My Aunt Agatha was the youngest of the grown-up people at Pembroke Lodge. She was, in fact, only nineteen years older than I was, so when I came there she was twenty-two. During my first years at Pembroke Lodge, she made various attempts to educate me, but without much success. She had three brightly coloured balls, one red, one yellow, and one blue. She would hold up the red ball and say : ‘What colour is that ?’ and I would say, ‘Yellow’. She would then hold it against her canary and say : ‘Do you think that it is the same colour as the canary ?’ I would say, ‘No’, but as I did not know the canary was yellow it did not help much. I suppose I must have learned the colours in time, but I can only remember not knowing them.
出典: The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, v.１, chap. 1, 1967]
詳細情報：https://russell-j.com/beginner/AB11-100.HTM
Men who live on islands have been much maligned by those who live on continents, and as the latter are the majority they have made their case heard more effectually than has been possible for the minority. Having just returned from an excursion to the Scillies, which are among the smallest inhabited islands in the world, I feel impelled to take up the cause of islanders in general and to argue that, whatever else they may be, they are not ‘insular’ in the ordinarily accepted meaning of the term. …
In the centre of the American continent the same sort of thing happens. The bulk of the population feels that American ways are the only natural ways, American forms of government the natural forms of government, and American abuses only such as human nature makes inevitable. The same sort of thing would be found in the centre of China or of any large homogeneous continental area. It would seem, therefore, that ‘insularity’, so far from being a characteristic of islanders, is, on the contrary, most often to be found among the inhabitants of vast inland countries.
出典: On insularity (written in Sept. 21, 1932 and pub. in Mortals and Others, v.1, 1975.)]
詳細情報：https://russell-j.com/INSULAR.HTM
All the higher animals have methods of expressing pleasure, but human beings alone express pleasure when they do not feel it. This is called politeness and is reckoned among the virtues. One of the most disconcerting things about infants is that they only smile when they are pleased. They stare at visitors with round grave eyes, and when the visitors try to amuse them, they display astonishment at the foolish antics of adults. But as soon as possible, their parents teach them to seem pleased by the company of people to whom they are utterly indifferent.
出典: On smiling (written in Aug. 17, 1932 and pub. in Mortals and Others, v.1, 1975.)]
詳細情報：https://russell-j.com/SMILING.HTM
「義務」,「自已否定」,「当為」(・・・すべし)などの高尚な概念の探求の結果としては,これは貧弱かつ卑俗だと思われるかもしれない。しかし私は,ある一点を除けば,それが正当な結果の全てであると確信している。その例外の一点とは,自分自身の不幸という代償において広く一般に幸福をもたらす人々は,他人に不幸をもたらして自分にだけ幸福を求める人々よりも善人である,と我々は感じるということである。（しかし）こういった見方を支持する合理的な根拠を私はまったく知らない（見つけていない）。あるいは,多分,何であれ多数の人々の求めるものは少数の人々が求めるものよりも好ましいという見解の方が幾らかより理屈にかなった見方であるが,そういった見方に対する合理的な根拠さえ,私はまったく知らない。これらはまったく倫理的な問題であるが,それらの問題が,政治や戦争以外のいかなる方法で解決し得るのか,私にはまったくわからない。この問題について私が言えることは,倫理的な意見は,ただ倫理学上の公理（注：それ以上証明できない命題）によってのみ擁護することができるということだけである。しかし,もしその公理が容認できないものとすれば,もはや合理的な結論に到達する方法はまったくない。（松下注：いわゆる emotive theory of value 価値情緒説／ラッセルは倫理の問題はあくまで知識論の対象にならず,論理的に導きださるものではないと考える。）
I adopted as my guiding thought the principle that ethics is derived from passions and that there is no valid method of travelling from passion to what ought to be done. I adopted David Hume’s maxim that ‘Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions’. I am not satisfied with this, but it is the best that I can do. Critics are fond of charging me with being wholly rational and this, at least, proves that I am not entirely so: The practical distinction among passions comes as regards their success: some passions lead to success in what is desired; others, to failure. If you pursue the former, you will be happy; if the latter, unhappy. Such, at least, will be the broad general rule. This may seem a poor and tawdry result of researches into such sublime concepts as ‘duty’, ‘self-denial’, ‘ought’, and so forth, but I am persuaded that it is the total of the valid outcome, except in one particular: we feel that the man who brings widespread happiness at the expense of misery to himself is a better man than the man who brings unhappiness to others and happiness to himself. I do not know any rational ground for this view, or perhaps, for the somewhat more rational view that whatever the majority desires is preferable to what the minority desires . These are truly ethical problems, but I do not know of any way in which they can be solved except by politics or war. All that I can find to say on this subject is that an ethical opinion can only be defended by an ethical axiom, but, if the axiom is not accepted, there is no way of reaching a rational conclusion. There is one approximately rational approach to ethical conclusions which has a certain validity. It may be called the doctrine of compossibility. This doctlrne is as follows: among the desires that a man finds himself to possess, there are various groups, each consisting of desires which may be gratified together and others which conflict. You may, for example, be a passionate adherent of the Democratic Party, but it may happen that you hate the presidential candidate. In that case, your love of the Party and your dislike of the individual are not compossible. Or you may hate a man and love his son. In that case, if they always travel about together, you will find them, as a pair, not compossible. The art of politics consists very largely in finding as numerous a group of compossible people as you can. The man who wishes to be happy will endeavour to make as large groups as he can of compossible desires the rulers of his life. Viewed theoretically, such a doctrine affords no ultimate solution. It assumes that happiness is better than unhappiness. This is an ethical principle incapable of proof. For that reason. I did not consider compossibility a basis for ethics.
