Vocabulary Test 39

[passage-header]Read the poem given below and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]99020Methought I saw 60815my late espoused Saint
Brought to me like 43465Alcestis from the grave[passage-footer]
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[passage-header]The extract is taken from a book written sixty years ago by a British scientist in which he considers the relationship between science and society.[/passage-header]  The pioneers of the teaching of science imagined that its introduction into education would remove the conventionality, artificiality, and backward-looking-ness which were characteristic of classical studies, but they were gravely disappointed. So in their time, had the humanists thought that the study of the classical authors in the original would banish at once the dull pedantry and superstition of medieval scholasticism. The 95346 professional schoolmaster was a match for both of them and has almost managed to make the understanding of chemical reactions as dull and as dogmatic an affair as the reading of Virgil's Aeneid.  
   The chief claim for the use of science in education is that it teaches a child something about the actual universe in which he is living, in making him acquainted with the results of scientific discovery, and at the same time teaches him how to think logically and inductively by studying scientific method. A certain limited success has been reached in the first of these aims, but practically none at all in the second. Those privileged members of the community who have been through a secondary or public school education may be expected to know something about the elementary physics and chemistry of a hundred years ago, but they probably know hardly more than any bright boy can pick up from an interest in the wireless or scientific hobbies out of school hours.
   As to the learning of scientific method, the whole thing is 44698palpably a farce. Actually, for the convenience of teachers and the requirements of the examination system, it is necessary that the pupils not only do not learn scientific method but learn precisely the reverse, that is, to believe exactly what they are told and to reproduce it when asked, whether it seems nonsense to them or not. The way in which educated people respond to such quackeries as spiritualism or 19675 astrology, not to say more dangerous ones such as racial theories or currency myths show that fifty years of education in the method of science in Britain or Germany has produced no visible effect whatever. The only way of learning the method of science is the long and bitter way of personal experience, and, until the educational or social systems are altered, to make this possible, the best we can expect is the production of a minority of people who are able to acquire some of the techniques of science and a still smaller minority who are able to use and develop them.
[passage-footer]Adapted from: The Social Function of Science, John D Bernal (1939)[/passage-footer]

