Directions: The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question. Literature-poetry, drama, fiction-can be enjoyed in two ways: haphazardly as a layman enjoys it, and methodically as a trained man does. In the one case the impression of its worth is vague, even confused; in the other it is fully accounted for. It is this latter method of enjoying that is called criticism. A critic is an ideal reader. Having 'travelled much in the realms of gold', he brings to bear a trained judgement on whatever he reads. To him no work of art is good or bad, enjoyable or unenjoyable, meaningful or meaningless, unless he has subjected it to a thorough examination. Criticism is, therefore, born of questioning; it never takes a writer or his work on trust. Where a work is held to be divinely inspired or revealed, as in the case of scriptures, there can be no criticism. For orthodox opinion will not permit a free discussion of it. It is the word of God. Hence it is that for long ages after the establishment of Christianity there was hardly any critical literature on the Bible. It was only when the Renaissance encouraged interrogation and free inquiry that it began to be examined critically. Today nothing is sacrosanct to criticism. It subjects everything to the closest scrutiny. Its approach is that of science - a disinterested application to its subject to understand and interpret it fully. For criticism therefore, as for science, to flourish, intellectual freedom is necessary. It requires an atmosphere in which questioning and inquiry are freely allowed. It is, however, conditioned by many factors, in particular by the trend of the age and the attitude of the critic. Both these tend to limit the critic's freedom as indeed they do that of the writer himself. One is ever a slave to one's times and mental make-up. It is these limitations that make the critical approach of one age or author different from that of another and impart to it its distinctive character. Generally, each age in literary history will be found to have its own critical standards, and each critic his own individual approach. One will look for morality in literature, another for aesthetic pleasure, a third for both. Or, one will advocate conformity to the rules of the Greek and Latin classics, another a reasonable deviation from them, a third a complete freedom of action. And so on. There are, thus, no fixed principles of Criticism to be applied indiscriminately to the works of all ages and writers. What this oft-used phrase actually signifies is the contribution each age has made to critical thought and the course it has followed in so doing. Often the critical canons of one age have been discarded in another and often too, a subsequent age has revived them. So the principles of criticism are nothing more than the various interpretations of literature or literary activity, advanced from time to time. They are sometimes similar, sometimes dissimilar, and sometimes even contradictory. Q. The writer speaks of an approach 'of science' and 'disinterested application' in the same breath. Why does he do that?

To imply that literary work can never be valid without an unbiased approach towards the piece of art

To highlight that much like scientific explorations, works of art cannot be enjoyed by layman

To call attention to the changed nature of the concept of criticism in the modern day world

To specify that like scientific exploration, literary criticism cannot be done without interest

Directions: The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question. Literature-poetry, drama, fiction-can be enjoyed in two ways: haphazardly as a layman enjoys it, and methodically as a trained man does. In the one case the impression of its worth is vague, even confused; in the other it is fully accounted for. It is this latter method of enjoying that is called criticism. A critic is an ideal reader. Having 'travelled much in the realms of gold', he brings to bear a trained judgement on whatever he reads. To him no work of art is good or bad, enjoyable or unenjoyable, meaningful or meaningless, unless he has subjected it to a thorough examination. Criticism is, therefore, born of questioning; it never takes a writer or his work on trust. Where a work is held to be divinely inspired or revealed, as in the case of scriptures, there can be no criticism. For orthodox opinion will not permit a free discussion of it. It is the word of God. Hence it is that for long ages after the establishment of Christianity there was hardly any critical literature on the Bible. It was only when the Renaissance encouraged interrogation and free inquiry that it began to be examined critically. Today nothing is sacrosanct to criticism. It subjects everything to the closest scrutiny. Its approach is that of science - a disinterested application to its subject to understand and interpret it fully. For criticism therefore, as for science, to flourish, intellectual freedom is necessary. It requires an atmosphere in which questioning and inquiry are freely allowed. It is, however, conditioned by many factors, in particular by the trend of the age and the attitude of the critic. Both these tend to limit the critic's freedom as indeed they do that of the writer himself. One is ever a slave to one's times and mental make-up. It is these limitations that make the critical approach of one age or author different from that of another and impart to it its distinctive character. Generally, each age in literary history will be found to have its own critical standards, and each critic his own individual approach. One will look for morality in literature, another for aesthetic pleasure, a third for both. Or, one will advocate conformity to the rules of the Greek and Latin classics, another a reasonable deviation from them, a third a complete freedom of action. And so on. There are, thus, no fixed principles of Criticism to be applied indiscriminately to the works of all ages and writers. What this oft-used phrase actually signifies is the contribution each age has made to critical thought and the course it has followed in so doing. Often the critical canons of one age have been discarded in another and often too, a subsequent age has revived them. So the principles of criticism are nothing more than the various interpretations of literature or literary activity, advanced from time to time. They are sometimes similar, sometimes dissimilar, and sometimes even contradictory. Q. All of the following conform to author's point of view presented in the passage, EXCEPT:

Nothing can be qualified as good or bad by critics unless they have scrutinised it.

