Page 37 - 血字的研究·四签名(外研社双语读库) (福尔摩斯探案全集)

Its somewhat ambitious title was "The Book of Life," and
it attempted to show how much an observant man might

learn by an accurate and systematic examination of all that
came in his way. It struck me as being a remarkable mixture
of shrewdness and of absurdity. The reasoning was close
and intense, but the deductions appeared to me to be far-
fetched and exaggerated. The writer claimed by a

momentary expression, a twitch of a muscle or a glance of
an eye, to fathom a man's inmost thoughts. Deceit,
according to him, was an impossibility in the case of one

trained to observation and analysis. His conclusions were as
infallible as so many propositions of Euclid. So startling
would his results appear to the uninitiated that until they
learned the processes by which he had arrived at them they
might well consider him as a necromancer.

文章的标题有些夸张，叫做“生活之书”，它试图说明，通过对接
触的事物加以精确、系统的观察，一个善于观察的人将会学到多少东

西。这篇文章给我的印象是一个精明和荒唐的混合体。从论证上看，
它严密而紧凑，但从结论上看，就有些牵强和夸大其词。作者声称，

只要一个瞬间的表情、一次肌肉的牵动或者眼神的一瞥，就能推断出
一个人内心最深处的想法来。在作者看来，对于一个在观察、分析方

面训练有素的人来说，欺骗是不可能的。他的结论会像欧几里德的许

多命题一样，绝对正确。他的结论在门外汉看来十分令人吃惊，在弄
明白他得出这样结论的各个步骤前，他们真会把他当作一个未卜先知
的神人。

"From a drop of water," said the writer, "a logician could
infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without
having seen or heard of one or the other. So all life is a great

chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown
a single link of it. Like all other arts, the Science of
Deduction and Analysis is one which can only be acquired

by long and patient study, nor is life long enough to allow
any mortal to attain the highest possible perfection in it.