出典: The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, v.3 chap. 1: Return to England, 1969]
詳細情報：https://russell-j.com/beginner/AB31-260.HTM
そこで私は今や,この倫理問題の探求を別のやり方で着手した。私はこの本（Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1954）の前半の第一部(注：２部構成)で,倫理学の基本概念（根本概念）をとり扱った。第二部で,これらの概念を政治の実際に適用する問題をとり扱った。第一部では,善悪,罪,迷信的な倫理,倫理的制裁といった概念を倫理規則（道徳律）として分析している。即ち,これらすべてのなかで,伝統的に倫理的として分類づけされている主題における倫理的要素を探求している。私が現在到達している結論は,倫理(学)は独立（自立）している要素ではなく,どこまでも分析していくと最後には政治（政治学の問題）に還元できるというものである。
What led me to write about ethics was the accusation frequently brought against me that, while I had made a more or less sceptical inquiry into other branches of knowledge, I had avoided the subject of ethics except in an early essay expounding Moore’s Principia Ethica. My reply is that ethics is not a branch of knowledge. I now, therefore, set about the task in a different way. In the first half of the book, I dealt with the fundamental concepts of ethics ; in the second part, I dealt with the application of these concepts in practical politics. The first part analyses such concepts as moral codes; good and bad, sin, superstitious ethics, and ethical sanctions. In all these I seek for an ethical element in subjects which are traditionally labelled ethical. The conclusion that I reach is that ethics is never an independent constituent, but is reducible to politics in the last analysis. What are we to say, for example, about a war in which the parties are evenly matched ? In such a context each side may claim that it is obviously in the right and that its defeat would be a disaster to mankind. There would be no way of proving this assertion except by appealing to other ethical concepts such as hatred of cruelty or love of knowledge or art. You may admire the Renaissance because they built St Peter’s, but somebody may perplex you by saying that he prefers St Paul’s. Or, again, the war may have sprung from lies told by one party which may seem an admirable foundation to the contest until it appears that there was equal mendacity on the other side. To arguments of this sort there is no purely rational conclusion. If one man believes that the earth is round and another believes that it is flat, they can set off on a joint voyage and decide the matter reasonably. But if one believes in Protestantism and the other in Catholicism, there is no known method of reaching a rational conclusion. For such reasons, I had come to agree with Santayana that there is no such thing as ethical knowledge. Nevertheless, ethical concepts have been of enormous importance in history, and I could not but feel that a survey of human affairs which omits ethics is inadequate and partial.
