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  3. UTOPIANISM in politics gets a bad press. The case against the grand-scale, state-directed kind is well known and overwhelming. U

UTOPIANISM in politics gets a bad press. The case against the grand-scale, state-directed kind is well known and overwhelming. U

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问题    UTOPIANISM in politics gets a bad press. The case against the grand-scale, state-directed kind is well known and overwhelming. Utopia, the perfect society, is unattainable, for there is no such thing. Remaking society in pursuit of an illusion not only fails, it leads swiftly to mass murder and moral ruin. So recent history grimly attests.
   Although true, that is just half the story. Not all modern Utopians aim to seize the state in order to cudgel the rest of the world back to paradise. Plenty of gentler ones want no more than to withdraw from the mainstream and create their own micro-paradise with a few like-minded idealists. Small experiments in collective living swept America, for example, early in the 19th century and again late in the 20th.
   Most failed or fell short. None lasted. All were laughed at. Yet in this intelligent, sympathetic history, Chris Jennings makes a good case for remembering them well. Politics stagnates, he thinks, when people stop dreaming up alternative ways of life and putting them to small-scale test.
   Though with occasional glances forward, Mr. Jennings focuses largely on the 19th century. At least 100 experimental communes sprang up across the young American republic in the mid-1800s. Mr. Jennings writes about five exemplary communities: the devout Shakers, Robert Owen’s New Harmony, the Fourierist collective at Brook Farm, Massachusetts, the Icarians at Nauvoo, Illinois, inspired by a French proto-communist, Etienne Cabet, and the Oneida Community in New York state practising "Bible communism" and "complex marriage".
   The Shakers’ founder was a Manchester Quaker, Ann Lee, a devout mother worn out by bearing dead or dying children. In 1774 she left for the New World, determined to forswear sex and create a following to share her belief. An optimistic faith in human betterment, hard work and a reputation for honest trading helped the Shakers thrive. At their peak in the early 19th century, they had perhaps 5,000 members scattered in some 20 villages across eight states. They counselled celibacy to spare women the dangers of child-bearing, made spare, slim furniture, now treasured in museums, and practised a wild, shaking dance that was taken as a sign of benign possession by the Holy Spirit.
In the following part immediately after this text, the author will most probably focus on______.
选项 A、a vivid description of the shaking dance
B、Robert Owen’ s New Harmony
C、the Fourierist collective
D、a detailed account of the Shakers’ other features
答案B
解析 结构题。由题干关键词the following part(接下来的部分)可知，该题考查的内容与第五段有别，而A项“颤抖舞蹈的生动描述”和D项“震教徒其他特征的具体描述”都是第五段的进一步扩展，故错误。由第四段内容可知，詹宁斯描述了5个典型的社区，前三个分别是虔诚的震教徒、罗伯特-欧文的新和谐村和傅立叶空想社会主义公社。而第五段描述了震教徒的具体特征，根据先后顺序可推出文章接下来将描述罗伯特-欧文的新和谐村，故本题选B。
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