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
2015-05-24
60
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 with 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.
Which can serve as the title of this text?
选项
A、Images and Human Brain.
B、Language and Human Brain.
C、Dreams and Human Brain.
D、Conceptions and Human Brain.
答案
B
解析
主旨大意题。分析全文可知,文章通过对大脑的主要功能以及对人类表达需求的阐述,揭示了大脑和语言的关系,故选[B]。虽然文章也提到了images,dreams和conceptions等概念,但都是为说明语言与大脑的关系,并非主旨,故排除[A]、[C]和[D]。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/lDOO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
SuccessPersonalityAccordingtoaGallupsurvey,anumberofqualitiesarecommonamongsuccessfulpeople.Herearefiveof
Intheearly1450sculturalchangeinEuropefueledagrowingneedfortherapidandcheapproductionofwrittendocuments.Be
TheSkillsRequiredtoGetaGoodJob1.Academicskills1Communicationskills—understandandspeakthelanguagesin(1)______
TheSkillsRequiredtoGetaGoodJob1.Academicskills1Communicationskills—understandandspeakthelanguagesin(1)______
IntroductiontotheSportsStudiesDepartmentThismini-lecturegivenbytheSportsStudiesDepartmentontheUniversity’sOpen
Mergersandtakeoversmeantheactivitiesthattwoormorebusinessesjointogetherandoperateasoneorganization.Mergersus
Thewell-knownformula:S→r…s→Rwasputforwardby
TheRabbitseriesareregardedastherepresentativeworksofJohnUpdike,whichincludesallthefollowingEXCEPT
Bahrainioppositionactivistssayateenageboy
Bahrainioppositionactivistssayateenageboy
随机试题
Icannot______thetruthofyourwords,althoughtheygoagainstmyinterests.
下列哪种肿瘤是恶性肿瘤
()是指交易对手不愿或者不能全部履行其合同义务,或者其信用等级下降时给金融资产持有者的收益造成的不确定性。
下列有关单斗挖掘机操作正确的是()。
在Word的编辑状态中,设置了一个由多个行和列组成的空表格,将插入点定在某个单元格内,用鼠标单击“表格”命令菜单中的“选定列”命令,则表格中被“选择”的部分是( )。
下列关于报关企业行为规范的表述正确的是()。
界定商业银行个人理财业务范畴,规范商业银行个人理财业务管理的文件是()。
唐代传入中国的基督教教派是()。
“探索等腰三角形的性质”的教学片段:(一)创设情境,引出课题教师活动:现在农村经济条件好了,大部分家庭盖有楼房。大家知道农村的楼房都有房梁,并且这些房梁都保持水平状态,你知道木匠师傅采用什么方法来确定房梁是否保持水平吗?学生活
我国现阶段分配制度中,按生产要素分配的依据是
最新回复
(
0
)