（無題）アディソン ADDISON.
「首なし騎手」に引用された「スペクテイター」誌の記事が見つかったので、読んでみた。ラテン語やスペイン語は翻訳機頼りで、誤訳もあるかと思う。
何処なりとも恐怖が襲い、その沈黙また恐怖呼ぶ。
Horror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent.
VIRG.(ウェルギリウス) Æn.(アエネイス) ii. ver. 755.
万物は恐怖と不安に満ちている、
夜の静寂の中にも恐ろしさがある。
All things are full of horror and affright,
And dreadful ev'n the silence of the night.
DRYDEN.
ロジャー卿の家から少し離れたところにある古い修道院の廃墟の中に、年老いたニレの長い散歩道がある。ニレの木はとても高く伸びていて、その下を通ると、ニレの頂上で休む雄鶏やカラスが、別天地で鳴いているようだ。このような騒音は、被造物全体の欲求を満たし、詩篇*の美しい言葉で言えば、自分を呼ぶ若いカラスを養う存在への自然な祈りのようなものだと考えて、私はとても喜んでいる。この隠居暮らしをより気に入っているのは、幽霊が出るという悪い噂があるため（家族で聞いた話ですが）、牧師以外の生き物が、この中を歩くことがない。親友の執事は、日没後にその中に身を置かないようにと、非常に深刻な顔で頼んできた。従僕の一人が、首なし黒馬の形をした幽霊に脅えそうになったことがあるからだという。さらに、1ヶ月ほど前、ミルクを入れた缶を頭に載せて遅く帰ってきたメイドの一人が、茂みの中でざわめきを聞いたので、それを落としてしまったと付け加えた。昨夜9時から10時の間、この場所を散歩してみたところ、なるほど幽霊が現れるには、世界中にも珍しいほどぴったりな光景だと思わずにはいられなかった。修道院の廃墟は四方に散在し、半分は蔦とニワトコの木で覆われている。この木には、夕暮れまでめったに姿を現さない数羽の孤独な鳥が集まっている。この場所は以前は教会堂で、今でも墓や埋葬の跡がいくつか残っている。古い廃墟や丸天井はよく反響し、普通より少し大きな音で踏み鳴らすだけで、その音が繰り返して聞こえる。同時に、楡の木の散歩道は、その頂上から時折聞こえる鴉の鳴き声とともに、非常に荘厳で由緒あるものに見える。
夜がその場所の恐ろしさを高め、その中のあらゆるものに無数の恐怖を注ぐとき、弱い心がその場所を妖怪や幻影で満たすことを、私はまったく不思議に思わない。ロック氏は、「観念の連合」の章において、教育の偏見によって、ある観念が、物の本質において互いに類似していない一連のものをしばしば心に導入することを示す非常に興味深い指摘を行っている。この種のいくつかの例の中で、彼は次のような例を挙げている。
ゴブリンとスライトの観念は、光よりも闇と何の関係もない。しかし、愚かな女中が子供の心にこれらをしばしば教え込み、一緒に育てると、おそらく彼は生きている限り、それらを再び切り離すことはできないだろう。暗闇はその後に恐ろしい考えをもたらすだろうし、それらは強く結合しているので、彼はもう一方に耐えることができないだろう。
…夕暮れ時の薄暗さが恐怖を煽るこの孤独な場所を歩いていると、すぐ近くで牛が草を食んでいるのが見えたが、驚きやすい想像力なら、それが首なし黒馬に見える事も有り得るだろう。このような些細な出来事で、哀れな従僕は分別を失ったに違いない。
At a little distance from Sir Roger's house, among the ruins of an old abbey, there is a long walk of aged elms ; which are shot up so very high, that when one passes under them, the rooks and crows that rest upon the tops of them seem to be cawing in another region. I am very much delighted with this sort of noise, which I consider as a kind of natural prayer to that Being who supplies the wants of his whole creation, and who, in the beautiful language of the Psalms *, feedeth the young ravens that call upon him. I like this retirement the better, because of an ill report it lies under of being haunted ; for which reason ( as I have been told in the family ) no living creature ever walks in it besides the chaplain. My good friend the butler desired me with a very grave face not to ven ture myself in it after sunset, for that one of the footmen had been almost frightened out of his wits by a spirit that appeared to him in the shape of a black horse without a head ; to which he added, that about a month ago, one of the maids coming home late that way with a pail of milk upon her head, heard such a rustling among the bushes that she let it fall. I was taking a walk in this place last night between the hours of nine and ten, and could not but fancy it one of the most proper scenes in the world for a ghost to appear in. The ruins of the abbey are scattered up and down on every side, and half covered with ivy and elder-bushes, the harbours of several solitary birds which seldom make their appearance till the dusk of the evening. The place was formerly a churchyard, and has still several marks in it of graves and burying-places. There is such an echo among the old ruins and vaults, that if you stamp but a little louder than ordinary, you hear the sound repeated. At the same time the walk of elms, with the croaking of the ravens which from time to time are heard from the tops of them, looks exceeding solemn and venerable. These objects naturally raise seriousness and attention and when night heightens the awfulness of the place, and pours out her supernumerary