英文自修156：权威与个体6（BBC瑞斯讲座1948-1）

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转载、翻译：武太白

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本篇是罗素为BBC瑞斯讲座（Reith Lectures）所作的1948年演讲《权威与个体》第一讲“社会凝聚力与人类天性”第六部分。

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‘Victims of Virtue’

“美德受害者”

This latter result has been observed among savages brought suddenly in contact with modern civilisation. Anthropologists have described how Papuan head-hunters, deprived by white authority of their habitual sport, lose all zest, and are no longer able to be interested in anything. I do not wish to infer that they should have been allowed to go on hunting heads, but I do mean that it would have been worthwhile if psychologists had taken some trouble to find some innocent substitute activity. Civilised man everywhere is, to some degree, in the position of the Papuan victims of virtue. We have all kinds of shocking impulses and also creative impulses which society forbids us to indulge, and the alternatives that it supplies in the shape of football matches and all-in wrestling are hardly adequate. Anyone who hopes that in time it may be possible to abolish war should give serious thought to the problem of satisfying harmlessly the instincts that we inherit from long generations of savages. For my part I find a sufficient outlet in detective stories where I alternatively identify myself with the murderer and the huntsman-detective, but I know there are those to whom this vicarious outlet is too mild, and for them something stronger should be provided.

在突然与现代文明发生接触的野蛮人身上，观察到过上述后一种结果。人类学家曾经指出，巴布亚的猎头战士被白人政府禁止进行这种传统的猎头活动之后，失去了所有的热情，再也不会对任何事情感兴趣。我倒不是希望说应该允许这些人继续猎头，而是说如果心理学家耗点神，设计些无害的替代活动给这些猎头战士，那是值得的。不论哪里，文明人都在一定程度上陷于巴布亚人的这种“美德受害者”的处境。我们有各种骇人的冲动、创造的冲动，社会都加以禁止，而所提供的替代形式如足球赛、全力以赴的摔跤运动等，远不足以满足此类冲动。如果谁希望战争终将得以根除，那可要好好想想该怎样满足我们人类从漫长的野蛮人时代继承下来的本能而不造成损害。对我来说，读一读侦探小说，一会儿设想自己是谋杀犯，一会儿设想自己是猎手-侦探，这样的宣泄出口是足够了，但我知道有些人会觉得这种替代的宣泄方式太文弱，而对他们来说就应该提供强悍些的东西。

I do not think that ordinary human beings can be happy without competition, for competition has been, ever since the origin of man, the spur to most serious activities. We should not, therefore, attempt to abolish competition, but only to see to it that it takes forms which are not too injurious. Primitive competition was a conflict as to which should murder the other man and his wife and children; modern competition in the shape of war still takes this form. But in sport, in literary and artistic rivalry, and in constitutional politics it takes forms which do very little harm and yet offer a fairly adequate outlet for our combative instincts. What is wrong in this respect is not that such forms of competition are bad, but that they form too small a part of the lives of ordinary men and women.

我觉得一般来说人类没有竞争是不会快乐的，因为自有人类以来，竞争就是促使其进行各种严肃活动的刺激因素。因此，我们不应该杜绝竞争，而是要确保竞争的形式不造成过大的损害。原始社会的竞争是一种你死我活、妻儿也不能幸免的冲突，现代社会以战争形式出现的竞争仍然是这样。但是在体育竞技、文艺竞争、宪法政治等领域，竞争的形式就极少造成损害，但也提供了足够大的出口，让我们的战斗本能得以宣泄。

Apart from war, modern civilisation has aimed increasingly at security, but I am not at all sure that the elimination of all danger makes for happiness. I should like at this point to quote a passage from Sir Arthur Keith’s New Theory of Human Evolution:

战争姑且不论，现代文明越来越追求安全，但我完全没把握的是，消除了所有危险是不是就能确保幸福。这里我想引述亚瑟•瑞斯爵士《人类进化的新理论》一书中的一段：

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Those who have visited the peoples living under a reign of ‘wild justice’ bring back accounts of happiness among natives living under such conditions. Freya Stark, for example, reported thus of South Arabia: ‘When I came to travel in that part of the country where security is non-existent, I found a people, though full of lament over their life of perpetual blackmail and robbery, yet just as cheerful and as full of the ordinary joy of living as anywhere on earth’. Dr. H. K. Fry had a similar experience among the aborigines of Australia. ‘A native in his wild state’, he reports, ‘lives in constant danger; hostile spirits are about him constantly. Yet he is light-hearted and cheerful ... indulgent to his children and kind to his aged parents’. My third illustration is taken from the Crow Indians of America, who have been living under the eye of Dr. R. Lowie for many years. They are now living in the security of a reserve. ‘Ask a Crow’, reports Dr. Lowie, ‘whether he would have security as now, or danger as of old, and his answer is -“danger as of old ... there was glory in it”’. I am assuming that the wild conditions of life I have been describing were those amid which mankind lived through the whole of the primal period of its evolution. It was amid such conditions that man’s nature and character was fashioned, one of the conditions being the practice of blood-revenge.

