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  3. The instinctive foundation of the intellectual life is curiosity, which is found among animals in its elementary form. Intellige

The instinctive foundation of the intellectual life is curiosity, which is found among animals in its elementary form. Intellige

admin2011-05-29  60
问题     The instinctive foundation of the intellectual life is curiosity, which is found among animals in its elementary form. Intelligence demands an alert curiosity, but it must be of a certain kind. The sort that leads village neighbors to try to peer through curtains after dark has not very high value. The widespread interest in gossip is inspired, not by love of knowledge, but by malice; no one gossips about other people’s secret virtues, but only about their secret vices. Accordingly, most gossip is untrue, but care is taken not to verify it.【66】You may see this impulse, in a moderately pure form, at work in a cat that has been brought to a strange room and proceeds to smell every corner and every piece of furniture. You will see it also in children, who are passionately interested when a drawer or cupboard, usually closed, is open for their inspection. Animals, machines, thunderstorms, and all forms of manual work arouse the curiosity of children, whose thirst for knowledge puts the most intelligent adult to shame.【67】This is the stage at which people announce that "things are not what they were in my young days." The thing that is not the same as it was in that far-off time is the speaker’s curiosity.【68】
    If curiosity is to be fruitful, it must be associated with a certain technique for the acquisition of knowledge; there must be habits of observation, belief in the possibility of knowledge, patience, and industry.【69】But since our intellectual life is only a part of our activity, and since curiosity is perpetually coming into conflict with other passions, there is need of certain intellectual virtues, such as open-mindedness. We become unreceptive to new truth both from habit and from desire; we find it hard to disbelieve what we have emphatically believed for a number of years and also what ministers to self-esteem or any other fundamental passion.【70】
    A. And with the death of curiosity, we may reckon that active intelligence, also, has died.
    B. This impulse grows weaker with advancing years until at last what is unfamiliar inspires only disgust, with no desire for a closer acquaintance.
    C. Broadly speaking, the higher the order of generality, the greater is the intelligence involved.
    D. Curiosity properly so-called, on the other hand, is inspired by a genuine love of knowledge.
    E. Open-mindedness should, therefore, be one of the qualities that education aims at producing.
    F. These things will develop of themselves, given the original fund of curiosity and the proper intellectual education.
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答案A
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