The same thing often happens with regard to all the other passions. A stranger passes by us in the street with all the marks of the deepest affliction; and we are immediately told that he has just received the news of the death of his father. It is impossible that, in this case, we should not approve of his grief. Yet it may often happen, without any defect of humanity on our part, that, so far from entering into the violence of his sorrow, we should scarce conceive the first movements of concern upon his account. – Adam Smith, The Theory of moral sentiments : 1. Part 1 Of the Propriety of Action Consisting of Three Sections : 1.1. Section I Of the Sense of Propriety : 1.1.3. Chap. III Of the manner in which we judge of the propriety or impropriety of the affections of other men, by their concord or dissonance with out own. 《他のすべての感情に関しても、同じことがよく起こる。この上なく深い苦悩の面持ちをした見知らぬ人が道ですれ違い、父親の訃報に接したばかりだと言う。このような場合、彼の悲しみを認めないわけにはいかない。けれども、こちらに慈悲心が欠けてはいなくても、彼の悲しみの激しさを汲み取れず、彼のために心配しようにも、まずどうすればよいのか...
The nearer we come to our own times the more difficult it is to assess objectively the value of our cultural impulses. More and more doubts arise as to whether our occupations are pursued in play or in earnest, and with the doubts comes the uneasy feeling of hypocrisy, as though the only thing we can be certain of is make-believe. But we should remember that this precarious balance between seriousness and pretence is an unmistakable and integral part of culture as such, and that the play-factor lies at the heart of all ritual and religion. So that we must always fall back on this lasting ambiguity, which only becomes really troublesome in cultural phenomena of a non-ritualistic kind. There is nothing to prevent us from interpreting a cultural phenomenon that takes itself with marked seriousness, therefore, as play. But insofar as Romanticism and kindred movements are divorced from ritual we shall inevitably, in our assessment of them, be assailed by the most vexing ambiguities. -- J. H...
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