首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
The process of transforming all direct experience into imaginary or into that supreme mode of symbolic expression, language, has
The process of transforming all direct experience into imaginary or into that supreme mode of symbolic expression, language, has
admin
2015-08-29
4.7K+
问题
The process of transforming all direct experience into imaginary or into that supreme mode of symbolic expression, language, has so completely taken possession of the human mind that it is not only a special talent but a dominant, organic need. All our sense impressions leave their traces in our memory not only as signs disposing our practical reaction in the future but also as symbols, images representing our idea of things: and the tendency to manipulate ideas, to combine and abstract, mix and extend them by playing with symbols, is man’s outstanding characteristic. It seems to be what his brain most naturally and spontaneously does. Therefore his primitive mental function is not judging reality, but dreaming his desires.
Dreaming is apparently a basic function of human brains, for it is free and unexhausting like our metabolism, heartbeat, and breath. It is easier to dream than not to dream, as it is easier to breathe than to refrain from breathing .The symbolic character of dreams is fairly well established. Symbol mongering, on this ineffectual, uncritical level, seems to be instinctive, the fulfillment of an elementary need rather than the purposeful exercise of a high and difficult talent.
The special power of man’s mind rests on the evolution of this special activity, not on any transcendently high development of animal intelligence. We are not immeasurably higher than other animals: we are different. We have a biological need and with it a biological gift that they do not share.
Because man has not only the ability but the constant need of conceiving what has happened to him, what surrounds him, what is demanded of him in short, of symbolizing nature, himself, and his hopes and fears he has a constant and crying need of expression. What he cannot express, he cannot conceive: what he cannot conceive is chaos, and fills him with terror.
If we bear in mind this all-important craving for expression we get a new picture of man’s behavior: for from this trait spring his powers and his weaknesses. The process of symbolic transformation that all our experiences undergo is nothing more or less than the process of conception, underlying the human faculties of abstraction and imagination.
When we are faced with a strange or difficult situation, we cannot react directly, as other creatures do, with flight, aggression, or any such simple instinctive pattern. Our whole reaction depends on how we manage to conceive the situation whether we cast it in a definite dramatic form, whether we see it as a disaster, a fulfillment of doom, or a fiat of the Devine Will. In words or dreamlike images, in artistic or religious or even in cynical form, we must construe the events of life. There is great virtue in the figure of speech. "I can make nothing of it," to express a failure to understand something. Thought and memory are processes of making the thought content and memory image: the pattern of our ideas is given by the symbols through which we express them. And in the course of manipulating those symbols we inevitably distort the original experience, as we abstract certain features of it, embroider and reinforce those features with other ideas, until the conception we project on the screen of memory is quite different from anything in our real history.
Conception is a necessary and elementary process: what we do with our conceptions is another story. That is the entire history of human culture—of intelligence and morality, folly and superstition, ritual, language, and the arts—all the phenomena that set man apart from, and above, the rest of animal kingdom. As the religious mind has to make all human history a drama of sins and salvation in order to define its own moral attitudes, so a scientist wrestles with the mere presentation of "the facts" before he can reason about them. The process of envisaging facts, values, hopes, and fears underlies our whole behavior pattern: and this process is reflected in the evolution of an extraordinary phenomenon found always, and only, in human societies the phenomenon of language.
The italicized sentence in Paragraph Two is an example of
选项
A、irony.
B、metaphor.
C、analogy.
D、euphemism.
答案
C
解析
修辞题。由题干定位至第二段斜体部分,即做梦比不做梦更容易,就像呼吸比不呼吸更容易一样。这显然是一个类比,故选[C]。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/g4OO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
Whatisadrug?Mostpeoplelikelythink【1】______thinkthere’saperfectlysimpleanswertothisque
A、providingaidandpromotingdemocracyB、promotingdemocracyC、controllingadeadlydiseaseD、BothBandCD
______holdsthatlanguagelearningissimplyamatterofimitationandhabitformation.
Therearesomanythingsaboutourlivesthatbelongtothecontentofculturethatitisimpossibletocoverthemall.Inthis
AmericanLiteratureAliteratureistherecordofhumanexperienceandpeoplehavealwaysbeenimpelledtowritedowntheirimpr
AmericanLiteratureAliteratureistherecordofhumanexperienceandpeoplehavealwaysbeenimpelledtowritedowntheirimpr
WehavescrutinizedtheAmericandreamofachievedwealthandwell-beingbycomparingrichandunrichcountries,andrichandun
Thechangesinlanguagewillcontinueforever,butnooneknowssure【M1】______whodoesthechanging.Onepossibilityi
Accordingtotheinterviewer,whichofthefollowingbestindicatestherelationshipbetweenchoiceandmobility?
Abouthalfoftheinfantandmaternaldeathsindevelopingcountriescouldbeavoidedifwomenhadusedfamilyplanningmethods
随机试题
以“三百石印富翁”自称的中国近现代画家是()。[安徽2020]
下列关于促胰液素生理作用的叙述,错误的是()(2010年)
患者,男性,26岁,一年前出现幻觉、妄想、言语紊乱等症状,诊断为精神分裂症,一直服用氯丙嗪50mg,bid治疗。氯丙嗪抗精神分裂症的主要机制是
刘某以赵某对其犯故意伤害罪,向法院提起刑事附带民事诉讼。因赵某妹妹曾拒绝本案主审法官王某的求爱,故王某在明知证据不足、指控犯罪不能成立的情况下,毁灭赵某无罪证据,认定赵某构成故意伤害罪,并宣告免予刑罚处罚。对王某的定罪,下列哪一选项是正确的?()(
《国际评估准则105一评估路径和方法》中,不属于成本途径包括的具体评估方法是()。
《中华人民共和国物权法》规定的可作为抵押的财产包括()。
1995年10月24日,“联合网络委员会”(FNC:TheFederalNetWorkingCounCil)通过了一项关于“互联网定义”的决议。联合网络委员会认为,下述语言反映了对“互联网”这个词的定义。“互联网”指的是全球性的信息系统:
政府制定或调整重大劳动关系标准时应当贯彻“三方原则”,即政府、工会、()共同参与决定。
首先提出普及教育的思想,并详细论证班级授课制的教育著作是()
水下文化遗产是指经历至少100年的周期性或连续性的、部分或全部位于水下的具有文化、历史或考古价值的所有人类生存的遗迹。根据上述定义,下列属于水下文化遗产的是:
最新回复
(
0
)