TEXT A His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar system. "You appear to be astonished," Holmes said, smiling at my expression. "Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it. You see, I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose: A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has difficulty in laying his hand upon it. It is a mistake to think that the little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it, there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you know before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones." "But the Solar System!" I protested. "What the deuce is it to me" he interrupted impatiently, One morning, I picked up a magazine from the table and attempted to while away the time with it, while my companion munched silently at his toast. One of the articles had a pencil mark at the heading, and I naturally began to run my eye through it. 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 deduction 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 thought. Deceit, according to him, was 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. "From a drop of water," said the writer, "a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic. 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 be acquired by long and patient study, nor is life long enough to allow any mortal to attain the highest possible perfection in it." This smartly written piece of theory I could not accept until a succession of evidences justified it. What was the Holmes’ idea about knowledge-learning
A. Learning what every body learned.
B. Learning what was useful to you.
C. Learning whatever you came across.
D. Learning what was different to you.
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TEXT C No one can be a great thinker who does not realize that as a thinker it is her first duty to follow her intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth gains more even by the errors of one who with due study and preparation thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not Suffer themselves to think. Note that it is solely, of chiefly, to form great thinkers that freedom of thinking is required. On the contrary, it is as much or even more indispensable to enable average human beings to attain the mental stature which they are capable of. There have been and many again be great individual thinkers in a general atmosphere of mental slavery. But there never has been, nor ever will be, in that atmosphere an intellectually active people. Where any of heterodox speculation was for a time suspended, where there is a tacit convention that principles are not to be disputed: where the discussion of the greatest questions which can occupy humanity is considered to be closed, we cannot hope to find that generally high scale of mental activity which has made some periods of history so remarkable. Never when controversy avoided the subjects which are large and important enough to kindle enthusiasm was the mind of a people stirred up fro9m its foundation and the impulse given which raised even persons of the most ordinary intellect to something of the dignity of thinking beings. She who knows only her own side of the case knows little of that. Her reasons may be food, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if she s equally unable to refute the reasons of the opposite side; if she does not so much as know what they are, she has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for her would be suspension of judgment, and unless she contents herself with that, she is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world the side to which she feels the most inclination. Nor is it enough that she should heat the arguments of adversaries from her own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations, That is not the way to do justice to the arguments, or bring them into real contact with her own mind. She must be able to hear them form persons who actually believe them’; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. She must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; she must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else she will never really possess herself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty. Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called educated persons are in this condition; even of those who can argue fluently for their opinions. Their conclusion may be true, but it might be false for anything they know; they have never thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think differently form them and considered what such persons may have to say; and consequently they do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrines which they themselves profess. According to the author, the person who holds orthodox beliefs without examination may be described in all of the following ways EXCEPT as ______.
A. enslaved by tradition
B. less than fully rational
C. determined on controversy
D. having a closed mind
TEXT D The world has spent on preparation for war more than $112 billion a year, roughly $450 per head for every man, woman, and child in the world. Let us consider for a moment what could be done with this sum of money if it were spent on peace and not on war. Some of it, at any rate, in the more prosperous countries, could be spent on the reduction of taxation. The rest should be spent in ways that will, at the same time, be of benefit to mankind and a solution to the economic problem of change from war industry to the expansion of peace industries. As to this expansion, let us begin with the most elementary of all needs, namely, food. Today, the majority of mankind suffers from undernourishment, and in view of the population explosion, this situation is likely to grow worse in the coming decades. A very small part of what is now being spent upon weapons would improve our predicament. Not only could the American surplus of grain, which was for many years uselessly destroyed, be spent in relief of famine, but, by irrigation, large region now desert could be made fertile, and by improvement in transport, distribution from regions of excess to regions of scarcity could be helped. Housing, even in the richest countries, is often disastrously inadequate. This could be relieved by a tiny fraction of what is being spent on missiles. Education everywhere, but especially in the newly liberated countries of Africa and Asia, demands an expenditure many times as great as that which it receives now. But it is not only greater expenditure that is needed in education. If the terror of war were removed, science could be devoted to improving human welfare, instead of to the invention of increasingly expensive methods of mutual killing, and schools would no longer think it a part of their duty to promote hatred of possible enemies by means of ignorance hardened by lies. It can be inferred that the author’s attitude is ______.
A. ideal
B. pessimistic
C. pragmatic
D. optimistic
TEXT A His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar system. "You appear to be astonished," Holmes said, smiling at my expression. "Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it. You see, I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose: A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has difficulty in laying his hand upon it. It is a mistake to think that the little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it, there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you know before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones." "But the Solar System!" I protested. "What the deuce is it to me" he interrupted impatiently, One morning, I picked up a magazine from the table and attempted to while away the time with it, while my companion munched silently at his toast. One of the articles had a pencil mark at the heading, and I naturally began to run my eye through it. 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 deduction 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 thought. Deceit, according to him, was 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. "From a drop of water," said the writer, "a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic. 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 be acquired by long and patient study, nor is life long enough to allow any mortal to attain the highest possible perfection in it." This smartly written piece of theory I could not accept until a succession of evidences justified it. What is the author’s attitude toward Holmes
A. Praising.
B. Critical.
C. Ironical.
Distaste.
Write a note of about 50~60 words based on the following situation: You have heard that your friend Jane has won the first prize at the speech contest. Write a note of congratulations to him. Marks will be awarded for content, organization, grammar and appropirateness.