アダム・スミス『道徳感情論』（36）良心の呵責は守護神
These natural pangs of an affrighted conscience are the daemons, the avenging furies, which, in this life, haunt the guilty, which allow them neither quiet nor repose, which often drive them to despair and distraction, from which no assurance of secrecy can protect them, from which no principles of irreligion can entirely deliver them, and from which nothing can free them but the vilest and most abject of all states, a complete insensibility to honour and infamy, to vice and virtue. – Adam Smith, The Theory of moral sentiments： 3.1.2. Chap. II
《このような生来の恐怖に戦（おのの）く良心の呵責は、現世において罪人に付き纏（まと）い、静寂も安息も与えず、しばしば絶望と乱心へと追いやり、どんな秘密の保証も彼らを守れず、どんな無宗教の原理も彼らを完全に解放できず、名誉や不名誉、悪徳や美徳に対する完全な無感覚という、すべての状態の中で最も価値のない、見捨てられたもの以外、彼らを解放するものは何もない守護神なのである》
― アダム・スミス『道徳感情論』第3部：第２章
Men of the most
detestable characters, who, in the execution of the most dreadful crimes, had
taken their measures so coolly as to avoid even the suspicion of guilt, have
sometimes been driven, by the horror of their situation, to discover, of their
own accord, what no human sagacity could ever have investigated. – Ibid.
《最も忌（い）まわしき罪を犯す際に、罪の嫌疑が掛けられぬよう策を講じるような、最も憎むべき性格の人であっても、自分の置かれた状況の恐ろしさから、幾ら聡明な人であっても調べられなかったことを、自発的に、明かしてしまうことがある》―
同
By acknowledging
their guilt, by submitting themselves to the resentment of their offended
fellow-citizens, and, by thus satiating that vengeance of which they were
sensible that they had become the proper objects, they hoped, by their death to
reconcile themselves, at least in their own imagination, to the natural
sentiments of mankind; to be able to consider themselves as less worthy of
hatred and resentment; to atone, in some measure, for their crimes, and by thus
becoming the objects, rather of compassion than of horror, if possible to die
in peace and with the forgiveness of all their fellow-creatures. Compared to
what they felt before the discovery, even the thought of this, it seems, was
happiness. – Ibid.
《自分の罪を認め、感情を害した同胞の腹立ちを甘受し、自分が適切な対象になったと自覚していた復讐を満足させることによって、彼らは、少なくとも自分自身の想像の中で、死によって、人の自然な感情と和解し、自分は憎しみや恨みを受けるに値するほどでもないと考えることが出来、多少なりとも罪を償って、恐怖よりもむしろ同情の対象となることで、出来ればすべての同胞の許しを得て、平和に死ぬことを望んだのである。明かす前に感じていたことと比べれば、このように考えることさえ幸せだったと思われる》―
同
In such cases, the
horror of blame-worthiness seems, even in persons who cannot be suspected of
any extraordinary delicacy or sensibility of character, completely to conquer
the dread of blame. In order to allay that horror, in order to pacify, in some
degree, the remorse of their own consciences, they voluntarily submitted
themselves both to the reproach and to the punishment which they knew were due
to their crimes, but which, at the same time, they might easily have avoided. –
Ibid.
《このような場合、非難に値することの恐怖は、性格が並み外れて繊細であったり敏感であったりすることが疑われるはずのない人であっても、非難されることの恐怖に完全に勝るように思われる。その恐怖を和らげるために、自分自身の良心の呵責を幾らかでも鎮（しず）めるために、彼らは自ら進んで、自分の罪の報いだと知りながら、同時に容易に避けられたかもしれない非難も処罰も甘受するのである》― 同
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