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.
When an Alexandrian wrote a book,
选项 A、encyclopedias are close at hand.
B、he can refer to a biographical dictionary.
C、he may recopy every word he wrote.
D、he can ask a copyist to help him to write.
答案C
解析 本题考查事实细节。根据第三段第五句“The Alexandrian author had to dictate or recopy every word…”可知，他在写书时，有可能口述，也有可能自己复写一篇。选项A 、B 说的是现代人写书可以参考的资料，因此可以排除；而抄写员只有写完书后进行复写印刷时才起作用，因此D 也应排除。
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