社科院英語真題

Patterns ofculture Sd))vS^g  
by RUTH BENEDICT pi5GxDA]  
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Custom has not been commonly regarded as asubject of any great moment. The inner workings of our own brains we feel to beuniquely worthy of investigation， but custom have a way of thinking， is behaviour at its most commonplace. As a matter of fact， it is the other way around.Traditional custom， taken the world over， is a mass of detailed behaviour more astonishing than what any oneperson can ever evolve in individual actions，no matter how aberrant. Yet that is a rather trivial aspect of thematter. The fact of first-rate importance is the predominant role that customplays in experience and in belief， and the very great varieties it may manifest. B|%tE{F  
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No man ever looks at the world withpristine eyes. He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutionsand ways of thinking. Even in his philosophical probings he cannot go behindthese stereotypes； his veryconcepts of the true and the false will still have reference to his particulartraditional customs. John Dewey has said in all seriousness that the partplayed by custom in shaping the behaviour of the individual as over against anyway in which he can affect traditional custom， is as the proportion of the total vocabulary of his mother tongue overagainst those words of his own baby talk that are taken up into the vernacularof his family. When one seriously studies the social orders that have had theopportunity to develop autonomously，the figure becomes no more than an exact and matter-off-factobservation. The life history of the individual is first and foremost anaccommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in hiscommunity. From the moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shapehis experience and behaviour. By the time he can talk， he is the little creature of hisculture， and by thetime he is grown and able to take part in its activities， its habits are his habits， its beliefs his beliefs， its impossibilities hisimpossibilities. Every child that is born into his group will share them withhim， and no childborn into one on the opposite side of the globe can ever achieve the thousandthpart. There is no social problem it is more incumbent upon us to understandthan this of the role of custom. Until we are intelligent as to its laws andvarieties， the maincomplicating facts of human life must remain unintelligible. 'PlaM亚洲国产精品va在线观看麻豆