有人拜访过生活在“野蛮正义”环境中的民族，带回了这样的故事：在这种环境下生活的土著人很幸福。例如弗雷亚•斯塔克报告说，在南阿拉伯就是这样：“当我在没有安全措施的地区旅行时，我发现一个民族，尽管他们对生活中不断的勒索和抢劫也会哀叹，还是和地球上其他任何地方的人一样神采奕奕、活得开心。”赫•凯•福莱博士在澳大利亚的土著人中间也有类似的经历。“一名野外生活的土著人，”他报告说，“生活中总是有危险；身边不断有敌人。然而他身心轻快，充满欢乐……宠爱孩子，善待年迈的父母。”第三个例证来自美洲的克罗印第安人，罗•路易博士对他们的生活进行了多年观察。他们如今生活在保留地的安全环境中。“你去问一问克罗人，”路易博士报告说，“他是想拥有现在的安全，还是过去的危险，他的答案将是‘过去的危险’……因为危险中有光荣。”我觉得这是因为此处所说的野外生活条件正是那些人类在其进化的整个原始阶段所处的环境。正是在这样的条件下人类的天性和性格逐步形成，其中一个条件就是进行血亲复仇。

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Such effects of human psychology account for some things which, for me at least, were surprising when in 1914 I first became aware of them. Many people are happier during a war than they are in peace time, provided the direct suffering entailed by the fighting does not fall too heavily upon them personally. A quiet life may well be a boring life. The unadventurous existence of a well-behaved citizen, engaged in earning a moderate living in a humble capacity, leaves completely unsatisfied all that part of his nature which, if he had lived 400,000 years ago, would have found ample scope in the search for food, in cutting off the heads of enemies, and in escaping the attentions of tigers. When war comes the bank clerk may escape and become a commando, and then at last he feels that he is living as nature intended him to live. But, unfortunately, science has put into our hands such enormously powerful means of satisfying our destructive instincts, that to allow them free play no longer serves any evolutionary purpose, as it did while men were divided into petty tribes. The problem of making peace with our anarchic impulses is one which has been too little studied, but one which becomes more and more imperative as scientific technique advances. From the purely biological point of view it is unfortunate that the destructive side of technique has advanced so very much more rapidly than the creative side. In one moment a man may kill 500,000 people, but he cannot have children any quicker than in the days of our savage ancestors. If a man could have 500,000 children as quickly as by an atomic bomb he can destroy 500,000 enemies we might, at the cost of enormous suffering, leave the biological problem to the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. But in the modern world the old mechanism of evolution can no longer be relied upon.

人类心理的这些效应能解释一些事情，对我来说只有到1914年（第一次世界大战爆发——译注）才注意到这些事情，并觉得吃惊。许多人在战争时代要比在和平时代更快乐，前提是战争造成的直接伤害对他们个人来说不是太重。平静的生活可能也是无聊的。一个行为端正的公民，过着平淡无冒险的生活，挣钱养家，这就完全无法满足他天性中的某个部分，40万年前这部分天性能够在寻找食物、砍下敌人头颅、躲过老虎的目光等活动中得到发挥。战争来临时，银行职员可能逃脱后成为军事指挥官，他终于感觉到自己是按照大自然的安排在生活了。但是不幸的是，科学已经给我们提供了如此大杀伤力的武器，以至于让我们的破坏本能完全发挥出来的话就不再起到任何进化作用，不像人类还处在小部落时代那样（破坏本能还能起点作用）。同我们的混乱本能讲和的问题一向很少有研究过，但这个问题正越来越紧迫，因为科技进步也越来越快。从纯生物角度来看，破坏类科技的进展是如此之快，远远超过了创造一面。一个人片刻之间就能杀死50万人，但他生起孩子来比起我们的野蛮人祖先一点也快不了。如果一个人生出50万孩子的速度和用原子弹杀死50万人的速度能够一样快，我们其实也可以把这个生物问题留给物竞天择和适者生存去解决，尽管代价是人类大规模遭受痛苦。但在现代社会，旧的进化机制已经无法再提供依靠了。