Lesson 44

Patterns of culture

Custom has not commonly been regarded as a subject of any great moment.
习俗通常没有被视为一个具有重大意义的主题。
The inner workings of our own brains we feel to be uniquely worthy of investigation, but custom, we have a way of thinking, is behaviour at its most commonplace.
我们感觉我们大脑的内部运作独特地值得研究，但我们有一种思维方式，认为习俗是最普遍的行为。
As a matter of fact, it is the other way around.
事实上，情况恰恰相反。
Traditional custom, taken the world over, is a mass of detailed behaviour more astonishing than what any one person can ever evolve in individual actions, no matter how aberrant.
放眼全球，传统习俗是一堆详细的行为，比任何一个人在个人行为中所能演化出的（行为）都要令人惊叹，无论这些行为多么反常。
Yet that is a rather trivial aspect of the matter.
然而，那只是这件事中相当琐碎的一个方面。
The fact of first-rate importance is the predominant role that custom plays in experience and in belief, and the very great varieties it may manifest.
至关重要的事实是习俗在经验和信仰中所扮演的主导作用，以及它可能表现出的巨大多样性。
No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes.
没有人能用纯净的眼睛审视这个世界。
He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking.
他看待它时，是将其置于一套明确的习俗、制度和思维方式中进行编辑的。
Even in his philosophical probings he cannot go behind these stereotypes; his very concepts of the true and the false will still have reference to his particular traditional customs.
即使在他的哲学探索中，他也无法超越这些刻板印象；他那真实与虚假的概念仍然会关联到他特定的传统习俗。
John Dewey has said in all seriousness that the part played by custom in shaping the behaviour of the individual, as against any way in which he can affect traditional custom, is as the proportion of the total vocabulary of his mother tongue against those words of his own baby talk that are taken up into the vernacular of his family.
约翰·杜威曾非常严肃地指出，习俗在塑造个人行为中所起的作用，相对于个人影响传统习俗的任何方式而言，就如同他母语的总词汇量与他自己婴儿语中被家庭方言所采纳的词汇量之间的比例。
When one seriously studies the social orders that have had the opportunity to develop autonomously, the figure becomes no more than an exact and matter-of-fact observation.
当一个人认真研究那些有机会自主发展的社会秩序时，这个数字仅仅是一个精确且实事求是的观察。
The life history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community.
个人的生命历史首先且首要地是对其社区中传统传承的模式和标准的适应。
From the moment of his birth, the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behaviour.
从他出生的那一刻起，他所处的习俗就塑造了他的经验和行为。
By the time he can talk, he is the little creature of his culture, and by the time he is grown and able to take part in its activities, its habits are his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities.
到他能说话时，他已是其文化的产物；而当他长大成人并能参与其活动时，其习惯就是他的习惯，其信仰就是他的信仰，其禁忌就是他的禁忌。
Every child that is born into his group will share them with him, and no child born into one on the opposite side of the globe can ever achieve the thousandth part.
每个出生在他群体中的孩子都将与他分享它们，而没有出生在地球另一端的孩子能实现其千分之一。
There is no social problem it is more incumbent upon us to understand than this of the role of custom.
没有比习俗角色这一问题更需要我们去理解的社会问题了。
Until we are intelligent as to its laws and varieties, the main complicating facts of human life must remain unintelligible.
直到我们理解了其规律和种类，人类生活的主要复杂事实必然保持不可理解。
The study of custom can be profitable only after certain preliminary propositions have been accepted, and some of these propositions have been violently opposed.
只有在某些初步命题被接受之后，对习俗的研究才是有益的，而其中一些命题遭到了强烈的反对。
In the first place, any scientific study requires that there be no preferential weighting of one or another of the items in the series it selects for its consideration.
首先，任何科学研究都要求在它选择用于考量的系列中，不对其中的任何项目进行优先加权。
In all the less controversial fields, like the study of cacti or termites or the nature of nebulae, the necessary method of study is to group the relevant material and to take note of all possible variant forms and conditions.
在所有较少争议的领域中，如仙人掌、白蚁的研究或星云的本质，必要的研究方法是归纳相关材料，并注意所有可能的变体形式和条件。
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.
以这种方式，我们已经了解了我们所知道的一切关于天文学定律，或者说是关于社会性昆虫习性的知识。
It is only in the study of man himself that the major social sciences have substituted the study of one local variation, that of Western civilization.
只有在研究人类自身的过程中，主要的社会科学才取代了对一种局部变体——即西方文明——的研究。
Anthropology was by definition impossible, as long as these distinctions between ourselves and the primitive, ourselves and the barbarian, ourselves and the pagan, held sway over people's minds.
只要我们与原始人、我们与野蛮人、我们与异教徒之间的这些区别在人们的思想中占据主导地位，人类学根据定义就是不可能的。
It was necessary first to arrive at that degree of sophistication where we no longer set our own belief against our neighbour’s superstition.
首先达到那种复杂程度，使我们不再将自己的信仰置于邻居的迷信之上，这是必要的。
It was necessary to recognize that these institutions which are based on the same premises, let us say the supernatural, must be considered together, our own among the rest.
有必要认识到，这些基于相同前提（比如超自然）的机构必须被放在一起考虑，我们自己的机构也在其中。