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  3. Despite their many differences of temperament and of literary perspective, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman sh

Despite their many differences of temperament and of literary perspective, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman sh

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问题     Despite their many differences of temperament and of literary perspective, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman share certain beliefs. Common to all these writers is their humanistic perspective. Its basic premises are that humans are the spiritual center of the universe and that in them alone is the clue to nature, history, and ultimately the cosmos itself. Without denying outright the existence either of a deity or of brute matter, this perspective nevertheless rejects them as exclusive principles of interpretation and prefers to explain humans and the world in terms of humanity itself. This preference is expressed most clearly in the transcendentalist principle that the structure of the universe literally duplicates the structure of the individual self. Therefore, all knowledge begins with self-knowledge.
    This common perspective is almost always universalized. Its emphasis is not upon the individual as a particular European or American, but upon the human as universal, freed from the accidents of times, space, birth, and talent. Thus, for Emerson, the "American Scholar" turns out to be simply "Man Thinking". While, for Whitman, the "Song of Myself" merges imperceptibly into a song of all the "children of Adam" where "every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you".
    Also common to all the five writers is the belief that individual virtue and happiness depend upon self-realization, which, in turn, depends upon the harmonious reconciliation of two universal psychological tendencies. First, the self-asserting impulse of the individual to withdraw, to remain unique and separate, and to be responsible only to himself or herself. Second, the self-transcending impulse of the individual to embrace the whole world in the experience of a single moment and to know and become one with that world. These conflicting impulses can be seen in the democratic ethic.  Democracy advocates individualism, the preservation of the individual’s freedom and self-expression. But the democratic self is torn between the duty to self, which is implied by the concept of liberty, and the duty to society, which is implied by the concepts of equality and fraternity.
    A third assumption common to the five writers is that intuition and imagination offer a surer road to truth than does abstract logic or scientific method. It is illustrated by their emphasis upon introspection——their belief that the clue to external nature is to be found in the inner world of individual psychology——and by their interpretation of experience as, in essence, symbolic. Both these stresses presume an organic relationship between the self and the cosmos of which only intuition and imagination can properly take account. These writers’ faith in the imagination and in themselves as practitioners of imagination led them to conceive of the writer as a seer and enabled them to achieve supreme confidence in their own moral and metaphysical insights.   
According to the passage, the five writers object to the scientific method primarily because they think it ______.
选项 A、is not the best way to obtain an understanding of the relationship between the individual and the cosmos
B、is so specialized that it leads to an understanding of separate parts of the universe but not of the relationships among those parts
C、cannot provide an adequate explanation of intuition and imagination
D、prevents people from recognizing the symbolic nature of experience
答案A
解析 根据本文内容，这五位作家反对科学方法主要是因为他们认为它不是了解个人和宇宙的关系的最佳方法。作者在最后一段的开头说，这五位作家共有的一种假设是直觉和想像比抽象的逻辑和科学方法更容易通向真理之路。
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