出典: The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, v.3 chap. 1: Return to England, 1969]
詳細情報：https://russell-j.com/beginner/AB31-250.HTM
コロンビア大学での最後の講義の末尾で私の言った一節（くだり）でトラブルに巻き込まれてしまった。私はその一節のなかで,「世界が必要としているのは,愛(love),キリストの愛（Christian love）,即ち,思いやり(compassion)です」と言った。私がこの「キリストの」という言葉を使ったことで,自由思想家たちからは一般通説の考え方（正統主義）に従ったといって嘆く手紙が,また,キリスト教徒の側からは彼らの教会に歓迎するという手紙が,殺到した。それから10年後に,（反核デモ行進のために収監された）ブリクストン刑務所でそこの教戒師から「あなたが光明を見いだされたことをうれしく思います。」といって歓迎された時,私は彼に,それはまったくの誤解であること,私の考えはまったく変っていないこと,また私なら’暗中模索している’と言うべきところをあなたは’光明を見いだしている’と言っているということを,説明しなければならなかった。あの時の講義で私が「キリストの愛」（Christian love）と言ったのは,その「愛」を普通の’性的な愛’から区別する意味で「キリストの」という形容詞をつけたのであるが,それはまったく自明のことと考えていた。前後の関係（文脈）からしてこれはまったくあきらかであると本当に想っていた。
（松下注：ラッセルは1929年に出版した Marriage and Morals 第9章(p.96)で次のように書いている。Love, when the word is properly used, does not denote any and every relation between the sexes, but only one involving considerable emotion, and a relation which is psychological as well as physical. つまり ‘love’ は。‘love'(男女間の愛情) は,正しく使われた場合は,男女間のどんな関係でも全て指すのではなく,肉体的であると同時に心理的である関係のみを意味する。しかし,誤解をする人もいると思われるために,コロンビア大学の講義では,男女間の愛をいうのではないことを明確にするために ‘Christian’ という形容詞をつけた,ということである。従って，Love を単に「愛情」と訳すと誤解を与えることがあり、「恋愛（感情）」と訳したほうがよい場合がかなりある。）
I think I was mistaken in being surprised that my lectures were liked by the audience. Almost any young academic audience is liberal and likes to hear liberal and even quasi-revolutionary opinions expressed by someone in authority. They like, also any jibe at any received opinion, whether orthodox or not: for instance, I spent some time making fun of Aristotle for saying that the bite of the shrewmouse is dangerous to a horse, especially if the shrewmouse is pregnant. My audience was irreverent and so was I. I think this was the main basis of their liking of my lectures. My unorthodoxy was not confined to politics. My trouble in New York in 1940 on sexual morals had blown over but had left in any audience of mine an expectation that they would hear something that the old and orthodox would consider shocking. There were plenty of such items in my discussion of scientific breeding. Generally, I had the pleasant experience of being applauded on the very same remarks which had caused me to be ostracized on the earlier occasion.
I got into trouble with a passage at the tail end of my last Columbia lecture. In this passage, I said that what the world needs is ‘love, Christian love, or compassion’. The result of my use of the word ‘Christian’ was a deluge of letters from, Free-thinkers deploring my adoption of orthodoxy, and from Christians welcoming me to the fold. When, ten years later, I was welcomed by the Chaplain to Brixton Prison with the words, ‘I am glad that you have seen the light’, I had to explain to him that this was an entire misconception, that my views were completely unchanged and that what he called seeing the light I should call groping in darkness. I had thought it obvious that, when I spoke of Christian love, I put in the adjective ‘Christian’ to distinguish it from sexual love, and I should certainly have supposed that the context made this completely clear. I go on to say that,
‘If you feel this you have a motive for existence, a guide in action, a reason for courage, and an imperative necessity for intellectual honesty. If you feel this, you have all that anybody should need in the way of religion.’
It seems to me totally inexplicable that anybody should think the above words a description of Christianity, especially in view, as some Christians will remember, of how very rarely Christians have shown Christian love. I have done my best to console those who are not Christians for the pain that I unwittingly caused them by a lax use of the suspect adjective. My essays and lectures on the subject have been edited and published in 1957 by Professor Paul Edwards along with an essay by him on my New York difficulties of 1940, under the title Why I am not a Christian.
出典: The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, v.3 chap. 1: Return to England, 1969]
詳細情報：https://russell-j.com/beginner/AB31-220.HTM
Conrad’s point of view was far from modern. In the modern world there are two philosophies: the one which stems from Rousseau, and sweeps aside discipline as unnecessary, the other, which finds its fullest expression in totalitarianism, which thinks of discipline as essentially imposed from without. Conrad adhered to the older tradition, that discipline should come from within. He despised indiscipline and hated discipline that was merely external.
In all this I found myself closely in agreement with him. At our very first meeting, we talked with continually increasing intimacy. We seemed to sink through layer after layer of what was superficial, till gradually both reached the central fire. It was an experience unlike any other that I have known. We looked into each other’s eyes, half appalled and half intoxicated to find ourselves together in such a region. The emotion was as intense as passionate love, and at the same time all-embracing. I came away bewildered, and hardly able to find my way among ordinary affairs.
出典: The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, v.１, chap. 7:Cambridge Again, 1967]
詳細情報：https://russell-j.com/beginner/AB17-100.HTM
Mrs. Whitehead was at this time becoming more and more of an invalid, and used to have intense pain owing to heart trouble. Whitehead and Alys and I were all filled with anxiety about her. He was not only deeply devoted to her but also very dependent upon her, and it seemed doubtful whether he would ever achieve any more good work if she were to die. One day, Gilbert Murray came to Newnham to read part of his translation of The Hippolytus, then unpublished. Alys and I went to hear him, and I was profoundly stirred by the beauty of the poetry. （See letter to Gilbert Murray and his reply, p.159. Also the subsequent letters relating to the Bacchae） When we came home, we found Mrs. Whitehead undergoing an unusually severe bout of pain.