[passage-header][/passage-header]    The Ring at Casterbridge was merely the local name of one of the finest amphitheaters, if not the very finest remaining in Britain.
     Casterbridge announced old Rome in every street, alley and precinct. It looked Roman, bespoke the art of Rome, concealed the dead men of Rome. It was impossible to dig more than a foot or two deep about the town fields and gardens without coming upon some tall soldier or other of the Empire, who had laid there in his silent unobtrusive rest for a space of fifteen hundred years. He was mostly found lying on his side, in an oval scoop in the chalk, like a chicken in its shell; his knees drawn up to his chest; sometimes with the remains of his spear against his arm; a brooch of bronze on his breast or forehead; an urn at his knees, a jar at his throat, a bottle at his mouth; and mystified conjecture pouring down upon him from the eyes of Casterbridge street boys, who had turned a moment to gaze at the familiar spectacle as they passed by.
     Imaginative inhabitants, who would have felt an unpleasantness at the discovery of a comparatively modern skeleton in their gardens, were quite unmoved by these 21240hoary shapes. They had lived so long ago, their time was so unlike the present, their hopes and motives were so widely removed from ours, that between them and the living there seemed to stretch a gulf too wide for even a spirit to pass.
     The Amphitheater was a huge circular enclosure, with a notch at opposite extremities of its diameter north and south. It was to Casterbridge what the ruined Coliseum is to modern Rome, and was nearly of the same magnitude. The dusk of evening was the proper hour at which the true impression of this 57171suggestive place could he received. Standing in the middle of the arena at that time, thereby degrees became apparent its real vastness, which a cursory view from the summit at noon-day was apt to obscure. Melancholy, impressive, lonely yet accessible from every part of the town, the historic circle was the frequent spot for appointments of a furtive kind. Intrigues were arranged there; tentative meetings have there experimented after divisions and feuds. But one kind of appointment- in itself the most common of any- seldom had the place in the Amphitheaters; that of happy lovers.
     Why, seeing that it was pre-eminently an airy, accessible, and sequestered spot for interviews, the cheerfullest form of those occurrences never took kindly to the soil of the ruin, would be a 97653curious inquiry. Perhaps it was because its associations had about them something sinister. Its history proved that. Apart from the sanguinary nature of the games originally played therein, such incidents attached to its past as these: that for scores of years the town gallows had stood at one corner; that in 1705 a woman who had murdered her husband was half-strangled and then burnt there in the presence of ten thousand spectators. Tradition reports that at a certain stage of the burning her heart burst and leaped out of her body, to the terror of them all, and that not one of those ten thousand people ever cared particularly for hot roast after that. In addition to these old tragedies, pugilistic encounters almost to the death had come off down to recent dates in that secluded arena, entirely invisible to the outside world save by climbing to the top of the enclosure, which few townspeople in the daily 28905round of their lives ever took the trouble to do. So that, though close to the turnpike-road, crimes might be perpetrated there unseen at mid-day.
     Some boys had latterly tried to impart gaiety to the ruin by using the central arena as a cricket-ground. But the game usually languished for the aforesaid reason- the dismal privacy which the earthen circle enforced, shutting out every appreciative passer's vision, every commendatory remark from outsiders-everything, except the sky; and to play at games in such circumstances was like acting to an empty house. Possibly, too, the boys were timid, for some old people said that at certain moments in the summer time, in broad daylight, persons sitting with a book or dozing in the arena had, on lifting their eyes, beheld the slopes lined with a gazing legion of Hadrian's soldiery as if watching the gladiatorial combat; and had heard the roar of their excited voices, that the scene would remain but a moment, like a lightning flash, and then disappear.
     Henchard had chosen this spot as being the 95672safest from observation which he could think of for meeting his long-lost wife, and at the same time as one easily to be found by a stranger after nightfall. As Mayor of the town, with a reputation to keep up, he could not invite her to come to his house till some definite course had been decided on.
[passage-footer]Adapted from: The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy (1886)[/passage-footer]

[passage-header][/passage-header]I have yet to meet a poetry-lover under thirty who was not an introvert, or an introvert who was not unhappy in adolescence. At school, particularly, maybe, if as in my own case, it is a boarding school, he sees the extrovert successful, happy, and good and himself unpopular or neglected; and what is hardest to bear is not unpopularity, but the consciousness that it is deserved, that he is grubby and inferior and frightened and dull. Knowing no other kind of society than the 92355 contingent, he imagines that this arrangement is part of the eternal scheme of things, that he is doomed to a life of failure and envy. It is not till he grows up, till years later he runs across the heroes of his school days and finds them grown commonplace and sterile, that he realizes that the introvert is the lucky one, the best adapted to an industrial civilization the collective values of which are so infantile that he alone can grow, who has educated his fantasies and learned how to draw upon the resources of his inner life. [passage-footer]Adapted from an article written by W.H Auden.[/passage-footer]

[passage-header]Read the poem and answer the question that follows:
[/passage-header]"The Triumph of Time"

It will grow not again, this fruit of my heart,
Smitten with88540 sunbeams, ruined with rain.
11972The singing seasons divide and depart,
Winter and summer depart in twain.
It will grow not again, it is ruined at root,
The bloodlike blossom, the dull red fruit;
84191Though the heart yet sickens, the lips yet smart,
With sullen savour of poisonous pain.

I shall never be friends again with roses;
I shall loathe sweet tunes, where a note grown strong
39685Relents and recoils, and climbs and closes,
As a wave of the sea turned back by song.
There are sounds where the soul's delight takes fire,
Face to face with its own desire;
A delight that rebels, a desire that reposes;
I shall hate sweet music my whole life long.

