2. 外语
  3. It is curious to note how slowly the mechanism of the intellectual life improves. Contrast the ordinary library facilities of a

It is curious to note how slowly the mechanism of the intellectual life improves. Contrast the ordinary library facilities of a

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问题      It is curious to note how slowly the mechanism of the intellectual life improves. Contrast the ordinary library facilities of a middle-class English home with the inconveniences of the equipment of an Alexandrian writer, and one realizes the enormous waste of time, physical exertion, and attention that went on through all the centuries during which the library flourished.
   Before the present writer lies half a dozen books, and there are good indices to them. He can pick up any one of these six books, refer quickly to a statement, verify a quotation, and go on writing. In contrast with the tedious unfolding of a rolled manuscript, close at hand are two encyclopedias, a dictionary, an atlas of the world, a biographical dictionary, and other books of reference.
     However, there were no such resources in the world in 300 B.C. Alexandria had still to produce the first grammar and the first dictionary. The present writer writes a book in manuscript; then the book is typed out very accurately by a typist. It can then, with the utmost convenience, be read over, corrected amply, rearranged freely, retyped, and reconnected. The Alexandrian author had to dictate or recopy every word he wrote. Before he could mm back to what he had written previously, he had to dry his last words by waving them in the air or pouring sand over them; he had not even blotting-paper. Whatever an author wrote had to be recopied again and again before it could reach any considerable circle of readers, and every copyist introduced some new error. New books were dictated to a roomful of copyists, and so issued in a first edition of some hundreds at least. Whenever a need for maps or diagrams arose, there were fresh difficulties. Such a science as anatomy, for example, depending upon accurate drawing, must have been enormously hampered by the natural limitations of the copyist. The transmission of geographical fact again must have been almost incredibly tedious.
In writing about his subject, the writer apparently
选项 A、wants to share his interests in his discoveries about the intellectual life with his reader.
B、persuades his readers to cherish the advantage of writing and copying in modern times.
C、introduces the fact that he is economically secure.
D、is a practical historian who sticks to established facts.
答案A
解析 本题考查推理判断。全文第一句说：“It is curious to note…”，表明作者想介绍“his discoveries about the intellectual life”，即想与读者分享他的发现。文章虽然比较了古代与现代写作、印刷等方面的不同，但这只是为了使读者了解写作、印刷业的发展，而并非劝说读者珍惜现在写作、印刷的优越性，因此B 可排除；C 、D 两项与文章内容无紧密联系，无法从文中推断出来，也可排除。
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