The Power of Habit 论习惯(中文版)

The Power of Habit 论习惯

——By William James

"Habit a second nature! Habit is ten times nature," the Duke of Wellington is

said to have exclaimed; and the degree to which this is true no one can probably

appreciate as well as one who is a veteran soldier himself. The daily drill and the

years of discipline end by fashioning a man completely over again, as to most of

the possibilities of his conduct.

“习惯是第二天性！习惯是十倍的天性！”威灵顿公爵曾这样大声疾呼；对于这句话的真实理解程度，可能没有人能够像一个退伍老兵理解那么深刻。每天的训练和常年累月的纪律，到头来把一个人大部分行为的可能性完全再塑造了一遍。

"There is a story, which is credible enough, though it may not be true, of a

practical joker, who, seeing a discharged veteran carrying home his dinner, suddenly

called out, 'Attention!' whereupon the man instantly brought his hands down, and

lost his mutton and potatoes in the gutter. The drill had been thorough, and its

effects had become embodied in the man's nervous structure."[16]

“一个恶作剧者，讲过这样一个故事，尽管此故事可能不真实，但是颇具可信度。看到一个退伍老兵端着饭回家，他突然大喊了一声“立正”因此，那个老兵立即放下双手，搞得他的羊肉和土豆都掉在水沟里了。训练如此彻底，以至于使其效果具体化地体现在了老兵的神经结构之中。”

Riderless cavalry-horses, at many a battle, have been seen to come together and

go through their customary evolutions at the sound of the bugle-call. Most trained

domestic animals, dogs and oxen, and omnibus- and car- [p.121] horses, seem to be

machines almost pure and simple, undoubtingly, unhesitatingly doing from minute to

minute the duties they have been taught, and giving no sign that the possibility

of an alternative ever suggests itself to their mind. Men grown old in prison have

asked to be readmitted after being once set free. In a railroad accident to a

travelling menagerie in the United States some time in 1884, a tiger, whose cage

had broken open, is said to have emerged, but presently crept back again, as if too

much bewildered by his new responsibilities, so that he was without difficulty

secured.

人们常在很多战斗中看到，无人骑的骑兵马，一听到军号声就会走到一起来，做出它们习惯性演练的动作。大多数受训过的家畜，狗和牛，公共马车和小马车的马，它们看起来似乎都是几近纯粹和简单的机器，每时每刻都在毫无怀疑，毫无犹豫地履行着教授给它们的责任，没有任何迹象表明在它们的心中还曾出现过其它事情的可能性。一些在监狱中变老的人，在释放之后，曾要求重新入狱。据说，1884年发生在旅行动物园的一场事故之中，一个老虎笼子被撞开，老虎已经出来了，但是没过多久就爬回去了，这就好像是它感到对自己新的责任，茫然不知所措，于是人们毫不费力就把它弄到了完全地带。

Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative

agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of [l1] ordinance, and saves

the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor. It alone prevents

the hardest and most repulsive[l2] walks of life[l3] from being deserted by those

brought up to tread therein. It keeps the fisherman and the deck-hand at sea through

the winter; it holds the miner in his darkness, and nails the countryman to his

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log-cabin and his lonely farm through all the months of snow; it protects us from

invasion by the natives of the desert and the frozen zone. It dooms us all to fight

out the battle of[l4] life upon the lines of our nurture or our early choice, and

to make the best of a pursuit that disagrees, because there is no other for which

we are fitted, and it is too late to begin again. It keeps different social strata

from mixing. Already at the age of twenty-five you see the professional mannerism

settling down on the young commercial traveller, on the young doctor, on the young

minister, on the young counsellor-at-law. You see the little lines of cleavage

running through the character, the tricks of thought, the prejudices, the ways of

the 'shop,' in a word, from which the man can by-and-by [l5] no more escape than

his coat-sleeve can suddenly fall into a new set of folds. On the whole, it is best

