Page 259 - 血字的研究·四签名(外研社双语读库) (福尔摩斯探案全集)

fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason
analytically."

“我对你说过，凡是超乎寻常的事物，一般都不是什么障碍，反而

是一种线索。在解决这类问题时，最主要的就是能够用推理的方法，

一层层地进行回溯推理。这是一项很有用的技能，而且也是很容易
的，不过，人们在实践中倒不常应用。在日常生活中，向前推理的方

法用处大一些，因此，回溯推理也就常常被忽略了。如果说有五十个
人能够进行综合推理，那么能够进行分析推理的就只有一个人。”

"I confess," said I, "that I do not quite follow you."

“说实话，”我说，“我还不大明白你的意思。”

"I hardly expected that you would. Let me see if I can

make it clearer. Most people, if you describe a train of
events to them, will tell you what the result would be. They
can put those events together in their minds, and argue
from them that something will come to pass. There are few
people, however, who, if you told them a result, would be

able to evolve from their own inner consciousness what the
steps were which led up to that result. This power is what I
mean when I talk of reasoning backwards, or analytically."

“我也没怎么指望你能够明白。让我试试看，能否说得更明确一

些。对大多数人来说，如果你向他们说明一系列的事实之后，他们就

能把可能的结果告诉你。他们能够在脑子里把这一系列事实联系起
来，通过思考，就能得出一个什么结论来。但是有少数的人，如果你

把结果告诉了他们，他们就能通过内在的意识，推断出产生这种结果
的各个步骤是什么。这就是我所说的回溯推理，也叫做分析推理。”

"I understand," said I.

“我明白了。”我说。

"Now this was a case in which you were given the result

and had to find everything else for yourself. Now let me
endeavour to show you the different steps in my reasoning.