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.
The best title for this passage might be
选项 A、The Difficulties of Alexandrian Writers.
B、The Advance of Writing and Publishing Since Alexandrian Time.
C、The Inadequacies of Ancient and Modern Times.
D、Writing and Publishing.
答案B
解析 本题考查主旨大意。作者在第一、二段将现代作家与古代作家进行比较，并在第三段表明古人在写作与印刷出版方面的困难及现代的优越，突出了写作与印刷、出版的进步与发展。选项A 只是提到了文章第三段的内容，不足以概括全篇；C 未在文中提及；而D 所概括的范围太大。
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