Criticism cannot be solely based on the level of wisdom possessed by an individual.

It is the milieu in which a writer or a critic is reared or nurtured that determines their attitude and orientation.

Criticism has now adopted a scientific approach in the form of uniform and consistent rules to judge a literary work.

Directions: The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question. Over one-third of the population of the globe has done away with capitalist social relations and has either built or is building socialism. Progressive forces in all the advanced capitalist countries are working for socialism. More and more nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America, just emerged from colonial and semi-colonial oppression, rejected the capitalist way and set their sights on socialism. Capitalism stands exposed as a social system that has brought mankind immense calamities. Exploitation of millions upon millions of working people by a handful of financial and industrial magnates; colonialism, ruthlessly oppressing and decimating the population of the colonies; two World Wars, which took tens of millions of human lives, and a third World War being prepared by the ultra-reactionary circles of the capitalist states which threatens mankind with disastrous consequences - such is the face of capitalism as it stands in the dock of history. Today's broad and mighty movement towards socialism is a natural and inevitable process, which explains the tremendous interest we find all over the globe in scientific socialist theory. Lenin's writings gives readers the opportunity to find out about the main propositions of scientific socialism and to understand the transition from pre-Marxian unscientific utopian socialist views to the science worked out by Marx, whose conclusions are backed up by profound and comprehensive theoretical analysis of social relations and have been borne out by the whole course of history. What then is socialism? The term was first used by the French utopian socialist Pierre Leroux in 1833. Socialism is a society based on social property in the means of production, without antagonistic classes or exploitation. Visions of such a society had tantalised the minds of men long before Leroux wrote about it, and were a reflection of the passionate protest of the oppressed and exploited masses against their intolerable condition. Humanity's best minds - Thomas Moore in the 16th century, Tommaso Campanella in the 17th century, Henri de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier, Robert Owen and Alexander Herzen and Nikolai Chernyshevsky in the 19th century - proclaimed the need to restructure society along socialist lines. Many of their projections are naive and unacceptable in the light of our own day, but they have also made some brilliant predictions. The weakest side of these utopian socialist doctrines was how to go about realising this social ideal and whether it was at all possible. There the utopian socialists proved to be quite helpless. They held that all the defects of capitalism sprang from private property, and they were quite right. But they had no answer as to how private property came to be established in human society, or how it was to be eliminated. They confined themselves to spreading socialist ideas, appealing to the powers that be, and so on. The main flaw of the utopian socialism was the inability to find the way to socialism and failure to realise that the struggle for socialism must rest on a definite social force. "Utopian socialism", said Lenin, "criticised capitalist society. It had visions of a better order and endeavoured to convince the rich of the immorality of exploitation. But utopian socialism could not indicate the real solution". Where was it to be found? There was only one answer: the forces and means of transforming society were to be sought in society itself. But this required an understanding of the laws which govern society, in general, and capitalist society in particular. Q. According to the passage, pre-Marxian sociology was considered unscientific because

It was not backed up by theoretical analysis of social relations

It lacked the scientific temperament of Marx and subsequently of Lenin

It was much like the utopian socialism that did not relate to the social needs

It sprang from the protests of the oppressed and exploited against intolerable condition

Directions: Read the following passage carefully and answer the given question. The expansion of the concept of "person" was perhaps always inevitable. Like the creative definitions of gambling in at least some U.S. states—designed to carve out a legal niche for riverboat casinos while prohibiting the same activity on terra firma—legal personhood for nonhumans was an available loophole that someone was always bound to try to jump through. If you are looking to secure protections for certain beings or environmental features that are otherwise at risk of exploitation, winning the status of person for them is a good way to get what you want. For a long time, the only way under the law to protect an animal from wanton abuse was to characterize the abuse as harm to property, essentially no different from the sort of law that prevents you from smashing your neighbor's wheelbarrow. As for morality, if it was to enter into question at all, it was indirect incitement to moral depravity brought on by abuse of animals that justified any prohibition on harming them. Thus, philosopher Immanuel Kant insisted it is indeed wrong to harm domestic animals, but this still does not require us to suppose these animals are, as he would say, "ends in themselves." They can only ever be means to distinctly human ends while a child who grows up torturing these "means" is, at worst, going to be more prone to abusing human beings later in life—animal torture as a gateway to human torture—or, at best, is going to be stunted in his or her overall moral development. In any case, such indirect protection generally only extends to domestic animals while the vast majority of animals belonging to the category we call "wildlife" cannot be protected as property because, by definition, they do not belong to anyone. Over the course of the 20th century, significant subcategories of wildlife would come to be legally protected as part of large-scale conservationist efforts. But the concern here was at the population level rather than the individual and typically implied no commitment to the irreducible worth, however that may be conceived, of any individual member of a given protected species. For example, gorillas, it appears to many, are sufficiently like human beings in deserving not to be harmed for the same reasons we deserve not to be harmed: not because we belong to someone else and not because our species is at risk of disappearing but because we are—however one might wish to flesh this out in theoretical, metaphysical, or even religious terms—intrinsically worthy beings. The best way to recognize this apparent truth in law has been to reclassify gorillas—perhaps to "promote" them to the status of person as has been done with varying degrees of success in several European countries. So far, this is the easy part. Again, the case for gorilla personhood has typically been made on the basis of an evident similitude of internal capacities they share with us. Even hippos have what appear to be big smiling faces and plainly love to eat, so they come across as relatable. But no one, at least no one directly involved in modern states' law-making institutions, will make a similar argument for rivers and mountains. Rivers, it is generally believed, have no internal capacities at all. They are not subjects. Yet today, at least some rivers have been reclassified as persons too. To bring such a river harm is to harm a person, a being that ought to be considered an end in itself with inalienable rights and intrinsic worth. Q. From the passage, it can be inferred that none of the following are true according to Immanuel Kant's view to harm domestic animals EXCEPT that:

The value of these animals does not depend on anything else

We should treat them as a means to our own ends

Humans should respect their inherent worth over these animals

The existence of these animals doesn't grant them their value

Directions: Read the following passage carefully and answer the given question. The expansion of the concept of "person" was perhaps always inevitable. Like the creative definitions of gambling in at least some U.S. states—designed to carve out a legal niche for riverboat casinos while prohibiting the same activity on terra firma—legal personhood for nonhumans was an available loophole that someone was always bound to try to jump through. If you are looking to secure protections for certain beings or environmental features that are otherwise at risk of exploitation, winning the status of person for them is a good way to get what you want. For a long time, the only way under the law to protect an animal from wanton abuse was to characterize the abuse as harm to property, essentially no different from the sort of law that prevents you from smashing your neighbor's wheelbarrow. As for morality, if it was to enter into question at all, it was indirect incitement to moral depravity brought on by abuse of animals that justified any prohibition on harming them. Thus, philosopher Immanuel Kant insisted it is indeed wrong to harm domestic animals, but this still does not require us to suppose these animals are, as he would say, "ends in themselves." They can only ever be means to distinctly human ends while a child who grows up torturing these "means" is, at worst, going to be more prone to abusing human beings later in life—animal torture as a gateway to human torture—or, at best, is going to be stunted in his or her overall moral development. In any case, such indirect protection generally only extends to domestic animals while the vast majority of animals belonging to the category we call "wildlife" cannot be protected as property because, by definition, they do not belong to anyone. Over the course of the 20th century, significant subcategories of wildlife would come to be legally protected as part of large-scale conservationist efforts. But the concern here was at the population level rather than the individual and typically implied no commitment to the irreducible worth, however that may be conceived, of any individual member of a given protected species. For example, gorillas, it appears to many, are sufficiently like human beings in deserving not to be harmed for the same reasons we deserve not to be harmed: not because we belong to someone else and not because our species is at risk of disappearing but because we are—however one might wish to flesh this out in theoretical, metaphysical, or even religious terms—intrinsically worthy beings. The best way to recognize this apparent truth in law has been to reclassify gorillas—perhaps to "promote" them to the status of person as has been done with varying degrees of success in several European countries. So far, this is the easy part. Again, the case for gorilla personhood has typically been made on the basis of an evident similitude of internal capacities they share with us. Even hippos have what appear to be big smiling faces and plainly love to eat, so they come across as relatable. But no one, at least no one directly involved in modern states' law-making institutions, will make a similar argument for rivers and mountains. Rivers, it is generally believed, have no internal capacities at all. They are not subjects. Yet today, at least some rivers have been reclassified as persons too. To bring such a river harm is to harm a person, a being that ought to be considered an end in itself with inalienable rights and intrinsic worth. Q. Which of the following best states the flaw in conservation efforts aimed at 'wildlife' initiated during the 20th century?

Conservation efforts for wildlife were aimed at individual protection but not at collective protection of the given species.

Wildlife, not being anyone's property, was accorded a level of protection similar to domestic animals.

The efforts failed to focus on morality issues of a single animal though they still represented an improvement in terms of consideration of morality.

The efforts failed to focus on the worth of a single entity and instead focused on collective protection of the wildlife under consideration.

