第44课

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Custom has not commonly been regarded as a subject of any great moment.

习俗通常不被认为是一个举足轻重的问题。

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The inner workings of our own brains we feel to be uniquely worthy of investigation,

我们认为我们自己大脑的内部运作是独一无二地值得研究的，

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but custom, we have a way of thinking, is behaviour at is most commonplace.

但我们有一种想法，认为习俗是最常见的行为。

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As a matter of fact, it is the other way around.

事实上，情况恰恰相反。

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Traditional custom, taken the world over,

传统的习俗，遍布世界各地，

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is a mass of detailed behaviour more astonishing than what any one person can ever evolve in individual actions,

是一堆详细的行为，比任何个人在单独行动中所能演变出的行为都更令人惊讶，

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no matter how aberrant.

无论多么反常。

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Yet that is a rather trivial aspect of the matter.

然而，这只是问题的微不足道的一面。

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The fact of first-rate importance is the predominant role that custom plays in experience and in belief,

最重要的事实是习俗在经验和信仰中扮演的主导角色，

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and the very great varieties it may manifest.

以及它可能表现出的巨大多样性。

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No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes.

没有人能以纯粹的眼光看待世界。

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He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking.

他看到的世界是由一套明确的习俗、制度和思维方式所塑造的。

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Even in his philosophical probings he cannot go behind these stereotypes;

即使在他的哲学探索中，他也无法超越这些刻板印象；

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his very concepts of the true and the false will still have reference to his particular traditional customs.

他对真与假的观念仍然会与他特定的传统习俗相关联。

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John Dewey has said in all seriousness that the part played by custom in shaping the behaviour of the individual,

约翰·杜威曾非常严肃地说，习俗在塑造个人行为中所起的作用，

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as against any way in which he can affect traditional custom,

与他能够影响传统习俗的任何方式相比，

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is as the proportion of the total vocabulary of his mother tongue

就像他母语的全部词汇量，

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against those words of his own baby talk that are taken up into the vernacular of his family.

与他自己咿呀学语中被家庭口语采纳的词语之比。

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When one seriously studies the social orders that have had the opportunity to develop autonomously,

当人们认真研究那些有机会自主发展的社会秩序时，

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the figure becomes no more than an exact and matter-of-fact observation.

这个比喻就成了精确而实际的观察。

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The life history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation

个体的生命历程首先是一种适应，

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to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community.

适应其社区中世代相传的模式和标准。

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From the moment of his birth,

从他出生那一刻起，

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the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behaviour.

他所降生的习俗塑造了他的经验和行为。

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By the time he can talk, he is the little creature of his culture,

等到他会说话时，他已是其文化的小小产物，

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and by the time he is grown and able to take part in its activities,

等到他长大成人并能参与其活动时，

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its habits are his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities.

它的习惯是他的习惯，它的信仰是他的信仰，它的不可能之事是他的不可能之事。

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Every child that is born into his group will share them with him,

每一个出生在他群体中的孩子都会与他分享这些，

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and no child born into one on the opposite side of the globe can ever achieve the thousandth part.

而出生在地球另一边的孩子连千分之一也无法做到。

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There is no social problem it is more incumbent upon us to understand than this of the role of custom.

没有比理解习俗的作用更重要的社会问题了。

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Until we are intelligent as to its laws and varieties,

在我们对其规律和多样性有充分了解之前，

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the main complicating facts of human life must remain unintelligible.

人类生活的主要复杂事实必然是难以理解的。

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The study of custom can be profitable only after certain preliminary propositions have been accepted,

对习俗的研究只有在某些初步命题被接受之后才能有所裨益，

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and some of these propositions have been violently opposed.

而其中一些命题曾遭到强烈反对。

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In the first place, any scientific study requires that there be no

首先，任何科学研究都要求，

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preferential weighting of one or another of the items in the series it selects for its consideration.

在它所选择的系列项目进行考量时，不应对其中任何一项有偏向性地加权。

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In all the less controversial fields, like the study of cacti or termites or the nature of nebulae,

在所有争议较少的领域，比如研究仙人掌、白蚁或星云的性质，

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the necessary method of study is to group the relevant material and to take note of all possible variant forms and conditions.

必要的研究方法是将相关材料分组，并记录所有可能的变体形式和条件。

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In this way, we have learned all that we know of the laws of astronomy, or of the habits of the social insects, let us say.

通过这种方式，我们掌握了天文学的所有规律，或者说，掌握了群居昆虫的习性。

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It is only in the study of man himself that the major social sciences

只有在研究人类自身时，主要的社会科学才

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have substituted the study of one local variation, that of Western civilization.

将对西方文明这一地方性变体的研究取而代之。

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Anthropology was by definition impossible,

人类学按定义来说是不可能的，

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as long as these distinctions between ourselves and the primitive,

只要我们与原始人、

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ourselves and the barbarian, ourselves and the pagan, held sway over people's minds.

我们与野蛮人、我们与异教徒之间的这些区别仍然主宰着人们的思想。

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It was necessary first to arrive at that degree of sophistication

首先，有必要达到那种成熟程度，

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where we no longer set our own belief against our neighbour's superstition.

即我们不再将自己的信仰与邻居的迷信对立起来。

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It was necessary to recognize that these institutions which are based on the same premises, let us say the supernatural,

有必要认识到，这些基于相同前提的制度，比方说超自然现象，

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must be considered together, our own among the rest.

必须被一并考虑，包括我们自己的。