opprobrium

Okakura Kakuzoの "The Book of Tea" を読み終えたので、今度は新渡戸稲造の武士道を読み始めました。今日引用する文は "Bushido" のBUSHIDO AS AN ETHICAL SYSTEMの章からです。

If fighting in itself, be it offensive or defensive, is, as Quakers rightly testify, brutal and wrong, we can still say with Lessing, “We know from what failings our virtue springs.” “Sneaks” and “cowards” are epithets of the worst opprobrium to healthy, simple natures. Childhood begins life with these notions, and knighthood also; but, as life grows larger and its relations many-sided, the early faith seeks sanction from higher authority and more rational sources for its own justification, satisfaction and development. If military interests had operated alone, without higher moral support, how far short of chivalry would the ideal of knighthood have fallen! In Europe, Christianity, interpreted with concessions convenient to chivalry, infused it nevertheless with spiritual data. “Religion, war and glory were the three souls of a perfect Christian knight,” says Lamartine.

明治の人らしく難しい英語を使います。 "opprobrium" の意味を調べます。

・Oxford English Dictionary: severe criticism of a person, country, etc. by a large group of people: The bombing has attracted international opprobrium.
・Collins Dictionary: Opprobrium is open criticism or disapproval of something that someone has done.: [formal] His political opinions have attracted the opprobrium of the Left.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: severe criticism and blame: International opprobrium has been heaped on the country following its attack on its neighbours.

辞書の例文は最近のイスラエルによるガザへの攻撃を思い起させますね。