Directions: Read the following passage carefully and answer the given question. The expansion of the concept of "person" was perhaps always inevitable. Like the creative definitions of gambling in at least some U.S. states—designed to carve out a legal niche for riverboat casinos while prohibiting the same activity on terra firma—legal personhood for nonhumans was an available loophole that someone was always bound to try to jump through. If you are looking to secure protections for certain beings or environmental features that are otherwise at risk of exploitation, winning the status of person for them is a good way to get what you want. For a long time, the only way under the law to protect an animal from wanton abuse was to characterize the abuse as harm to property, essentially no different from the sort of law that prevents you from smashing your neighbor's wheelbarrow. As for morality, if it was to enter into question at all, it was indirect incitement to moral depravity brought on by abuse of animals that justified any prohibition on harming them. Thus, philosopher Immanuel Kant insisted it is indeed wrong to harm domestic animals, but this still does not require us to suppose these animals are, as he would say, "ends in themselves." They can only ever be means to distinctly human ends while a child who grows up torturing these "means" is, at worst, going to be more prone to abusing human beings later in life—animal torture as a gateway to human torture—or, at best, is going to be stunted in his or her overall moral development. In any case, such indirect protection generally only extends to domestic animals while the vast majority of animals belonging to the category we call "wildlife" cannot be protected as property because, by definition, they do not belong to anyone. Over the course of the 20th century, significant subcategories of wildlife would come to be legally protected as part of large-scale conservationist efforts. But the concern here was at the population level rather than the individual and typically implied no commitment to the irreducible worth, however that may be conceived, of any individual member of a given protected species. For example, gorillas, it appears to many, are sufficiently like human beings in deserving not to be harmed for the same reasons we deserve not to be harmed: not because we belong to someone else and not because our species is at risk of disappearing but because we are—however one might wish to flesh this out in theoretical, metaphysical, or even religious terms—intrinsically worthy beings. The best way to recognize this apparent truth in law has been to reclassify gorillas—perhaps to "promote" them to the status of person as has been done with varying degrees of success in several European countries. So far, this is the easy part. Again, the case for gorilla personhood has typically been made on the basis of an evident similitude of internal capacities they share with us. Even hippos have what appear to be big smiling faces and plainly love to eat, so they come across as relatable. But no one, at least no one directly involved in modern states' law-making institutions, will make a similar argument for rivers and mountains. Rivers, it is generally believed, have no internal capacities at all. They are not subjects. Yet today, at least some rivers have been reclassified as persons too. To bring such a river harm is to harm a person, a being that ought to be considered an end in itself with inalienable rights and intrinsic worth. Q. The author will agree with each of the following statements, EXCEPT that:

Each entity has an independent and conclusive nature and hence needs high and distinct level of protection.

A species that is more endangered has a higher chance of being categorized under 'persons' for individual level protection.

Some consideration as to whether an entity is living or non-living is definitely involved in bringing such entity under the ambit of 'persons'.

If we start considering wildlife as 'property', they will be better and more comprehensively protected than they are otherwise.

Directions: The passage given below is followed by four alternative summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage. When it comes to enjoying life and making full use of it, there is no use looking at the ugly side of things, or grumbling about things not going fine. Instead, rejoice over whatever good things are happening in your life. Even at the age of 80, late actor Dev Anand, used to tell his fans that one should not let oneself be bogged down by the sorrows of life, and instead one must live one's life knowing that it is running out. What matters is your attitude towards the many developments in your daily life. If you take them as challenges, you are a winner; and if you shy away from accepting hard tasks, then you are letting yourself get into a pit that will consume you without letting you do anything good in life.

Hope can do wonders in making your life a game with no limits.

The journey of life is hard and it needs to be handled with proper planning.

Major achievements require a hard and long struggle.

The ability to overcome sorrows in life comes from attitudinal change.

Directions: The passage given below is followed by four alternative summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage. Although almost all climate scientists agree that the Earth is gradually warming, they have long been of two minds about the process of rapid climate shifts within larger periods of change. Some have speculated that the process works like a giant oven or freezer, warming or cooling the whole planet at the same time. Others think that shifts occur on opposing schedule in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, like exaggerated seasons. Recent research in Germany examining climate patterns in the Southern Hemisphere at the end of the last Ice Age strengthens the idea that warming and cooling occurs at alternate times in the two hemispheres. A more definitive answer to this debate will allow scientists to better predict when how quickly the next climate shift will happen.

Scientists are sure of how rapid shifts in the Earth's climate occur all at once in different hemispheres, even though research will provide more answers to better predict climate shifts in the future.

Scientists are unsure whether rapid shifts in the Earth's climate happen all at once or on opposing schedules in different hemispheres; finding a definitive answer will help them better predict climate shifts in future.

Research in Germany will help scientist find a definitive answer about warming and cooling cycles that take place on the Earth, and help them predict climate shifts in the future in a better manner.

More research rather than debates on warming or cooling of the Earth and exaggerated season in its hemispheres will help scientists in Germany predict climate changes better in the future.

CAT Mock Test - 15 (November 17) Free MCQ Practice Test with Solutions

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