horrors upon every thing in it, I do not at all wonder that weak minds fill it with spectres and apparitions. ; Mr. Locke, in his chapter of the Association of Ideas, has very curious remarks to shew how by the prejudice of education one idea often introduces into the mind a whole set that bear no resemblance to one another in the nature of things. Among several examples of this kind, he produces the following instance. The ideas of goblins and sprights have really no more to do with darkness than light yet let but a foolish maid inculcate these often on the mind of a child, and raise them there together, possibly he shall never be able to separate them again so long as he lives ; but darkness shall ever afterwards bring with it those frightful ideas, and they shall be so joined, that he can no more bear the one than the other * ' - As I was walking in this solitude, where the dusk of the evening, conspired with so many other occasions of terror, I observed a cow grazing not far from me, which an imagination that was apt to startle might easily have construed into a black horse without a head : and I dare say the poor footman lost his wits upon some such trivial occasion. 私の友人であるロジャー卿は、よく私に面白おかしく話してくれた。初めて自分の領地に来たとき、家の3つの部分がまったく使えなかったこと、その中で最も良い部屋は幽霊が出ると評判で、そのために鍵をかけていたこと、長い回廊で物音が聞こえ、夜8時以降は使用人を入れられなかったこと、ある部屋の扉は釘付けになっていて、以前その部屋で執事が首を吊ったと家族の間で噂されていたこと。また、長生きした彼の母親が、邸宅の半分にも及ぶ、夫や息子や娘が亡くなった部屋を閉め切ったこと。この騎士は、自分の住まいがこんなにも狭くなってしまい、自分の家から閉め出されたような状態になったのを見て、母の死を契機に、すべての部屋を開け放つよう命じ、牧師が各部屋に次々と寝泊まりして悪魔払いをし、長い間一家を支配していた恐怖を払拭させた。
My friend Sir Roger has often told me with a good deal of mirth, that at his first coming to his estate he found three parts of his house altogether useless ; that the best room in it had the reputation of being haunted, and by that means was locked up ; that noises had been heard in his long gallery, so that he could not get a servant to enter it after eight o'clock at night ; that the door of one of the chambers was nailed up, because there went a story in the family that a butler had formerly hanged himself in it ; and that his mother, who lived to a great age, had shut up half the rooms in the house, in which either her husband, a son, or a daughter had died. The knight seeing his habitation reduced to so small a compass, and himself in a manner shut out of his own house, upon the death of his mother, ordered all the apartments to be flung open, and exorcised by his chaplain, who lay in every room one after another, and by that means dissipated the fears which had so long reigned in the family.
この国のあらゆる場所で、このような恐怖が蔓延していることに気づかなかったら、このような馬鹿げた恐怖にこれほどこだわる事もなかったであろう。同時に、幽霊や妖怪の想像に怯える人は、古今東西のあらゆる歴史家の報告に反して、またあらゆる国の伝統に反して、霊の出現を信じ難く根拠がないと考える人よりも、ずっと話が合うと思わずに居られない。かくなる人類一般の証言に身を委ねることができないのに、現在生きていて、他の事実について信用ならない特定の人物が言う事を信用しろというのか。ここで付け加えると、歴史家だけでなく、詩人や古代の哲学者たちも、この意見を支持している。その哲学を突き詰めていく中で、魂は肉体から分離して存在しないと主張せざるを得なかったルクレティウスも、幻影の実在を疑わず、人はしばしば死後に姿を現すと述べている。このことは、注目に値する。彼は、否定できない事実に迫られ、哲学が始まって以来、最もばかげた非哲学的な概念で説明することを余儀なくされたのだ。その説くところ、すべての物の表皮は、それぞれの本体から絶え間なく次々と飛び立っている。そして、これらの表面や薄いケースは、玉ねぎの皮のように身体の中で結合している間はお互いを含んでいたが、身体から離れると全体が見えることがある。これによって、我々はしばしば死者や不在者の形や影を見ることができると。
I should not have been thus particular upon these ridiculous horrors, did not I find them so very much prevail in all parts of the country. At the same time I think a person who is thus terrified with the imagination of ghosts and spectres much more reasonable than one who, contrary to the reports of all historians sacred and profane, ancient and modern, and to the traditions of all nations, thinks the appearance of spirits fabulous and groundless.
