练习1Nature vs nurture: hard facts and strong storiesANYONE who still believes that our psychological dispositions are due largely to our genes will learn a lot from this book. The same goes for those who think they are predominantly shaped by our environment. Jerome Kagan, an emeritus professor of psychology at Harvard University, has spent much of his career unpacking the complexities behind human personality and behaviour. In The Temperamental Thread he navigates a path through the conflicting evidence with great skill and eloquence.The thesis behind the title is that everyone is born with a biologically based temperamental bias that is evident in infancy and influences our future behaviour, but how that pans out as we grow up depends strongly on a range of factors such as our ethnicity and gender, how our parents treat us, their social class, the size of our home town and whether or not we have older siblings. Temperamental bias, he explains, resembles the inherited components of a bird's song: "Although the bird's genes contribute to the basic components of the song, they do not determine the specific songs the adult bird will sing." Kagan's expertise derives partly from an exhaustive longitudinal study in which he followed the lives of more than 450 people from 16 weeks old to adulthood. He found that those who become distressed or strongly aroused as infants when confronted with unfamiliar objects, such as brightly coloured mobiles, tend to grow into timid or anxious adolescents, while less reactive infants develop a more relaxed, spontaneous disposition.However, he stresses that these outcomes are not fixed since the developmental environment can powerfully distort the effect of genes. For example, while thepossession of a gene variant which disrupts serotonin(血清素) activity in the brain can result in social anxiety in a woman raised in a stable middle-class family, it can contribute to criminality in a man brought up in poverty by abusive parents.This kind of analysis leads Kagan into some interesting areas, such as the origins of psychological differences between the sexes and between members of different ethnic groups. He is also happy to throw in the occasional wild speculation, such as the idea that women are better placed than men to save the world from ecological disaster.None of this undermines the serious messages in his book, perhaps the most important of which is that we are still largely ignorant about the biology that underlies behavioural predispositions and the cascade of psychological processes that flow from them.先天对后天：确凿的事实与强力的证明无论你是认为心理定势主要源于基因遗传，还是认为心理定势主要受环境支配，本书都可以使你受益匪浅。
哈佛大学名誉心理学教授杰罗姆·卡根几乎倾注了毕生的精力，致力解开人类性格和行为内在的复杂性。
在《性格密码》一书中，卡根以高超的技巧和雄辩的语言梳理互相矛盾的证据，做出自己的结论。
书名隐含的论点是，每个人天生具有生物学意义上的性格偏向，这一偏向在儿童期就已经显现，并影响今后的行为，然而我们在成长过程中，天生的偏向所起的作用很大程度上是由诸如族裔、性别、父母对待我们的态度、他们的社会阶层、家乡的面积大小以及我们有无哥哥、姐姐等因素决定的。
卡根解释说，性格偏向类似于鸟鸣的遗传构成：―尽管鸟类的基因对鸟鸣的基本构成产生影响，但他们不能决定成年鸟具体的鸣唱方式。
‖卡根的专业知识部分来源于穷尽性的跟踪研究，他跟踪调查了共450人从16周大到成年人的全部生活过程，发现在婴儿期即受到不熟悉的物体，比如色彩鲜艳的风铃等的干扰而痛苦或备受刺激的人，容易成长为胆怯、焦虑的人。
相反那些不易受干扰的婴儿，容易成长为性格放松、率性而为的人。
然而，卡根强调这些结果不是一成不变的，因为环境的变化可以大大逆转基因的影响。
例如，虽然拥有破坏大脑血清素活动的一种基因变型可能导致稳定中产家庭长大的女性的社交焦虑，然而它可以导致受父母虐待的贫穷家庭成长的男子走向犯罪。
这种分析也把卡根领入了某些有趣的领域，比如男女之间以及不同族异群体成员之间的心理差异的起源问题。
他偶然会乐不可支地提出某些疯狂的推断，比如女人天生比男人更具备拯救世界脱离环境灾难的能力。
这样的推断并没有损害他书中内容的严肃性，也许最重要的是，我们一直大大忽视了行为倾向的生物性，以及由这些倾向所产生的大量心理过程。
练习2 我之于书夏丏尊Xia Mianzun Books and I二十年来，我的生活费中至少十分之一二是消耗在书上的(2)。
我的房子里(3)比较贵重的东西就是书。
For twenty years past, books have eaten into at least 10-20 percent of my pocket. Now the only things of some value under my roof, if any（汉译英时，添加以增强逻辑性）, are my books.(I had to dip into my pocket to pay for the holiday. 我得自己掏腰包支付度假的费用.)我一向没有对于任何问题作高深研究的野心，因此所买的书范围较广，宗教、艺术、文学、社会、哲学、历史、生物，各方面差不多都有一点。
最多的是各国文学名著的译本，与本国古来的诗文集，别的门类只是些概论等类的入门书而已。
Since I have never entertained （抱有想法，书面语）ambition for making a profound study of any subject, the books I have acquired （也可以用procured）cover almost(pretty much) everything（are almost all-embracing）--religion, art, literature, sociology, philosophy, history, biology, etc. Most of them are Chinese translations of literary works by famous foreign writers and anthologies of Chinese poetry and prose through the ages. (On top of my book list are …)The rest, often called an outline or introduction, are merely on rudiments of various subjects.我不喜欢向别人或图书馆借书。
借来的书，在我好像过不来瘾似的(4)，必要是自己买的才满足。
这也可谓是一种占有的欲望。
买到了几册新书，一册一册在加盖藏书印(5)记，我最感到快悦的是这时候。