The pulse of war and passion of wonder,
The heavens that murmur, the sounds that shine,
The stars that sing and the loves that thunder,
30422The music burning at heart like wine,
95973An armed archangel whose hands raise up
56218All senses mixed in the spirit's cup
87505Till flesh and spirit are molten in sunder-
10477These things are over, and no more mine.
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[passage-header]Read the poem and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]Ye living lamps, by whose dear light
The nightingale does sit so late,
And studying all the summer night,
57300Her matchless songs does meditate;

Ye country comets, that 57381portend
No war nor prince's funeral,
Shining unto no 15171higher end
Than to presage the grass's fall;

Ye glowworms, whose 59681officious flame
To wandering mowers show the way,
That in the night have 48636lost their aim,
And after foolish fires do stray;

Your courteous light in vain you waste,
Since Juliana here is come,
For she my mind hath so displaced
That I shall never find my home.
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[passage-header]The passage is taken from a description of the life of certain Pacific Islanders written by a pioneering sociologist.[/passage-header]     By the time a child is six or seven, she has all the essential avoidances well enough by heart to be trusted with the care of a younger child. And she also develops a number of simple techniques. She learns to weave firm square balls from palm leaves, to make pinwheels of palm leaves or frangipani blossoms, to climb a coconut tree by walking up the trunk on flexible little feet, to break open a coconut with one firm well-directed blow of a knife as long as she is tall, to play a number of group games and sing the songs which go with them, to tidy the house by picking up the litter on the stony floor, to bring water from the sea, to spread out the copra to dry and to help gather it in when rain threatens, to go to a neighboring house and bring back a lighted faggot for the chief's pipe or the cook-house fire.
     But in the case of the little girls, all these tasks are merely supplementary to the main business of baby-tending. Very small boys also have some care of the younger children, but at eight or nine years of age, they are usually relieved of it. Whatever rough edges have not been smoothed off by this responsibility for younger children are worn off by their contact with older boys. For little boys are admitted to interesting and important activities only as long as their behavior is circumspect and helpful. Where small girls are 57275 brusquely pushed aside, small boys will be patiently tolerated and they become adept at making themselves useful. The four or five little boys who all wish to assist in the important business of helping a grown youth lasso reef eels, organize themselves into a highly efficient working team; one boy holds the bait, another holds an extra lasso, others spoke eagerly about in holes in the reef looking for prey, while still another tucks the captured eels into his lavalava. The small girls, burdened with heavy babies or the care of little staggers who are too small to adventure on the reef, discouraged by the hostility of the small boys and the scorn of the older ones, have little opportunity for learning the more adventurous forms of work and play. So while the little boys first undergo the chastening effects of baby-tending and then have many opportunities to learn effective cooperation under the supervision of older boys, the girls' education is less comprehensive. They have a poke eagerly about in holes in the reef looking for prey, while still another tucks the captured eels into his lavalava. The small girls, burdened with heavy babies or the care of little staggers who are too small to adventure on the reef, discouraged by the hostility of the small boys and the scorn of the older ones, have little opportunity for learning the more adventurous forms of work and play. So while the little boys first undergo the chastening effects of baby-tending and then have many opportunities to learn effective cooperation under the supervision of older boys, the girls' education is less comprehensive. They have a 70490 high standard of individual responsibility, but the community provides them with no 17859 lessons in cooperation with one another. This is particularly apparent in the activities of young people; the boys organize quickly; the girls waste hours in bickering, 21798 innocent of any technique for quick and efficient cooperation.
[passage-footer]Adapted from: Coming of Age in Samoa, Margaret Mead(1928)[/passage-footer]

     Examine the recently laid egg of some common animal, such as a salamander or newt. It is a minute spheroid- and apparently strucreless sac, enclosing a fluid, holding granules in suspension. But let a moderate supply of warmth reach its watery cradle, and the plastic matter undergoes changes so rapid, yet so steady and purposeful in their succession, that one can only compare them to those operated by a skilled modeler upon a formless lump of clay. As with an invisible trowel, the mass is divided and subdivided into smaller and smaller portions. And, then, it is as if a delicate finger traced out the line to be occupied by the spinal column, and molded the contour of the body; pinching up the head at one end, the tail at the other, and fashioning flank and limb into due proportions, in so artistic a way, that, after watching the process hour by hour, one is almost involuntarily possessed by the notion, that some more subtle aid to vision than a microscope, would show the hidden artist, with his plan before him, striving with skillful manipulation to perfect his work.
[passage-footer]Adapted from an essay by T.H Huxley[/passage-footer]