Could not I give myself up to this general testimony of mankind, I should to the relations of particular persons who are now living, and whom I cannot distrust in other matters of fact. I might here add, that not only the historians, to whom we may join the poets, but like wise the philosophers of antiquity, have favoured this opinion. Lucretius *, though by the course of his philosophy he was obliged to maintain that the soul did not exist separate from the body, makes no doubt of the reality of apparitions, and that men have often appeared after their death. This I think very remarkable : he was so pressed with the matter of fact which he could not have the confidence to deny, that he was forced to account for it by one of the most absurd unphilosophical notions that was ever started. He tells us, that the surfaces of all bodies, are perpetually flying off from their respective bodies, one after another ; and that these surfaces or thin cases that included each other whilst they were joined in the body like the coats of an onion, are sometimes seen entire when they are separated from it ; by which means we often behold the shapes and shadows of persons who are either dead or absent.
この論文は、ヨセフスの物語で締めくくることにする。この物語自体のためというよりも、著者がこの物語の最後に述べている道徳的考察のためである。
「アルケラウス王の娘グラフィラは、先の2人の夫の死後（最初の夫の兄弟である3番目の夫と結婚し、夫は彼女を熱烈に愛していたため、この結婚のために前の妻を追い出した）、非常に奇妙な夢を見た。彼女は最初の夫が自分に向かってくるのを見たと思い、とても優しく彼を抱きしめた。その時、彼の姿を見て彼女が示した喜びの中に、彼は次のように彼女を非難した。
『グラフィラ、』と彼は言う、『女は信用できない』という古いことわざをあなたは実践したのだ。私はあなたの初めての夫ではなかったのか？あなたとの間に子供はいないのか？あなたはどうして私たちの愛を忘れて、二度目の結婚をし、さらに三度目の結婚をし、いや、兄弟のベッドに恥ずかしげもなく忍び込んだ男を夫にすることができたのでしょうか？しかし、私たちの過去の愛のために、私はあなたを現在の非難から解放し、あなたを永遠に私のものにしよう』。
グラフィラは、この夢を知り合いの女性数人に語って後、まもなくして死んだ。
私はこの話が、王たちについて語るこの場所で、不謹慎でないかと思った。それに、この例は、魂の不滅と神の摂理の最も確かな証拠を含んでいる点で、注目に値する。もし、これらの事実を信じられないと思う人がいれば、その人が自分の意見を主張するのはいいとして。このような事例から徳の研究に励んでいる他の人の研究を邪魔するような真似は控えられたい。」
I shall dismiss this paper with a story out of Josephus *, not so much for the sake of the story itself, as for the moral reflections with which the author concludes it, and which I shall here set down in his own words. 'Glaphyra, the daughter of king Archelaus, after the death of her two first husbands (being married to a third, who was brother to her first husband, and so passionately in love with her that he turned off his former wife to make room for this marriage) had a very odd kind of dream. She fancied that she saw her first husband coming towards her, and that she embraced him with great tenderness; when in the midst of the pleasure, which she expressed at the sight of him, he reproached her after the following manner:"Glaphyra," says he, "thou hast made good the old saying, That women are not to be trusted. Was not I the husband of thy virginity ? Have I not children by thee ? How couldst thou forget our loves so far as to enter into a second marriage, and after that into a third, nay to take for thy husband a man who has so shamelessly crept into the bed of his brother? However, for the sake of our past loves, I shall free thee from thy present reproach, and make thee mine for ever." Glaphyra told this dream to several women of her acquaintance, and died soon after. I thought this story might not be impertinent in this place, wherein I speak of those kings. Besides that, the example deserves to be taken notice of, as it contains a most certain proof of the immortality of the soul, and of Divine Providence. If any man thinks these facts incredible, let him enjoy his own opinion to himself, but let him not endeavour to disturb the belief of others, who by instances of this nature are excited to the study of virtue.'
ADDISON.
* Psalm cxlvii. 9.
* Essay on Human Understanding, B. ii. ch. 33. sect. 10.
* Book iv, ver. 34, & c.
* Jewish Antiquities, Book xvii. chap. 15.