he should not escape. It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of

thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

因此，习惯是社会的巨大飞轮，是社会最珍贵、最保守的代理人。仅凭一己之力，就把我们束缚在社会的条条框框之内，把富家孩子从饱含嫉妒之心的穷人的暴动之中拯救出来。仅凭一己之力，就阻挡了最艰难、最令人生厌的行当，不至于被那些在那里成长起来的人抛弃。习惯让渔夫和水手，整个冬天都固守海上；它让矿工呆在黑暗中，让乡下人在漫漫雪天里，固守着自己的小木屋和他那孤寂的农场；它使我们免受沙漠和严寒地带土著居民的侵害。它注定让我们所有的人为我们的教化或早期的选择，展开一场生活之战，并且充分利用与先前教化或选择不同的追求，因为没有其它的东西适合我们，而重头再来又太晚了。它使各个不同的阶层不至于混淆起来。你会发现，25岁之时，年轻的旅行推销员、年轻的医生、年轻的牧师、年轻的法律顾问，都已经沾上了职业习气。你会发现，你在性格、思想技巧、偏见、“购物“的方式上，看到小小的分歧，简而言之，人们对于此无法马上回避，正如他的外衣袖子不能突然一下子适应新的折痕一般。总言之，最好是他不该回避。在我们大多数人中，到了30岁的时候，性格就已如石膏般固定，永远再也不会软化了，这真的是一件好事情。

If the period between twenty and thirty is the critical one in the formation

of intellectual and professional habits, [p.122] the period below twenty is more

important still for the fixing of personal habits, properly so called, such as

vocalization and pronunciation, gesture, motion, and address. Hardly ever is a

language learned after twenty spoken without a foreign accent; hardly ever can a

youth transferred to the society of his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices

of speech bred in him by the associations of his growing years. Hardly ever, indeed,

no matter how much money there be in his pocket, can he even learn to dress like

a gentleman-born. The merchants offer their wares as eagerly to him as to the veriest

'swell[l6] ,' but he simply cannot buy the right things. An invisible law, as strong

as gravitation, keeps him within his orbit, arrayed[l7] this year as he was the last;

and how his better-bred acquaintances contrive to get the things they wear will be

for him a mystery till his dying day.

如果说20到30岁之间，在形成人的智力和职业习惯，是一个时期的话，那么说，20岁之前的这段时期，对于一个人个性习惯（严格上讲），就更为至关重要，这些个性习惯包括，语音、发声、手势、动作、谈吐等。20岁之后学习语言，几乎很少不带外国口音 ；一个升到其上司的社会圈子内的年轻人，几乎很难忘记在他成长的岁月中，所形成的说话带鼻音和其它言语缺陷。诚然，不管自己的口袋有多少钱，他也很难把自己打扮成一个士绅出身

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的模样。商家向他和名副其实的“风头人物”一样，热心兜售商品，但他就是完全不能买对东西。一条看不见的法则，如引力般强大，将他留在他的轨道，在这一年打扮得好像他是最差的；他那些受过更良好教养的人，则是想方设法得到他们所穿戴的东西，而这对于他而言，到死的那一天也将是个谜。

The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally

instead of our enemy. It is to fund and capitalize our acquisitions, and live at

ease upon the interest of the fund. For this we must make automatic and habitual,

as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing

into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against

the plague. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the

effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set

free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than one in

whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar,

the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the

beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation.

Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters

which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his

consciousness at all. If there be such daily duties not yet ingrained in any one

of my readers, let him begin this very hour to set the matter right.

所以，在我们所有的教育之中，最伟大的事情莫过于，使神经系统成为我们的盟友，而不是我们的敌人。它对我们的所得之物进行投资，并将它资本化，随后轻松地坐收投资渔利。基于此，我们就必须尽可能早些时候，尽可能把有用的动作变成自动自发、习惯性的动作，就必须像预防瘟疫一般，预防那些将有可能演变成对我们不利的行为方式。如果我们日常生活细节，能够交给自发力去监护，那么我们心灵高级的力量就更是能释放出来做它们自己的专属工作。那种人毫无习惯而只有优柔寡断，对他们而言，每一根香烟的点燃、每一杯水的喝下、每一天起床和睡觉的时间、开始每一项工作都要明晰的、刻意的去思考，这样的人，是人世间最悲哀的。这种人的绝大部分时间都耗在他那里原本就是那么根深蒂固、以至于就他的意识而言，实际上全然不存在的问题做决定，或者是感到后悔。

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