按：昨天鲍得海大侃了一通罗素，见“可怜之人必有可恨之处! --- 哥德尔, 罗素和我们”（http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=215467），那么今天我小侃一通罗素夫人。

 

罗素夫人1920年在中国的精彩演讲

武夷山

 

英国哲学家、诺贝尔文学奖得主罗素1920－1921年期间曾在中国讲学 ，他的女友桃拉·布莱克随其访问。从中国返回英国后，他俩正式结婚。她是罗素的第二任夫人。

她在访华期间也发表过演讲，《社会结构学（罗素五大演讲）》（北大新知书社，1921年10月出版）一书收入了她1921年7月离开中国前发表的临别演讲。这本书在当年的中科院图书馆社科分部（位置在王府井大街上）有收藏，我借阅过。下面摘录一些她的演讲词，以窥其非凡识见。

 

我可以大胆说一句，这个世界上，没有哪个国家，在他的道德上，智慧上，都超过其余的国家。这是国际思想第一个公理。

（博主：小布什迄今没有这样的认识，她近九十年前就看得这么清楚，了不起！这样的认识是文化多样性思想的前驱。）

西方文明之有力者，是以下各种的信仰――科学，机械与物质的安逸，及人类的进化。

（博主：请注意，她并没有说西方的伦理道德思想更先进。）

西方科学的观察，或能于你们有利，第一，在道德的问题上，可以得着精确与不迷信的结论，第二，能借此发达一些道德的性质――诚实与精确。（博主：我们的社会，诚信仍是大问题；国人马马虎虎的习惯也未见太大的改观。）……科学家是怀疑的，小心的，……很容易引起一般自以为了解科学的人，对于宗教、政治、伦理各种事情，都采用怀疑与冷静的态度。他们说，因为世界上有许多的“假设”与“可能”。所以要在这些上面去用功，乃是不值得的。我想你们中国人，已经有很多的冷静与怀疑的态度，不必再取材于我们。你们已经欢喜尽力讨论，其结果遂使你们自己，对于每种行动之任何方针，均觉不能自择。（博主：姓社还是姓资的讨论与辩论，曾经那么激烈，所以邓小平说，“不争论”。）

当寻觅真理时，科学即指导我们，对于一切事物，只须注意宇宙的全体，不必注重宇宙上的个人……(博主: 这一思想似乎不符合以人为本的科学发展观啊,呵呵。)

懦夫是最好的机械。

认定主义而不实行，在这样黑暗的时代，乃是人类的蟊贼。（博主：她也是反对口头革命派的。）

 

博主认为，她的演讲最值得注意的是，她并不主张全盘西化。她对中国的文化特点和民族性格把握得比较准确，因此是有的放矢地提一些建议。这一点，比我们中国人中某些崇洋媚外者恨不得一切照搬西方国家做法的心态要强多了。

以下是维基百科对她的介绍。她父亲重视子女的教育，不搞性别歧视，所以她获得良好的教育，在那么早的年代就在伦敦大学学院读过研究生，研究18世纪的法国思想。她是作家、女权思想和进步思想的宣传家。

Dora Russell, née Black (3 April 1894 – 31 May 1986) was a British author, a feminist and progressive campaigner, and the second wife of the eminent philosopher Bertrand Russell.

Dora Black was born into an English upper-middle class family, the second of four children. Her father, Sir Frederick Black, worked his way up in the Civil Service and laid great store by his children's education, regardless of their sex. She went to a private co-educational primary school near her parents' home, won a junior scholarship to Sutton High School. In 1911 she spent nearly a year at a private boarding school for girls in Germany, in preparation for the 'Little Go' at Cambridge. There she won a modern languages scholarship to Girton College, Cambridge. Soon she joined the Heretics Society, co-founded by C. K. Ogden in 1909. It questioned traditional authorities in general and religious dogma in particular. The society helped her to discard traditional values and develop her own feminist mode of thought. In June 1915 she received a First Class Honours degree in modern languages at Girton with a special distinction in Orals.

By autumn of that year she had moved to London and begun postgraduate studies in eighteenth century French thought at University College London. She first met Bertrand Russell in 1916 when joining him on a weekend walking tour. However, the pair did not embark on a relationship before 1919, when Russell invited her to join him during his summer holidays. Before that, Black had supported Russell in his campaign against military conscription in World War I.

Black and Russell visited Russia in 1920, soon after the Bolshevik revolution. Russell was unimpressed by Lenin, but Black, like many English socialists at the time, saw a vision of a future ideal civilisation. The couple also visited China.

On their return to England, Black and Russell married. They soon had their first child, John Russell in 1921.

She at first rejected Russell's offer of marriage. In common with other radical women of her generation she had realised the extent to which the laws regulating marriage contributed to women's subjugation. In her view, only parents should be bound by a social contract, and only insofar as their cooperation was required for raising their children. Implicit was her conviction that both men and women were polygamous by nature and should therefore be free, whether married or not, to engage in sexual relationships that were based on mutual love. In this she was as much an early sexual pioneer as in her fight for women's right to information about, and free access to, birth control methods. She regarded these as essential for women to gain control over their own lives, and eventually become fully emancipated.

In 1924, Russell campaigned passionately for birth control, joining with H. G. Wells and John Maynard Keynes in founding the Workers' Birth Control Group. She also campaigned in the Labour Party for birth control clinics, with only limited success.

The couple founded a school in 1927 called Beacon Hill School in which they tried to teach children to leave behind superstition and the irrational views of previous generations as they viewed them. Russell expressed her views on education in a book called In Defence of Children.

She became Countess Russell in 1931, when Bertrand Russell's elder brother Frank died and her husband became the 3rd Earl Russell. Russell left her for one of his students after Dora Russell had had two children with journalist Griffin Barry. She ran the school on her own until World War II.

After the war, Russell became an advocate of the peace movement and was one of the founder members of the CND, in which she joined with other prominent leftists (Russell, J. B. Priestley, Michael Foot, Victor Gollancz among others) in campaigning for worldwide nuclear disarmament.

It has taken us centuries of thought and mockery to shake the medieval system. -- With this in view I have taken as impulses, instincts, or needs certain driving forces in the human species as we know it at present, and argued for such social and economic changes as will give them new, free, and varied expression. To take even this first step towards a happy society is a herculean task. After it has been accomplished, generations to come will see what the creature [us] will do next. We none of us know; and we should be thoroughly on our guard against all those who pretend that they do." --Dora Russell, Author's Preface, The Right to Be Happy, Harper & Brothers,(1927)

She was still speaking on peace issues on 2 April 1981, when she addressed a Merseyside Peace Week^[1].

[edit] References

1. ^ LSE archive at http://www.lse.ac.uk/library/archive/cnd/cnd_1.htm (accessed 7 September 2008)

 

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