She seemed cut off from everyone and everything by walls of agony,
and the sense of the solitude of each human soul suddenly overwhelmed me. Ever since my marriage, my emotional life had been calm and superficial. I had forgotten all the deeper issues, and had been content with flippant cleverness. Suddenly the ground seemed to give way beneath me, and I found myself in quite another region. Within five minutes I went through some such reflections as the following: the loneliness of the human soul is unendurable; nothing can penetrate it except the highest intensity of the sort of love that religious teachers have preached; whatever does not spring from this motive is harmful, or at best useless; it follows that war is wrong, that a public school education is abominable, that the use of force is to be deprecated, and that in human relations one should penetrate to the core of loneliness in each person and speak to that.
出典: The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, v.１, chap. 6,
Principia Mathematica, 1967]
詳細情報：https://russell-j.com/beginner/AB16-030.HTM
There are two kinds of impulses, corresponding to the two kinds of goods. There are possessive impulses, which aim at acquiring or retaining private goods that cannot be shared; these centre in the impluse of property. And there are creative or constructive impulses, which aim at bringing into the world or making available for use the kind of good in which there is no privacy and no possession. The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive imuplses the smallest.
出典：Political Ideals, 1917, chap.1
詳細情報：https://russell-j.com/beginner/2-IMPULS.HTM
In 1929, I published Marriage and Morals, which I dictated while recovering from whooping-cough. (Owing to my age, my trouble was not diagnosed until I had infected most of the children in the school.) It was this book chiefly which, in 1940, supplied material for the attack on me in New York. In it, I developed the view that complete fidelity was not to be expected in most marriages, but that a husband and wife ought to be able to remain good friends in spite of affairs. I did not maintain, however, that a marriage could with advantage be prolonged if the wife had a child or children of whom the husband was not the father; in that case, I thought, divorce was desirable. I do not know what I think now about the subject of marriage. There seem to be insuperable objections to every general theory about it. Perhaps easy divorce causes less unhappiness than any other system, but I am no longer capable of being dogmatic on the subject of marriage.
出典: The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, v.2 chap. 4:Second Marriage, 1968]
詳細情報：https://russell-j.com/beginner/AB24-100.HTM
[寸言]
ラッセルが1929年に Marriage and Morals（結婚と性道徳、いわゆる『結婚論』）を出した時、当時としては過激な書物として、多くの非難を受けた。1940年にニューヨーク市立大学教授として教鞭をとることが内定していたが、ニューヨークに住む一キリスト教徒から，ラッセルは不道徳な人間なので公立大学の教員としてふさわしくない（採用取り消しをせよ）という訴えが出され、（同じくカトリック教徒の）裁判官により、ラッセルの任用は取り消せられることになる。 しかし、戦後世界は激変し、ラッセルの主張の半分以上は、今や一般市民の常識となっており、『結婚論』や『西洋哲学史』などの、自由を守るための執筆活動を称えられ、1950年にはノーベル文学賞を受賞している。
つまり、当時の多数意見は現在では少数意見となっているが、このように、少数意見が多数意見になることによって大きな進歩がなされているのである。従って、多数意見は間違っている場合が多いということを肝に銘ずるべきであろう。
アガサおばさんは,ペンブローク・ロッジ（注：ラッセルが18歳まで住んでいた祖父母の屋敷）に住んでいた大人のなかで一番若かった（写真はラッセルとアガサおばさん）。事実,彼女は私より19歳年上であるにすぎず,私が1876年２月,ラッセル３歳９ケ月の時に）ペンブローク・ロッジに（来たとき,彼女は22歳であった。(訳注：それだけ年寄りに囲まれて暮らしていたという wit) 私がペンブローク・ロッジに来た最初の数年,彼女は私を教育しようとして,さまざまの試みをしたが,大きな成果はあげられなかった。
My Aunt Agatha was the youngest of the grown-up people at Pembroke Lodge. She was, in fact, only nineteen years older than I was, so when I came there she was twenty-two. During my first years at Pembroke Lodge, she made various attempts to educate me, but without much success. She had three brightly coloured balls, one red, one yellow, and one blue. She would hold up the red ball and say : ‘What colour is that ?’ and I would say, ‘Yellow’. She would then hold it against her canary and say : ‘Do you think that it is the same colour as the canary ?’ I would say, ‘No’, but as I did not know the canary was yellow it did not help much. I suppose I must have learned the colours in time, but I can only remember not knowing them.
