【１】砂漠には何もない。何もないということがとうぜんのようになってくると、逆に、なぜ日本の生活にはあんなにもたくさんのものがあるのか、奇妙に思えてくる。あんなに多くのものに取り巻かれなければ暮してゆけないのだろうか、と。【２】もしかしたら、それらのものは、ぜんぶ余計なものではないのか。余計なものに取り巻かれて暮しているから、余計な心配ばかりがふえ、かんじんの生きる意味が見失われてしまうのではないか……。
　【３】しかし、待てよ、と私は考える。生きてゆくのに必要なものだけしかないということは、文化がないということではないか。生きてゆくうえに必要なもの、それを上まわる余分のものこそが、じつは文化ではないのか。【４】文化とは、言ってみれば、余計なものの集積なのではないか。だとすれば、砂漠を肯定することは、文化を否定することになりはしまいか……。
　それにしても――と私はさらに考えなおす。私たちはあまりにも余分なものを抱えこみすぎているのではなかろうか。【５】余分なものこそ文化にはちがいないが、さりとて、余分なもののすべてが文化であるわけもなかろう。余分なもののなかで、どれが意味があり、何が無価値であるか、それをもういちど考えなおす必要がありはしまいか……。
　【６】砂漠とは、こうした反省を私にもたらす世界である。砂漠は現代の文明社会に生きる人びとにとって、一種の鏡の国と言ってもいいような気がする。私は砂漠に身を置くたびに、ある探検家がしみじみと洩らしたつぎのことばをかみしめる。
　【７】「砂漠とは、そこへ入りこむさきには心配で、そこから出て行くときにはなんの名残もない。そういう地域である。砂漠には何もない。ただ、その人自身の反省だけがあるのだ」
　私は、砂漠に自分自身の姿を見に行くのである。

　【８】砂漠は、私たち日本人が考えがちなロマンチックな場所ではけっしてない。王子さまとお姫さまが月の光を浴びながら銀色の砂の上を行く――などというメルヘンの世界ではない。【９】昼と夜とで温度は激変し、一瞬のうちに砂嵐が天地をおおってしまう、そういうおよそ非情な世界である。日本という井戸のなかに住む蛙であ∵る私は、こうした砂の世界に足を踏み入れたとたん、いつも後悔する。よりによって、なんでこんなところへ来てしまったのか！
　【０】だが、その後悔は、やがて反省へ変り、さらに希望へと移ってゆく。生きることへの希望へ。
　この意味で、砂漠こそ最もロマンチックな場所であり、メルヘンの世界だと私は思う。なぜなら、そうした「反世界」へ行こうとすることこそが、現代ではいちばんロマンチックな行為のように思われるからだ。メルヘンの世界とは、さかさまの国のことである。だとすれば、砂漠行こそ、まさしくメルヘンの国への旅ではないか。
　千里の旅、万巻の書――旅とはいろいろに考えられよう。しかし私は、旅とは、さかさまな国で自分を発見すること、後悔の向うに希望を見出すこと、そして人間の世界は、かくも広く、かくも多様で、かくも豊かなのだということを実感することだと思う。
　だからこそ、千里の旅は万巻の書に値するのである。

（森本哲郎（）「砂漠への旅」より）

The Complete Man

After his marriage to Princess Elizabeth and following her accession to the throne as Queen Elizabeth ? in 1952, Prince Philip's many interests and his sympathetic understanding of present-day problems were reflected in the speeches he made on public occasions. The speech quoted here is characteristic of his clear vision and of his ability to combine courtesy and plain speaking.
In the Middle Ages it was the Church and the universities which were primarily responsible for knitting together the nations of Europe in a common culture. This amounted to a system of thought and behaviour, conditioned by a reverence for the classics and restrained by religion and social custom. Two world wars and the advent of science have completely upset those conditions and removed those restraints. So far we have neither returned to them nor put anything in their place. The responsibility of the universities is therefore much greater today if they are to minister to the specialized needs of modern society and to regain their position as the spiritual and moral reservoirs of Europe and the world.
One of the marks of the Middle Ages was the free movement of scholars from university to university across the face of Europe. Since then the world has grown much smaller and that mobility ought in our day to cover the whole world. Teachers in the arts must surely benefit from a wide personal knowledge of the places where those arts flourished most nobly, and the science teacher must surely draw inspiration from working in the universities which were responsible for some of the greatest strides in science. Perhaps even more important, the movement of teachers and students alike between universities must surely help to break down the narrow nationalism which grows up with isolation. A proper respect for the achievements of others may not be easy in this competitive world, but it is after all the first step towards a broad mind.
European culture, thought, and ideas have drifted all over the world, and although they have received some hard knocks in recent years there are many far-away places where people still believe that Europe has something good to offer. We shall have nothing to offer unless our behaviour, our ideals, and our achievements gain universal respect. We can only have something to offer if the universities have clearly before them what they are aiming to do.
With the inevitable growth of specialization I see the universities facing two great dangers. First, it is very easy to get so involved in the technical details of education that the object of education is lost. And secondly, in an effort to condition a university to the needs of its students and to the needs of the State it may lose its power to make or mould those students into reasonable and responsible men, capable of thinking for themselves and capable of expressing the result of their thoughts to others.
A university must do more than merely provide a high-class professional apprenticeship. It does not matter in the least what a student's specialized line happens to be; the fact that he is a specialist cannot excuse him from his responsibilities as a man. Students must emerge as complete human beings capable of taking their proper place in society as a credit to their universities both for their professional knowledge and as men. There is no conflict between the disciplines here. Nobody can be termed a complete man who has no knowledge of what science has to teach, and, equally, human obligations cannot be escaped on the grounds of being a specialized scientist or technologist.
By human obligations I mean the ability to behave in a reasonable way, to observe restraint so that restraints do not have to be imposed, to be able to think clearly and objectively so that false doctrines cannot gain ground. I believe that it also means the ability to see through nonsense, political, economic, scientific, and so on, and the feeling that it is a duty to resist it. This in no way conflicts with the amount of specialized knowledge, whether scientific, classical, or anything else, which the student can absorb and turn to good account for himself and the community at large.
The universities have a special responsibility to send people of that sort out into the world, because by their influence and example in the community at large they can extend the work of the universities to every corner of the world.
However, to produce the complete man with that balanced sense of obligation and understanding we need to know much more about man himself. Our knowledge of science, the classics, or medicine is beautifully documented, indexed, and ordered. We may not know everything about the subject, but what is known is neatly bound. I imagine that is why we sometimes call this an age of reason, but we forget that -- in the midst of all that reasonable knowledge -- man himself remains as unreasonable, irrational, and unpredictable as ever
Everything around us has been found to have laws and order, and there are some who faintly resent the fact that man refuses to be ordered in the same way. But we must take care not to treat man, with his immense variety of prejudices and emotions, as just another statistical unit. There is the conflict; and it is perhaps inclined to become most noticeable in scientists who deal with ordered things and thoughts in their professional lives, but when the problems are human ones it is not altogether surprising that their ideal solutions are not universally accepted. The reverse is, of course, also true. If you spend your life making compromises it is hard to understand why that is not possible in science.
I would like to repeat that the conflict is not between disciplines, between humanism and science. The conflict lies between man and the world he has made for himself. Man has succeeded in changing many things but he has not changed much himself. It is just because we have got such a grip on nature and such a store of knowledge for its own sake that we must remember the central character, man, and his possibilities, limitations, and the depths he can sink to if he relaxes his self-control.

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh: from Selected Speeches (1955).