a far graver matter. For the same reason divorce, which had previously been granted to men on easy terms, was declared inadmissible. Marriage became a sacrament and therefore lifelong....
... Christianity, while in some ways it made the position of women worse, especially in the well-to-do classes, did at least recognize their theological equality with men, and refused to regard them as absolutely the property of their husbands. A married woman had not, of course, the right to leave her husband for another man, but she could leave him for a life of religion. And on the whole progress towards a better status for women was easier, in the great bulk of the population, from the Christian than from the pre-Christian standpoint.
Among civilized people in the modern world none of these conditions for what is called happiness exist, and accordingly one finds that not many marriages after the first few years are happy....
There is another difficulty in the way of modern marriage, which is felt especially by those who are most conscious of the value of love. Love can only flourish as long as it is free and spontaneous; it tends to be killed by the thought that it is a duty. To say that it is your duty to love so-and-so is the surest way to cause you to hate him or her. Marriage as a combination of love with legal bonds thus falls between two stools. ...
It is therefore possible for a civilized man and woman to be happy in marriage, although if this is to be the case a number of conditions must be fulfilled. There must be a feeling of complete equality on both sides; there must be no interference with mutual freedom ; there must be the most complete physical and mental intimacy; and there must be a certain similarity in regard to standards of values. (It is fatal, for example, if one values only money while the other values only good work.) Given all these conditions, I believe marriage to be the best and most important relation that can exist between two human beings. If it has not often been realized hitherto, that is chiefly because husbands and wives have regarded themselves as each other's policemen. If marriage is to achieve its possibilities, husbands and wives must learn to understand that whatever the law may say, in their private lives they must be free.
