バートランド・ラッセル『ヒューマン・ソサエティ-倫理学から政治学へ』11-10- Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1954
* 原著:Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1954* 邦訳書:バートランド・ラッセル(著),勝部真長・長谷川鑛平(共訳)『ヒューマン・ソサエティ-倫理学から政治学へ』(玉川大学出版部,1981年7月刊。268+x pp.)
『ヒューマン・ソサエティ』第11章:生産と分配 n.10 |
Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1954, chapter 11: Production and Distribution, n.10 | |||
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This is a more serious matter than is sometimes thought. An individual cannot, without becoming sterile, confine his purview to his own life, nor even to his own country or his own age. Each of us is part of a long chain from our remote animal ancestry into an unforeseeable future. The human race has emerged slowly from the condition of a rare and miserable hunted animal, but if we suppose that it has no further journey to make, that there are no greater perfections to be achieved in the future, and that we are approaching a dead-end, something deeply instinctive and immeasurably important will wither and die. I am thinking of something which in most people is scarcely conscious, something which acquires explicit expression only in a few, but which belongs to us in our inmost being, because we are not merely individuals but members of a species. It is for this reason that in judging of a country or a period I should attach importance, not only to the day-by-day happiness of the individuals concerned, but to its contribution to civilization, by which I mean the stock of all those mental goods which distinguish man from the ape and civilized man from the savage. It is these things that make the unique importance of man, and it is of these things that each generation in turn is the trustee. To hand on the treasure, not diminished, but increased, is our supreme duty to posterity. I wish I could believe that we are performing it. |