Reading Comprehension for UPPSC MCQs for UPPSC (UP) Exam

Those who opine lose their impunity when the circumstances in which they pontificate are such that generate from their expression a positive instigation of some mischievous act. An opinion that corn dealers are starvers of the poor, or that owning private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn dealer, or when handed about among the same mob in the form of a placard. Acts, of whatever kind, which without justifiable cause do harm to others, may be, and in the more important cases are absolutely required to be, controlled by the unfavourable sentiments, and, when needful, by the active interference of mankind. The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people. But if he refrains from molesting others in matters that concern them, and merely acts according to his own inclination and judgment in matters which concern himself he should be allowed, without molestation, to carry his opinions into practice at his own cost. As it is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so it is that there should be different experiments of living, that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others, and that the worth of different modes of life should be proved practically, when anyone thinks fit to try them. Where not the person‘s own character but the traditions and customs of other people are the rule of conduct, there is wanting one of the principal ingredients of individual and social progress.  

It would be absurd to pretend that people ought to live as if nothing whatever had been known in the world before they came into it; as if experience had as yet done nothing toward showing that one mode of existence, or of conduct, is preferable to another. Nobody denies that people should be so taught and trained in youth as to know and benefit by the ascertained results of human experience. But it is the privilege and proper condition of a human being, arrived at the maturity of his faculties, to use and interpret experience in his own way. It is for him to find out what part of recorded experience is properly applicable to his own circumstances and character. The traditions and customs of other people are, to a certain extent, evidence of what their experience has taught them—presumptive evidence, and as such, have a claim to his deference—but, in the first place, their experience may be too narrow, or they may have not interpreted it rightly. Secondly, their interpretation of experience may be correct, but unsuited to him. Customs are made for customary circumstances and customary characters, and his circumstances or his character may be uncustomary. Thirdly, though the customs be both good as customs and suitable to him, yet to conform to custom merely as custom does not educate him or develop in him any of the qualities which are the distinctive endowments of a human being. He gains no practice either in discerning or desiring what is best. 

Q.The author holds that one should not necessarily defer to the traditions and customs of other people. The author supports his position by arguing that:  

I. traditions and customs are usually the result of misinterpreted experiences.  

II. customs are based on experiences in the past, which are different from modern experiences.

III. customs can stifle one‘s individual development. 

Direction For Question : Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self- imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one’s own understanding without another’s guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one’s own mind without another’s guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) “Have the courage to use your own understanding,” is therefore the motto of the enlightenment. Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large part of mankind gladly remain minors all their lives, long after nature has freed them from external guidance. They are the reasons why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor. If I have a book that thinks for me, a pastor who acts as my conscience, a physician who prescribes my diet, and so on—then I have no need to exert myself. I have no need to think, if only I can pay; others will take care of that disagreeable business for me. Thus it is very difficult for the individual to work himself out of the nonage which has become almost second nature to him. He has even grown to like it, and is at first really incapable of using his own understanding because he has never been permitted to try it. Dogmas and formulas, these mechanical tools designed for reasonable use—or rather abuse— of his natural gifts, are the fetters of an everlasting nonage. The man who casts them off would make an uncertain leap over the narrowest ditch, because he is not used to such free movement. That is why there are only a few men who walk firmly, and who have emerged from nonage by cultivating their own minds. It is more nearly possible, however, for the public to enlighten itself; indeed, if it is only given freedom, enlightenment is almost inevitable. There will always be a few independent thinkers, even among the self- appointed guardians of the multitude. Once such men have thrown off the yoke of nonage, they will spread about them the spirit of a reasonable appreciation of man’s value and of his duty to think for himself. It is especially to be noted that the public which was earlier brought under the yoke by these men, afterwards forces these very guardians to remain in submission, if it is so incited by some of its guardians who are themselves incapable of any enlightenment. That shows how pernicious it is to implant prejudices: they will eventually revenge themselves upon their authors or their authors’ descendants. Therefore, a public can achieve enlightenment only slowly. A revolution may bring about the end of a personal despotism or of avaricious tyrannical oppression, but never a true reform of modes of thought. New prejudices will serve, in place of the old, as guide lines for the unthinking multitude. This enlightenment requires nothing but freedom— and the most innocent of all that may be called “freedom”: freedom to make public use of one’s reason in all matters. Now I hear the cry from all sides: “Do not argue!” The officer says: “Do not argue—drill!” The tax collector: “Do not argue—pay!” The pastor: “Do not argue—believe!” Only one ruler in the world says: “Argue as much as you please, but obey!” We find restrictions on freedom everywhere. But which restriction is harmful to enlightenment? Which restriction is innocent, and which advances enlightenment? I reply: the public use of one’s reason must be free at all times, and this alone can bring enlightenment to mankind.

Direction For question : As the Heart of Darkness makes its way into the savage shadows of the African continent, Joseph Conrad exposes a psycho-geography of the collective unconscious in the entangling symbolic realities of the serpentine Congo. Conrad’s novella descends into the unknowable darkness at the heart of Africa, taking its narrator, Marlow, on an underworld journey of individuation, a modern odyssey toward the center of the Self and the center of the Earth. Ego dissolves into soul as, in the interior; Marlow encounters his double in the powerful image of ivory-obsessed Kurtz, the dark shadow of European imperialism. The dark meditation is graced by personifications of anima in Kurtz’ black goddess, the savagely magnificent consort of the underworld, and in his porcelain -skinned Persephone, innocent intended of the upper world. “Africa,” wrote Graham Greene, “will always be the Africa in the Victorian atlas, the blank unexplored continent in the shape of the human heart.” The African heart described by Greene “acquired a new layer of meaning when Conrad portrayed the Congo under King Leopold as the Heart of Darkness, a place where barbarism triumphs over humanity, nature over technology, biology over culture, id over super ego.” The unknown and uncharted topography of the African continent first beckoned Conrad’s narrator, Marlow, into its depths in his boyhood: “Now, when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration”. When Marlow was grown and Africa was no longer a blank space on the map, but rather “a place of darkness,” there was still one river there that drew him especially, “a mighty big river, that you could see on the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land”. This same deep place, the Congo, that had seduced Conrad’s ivory hunting Kurtz into the horrors of its savage embrace had, in 1890, lured Conrad himself into adventure that turned him from sailor to writer and severely affected his health for the rest of his life. As the voyage up the Congo pro ved fateful for the development of Conrad’s narrator, Marlow, it was equally fateful for Conrad’s individuation, as he reflects in his letters “Before the Congo I was just a mere animal.” Hillman, in “Notes on White Supremacy” reminds us that, like Conrad, both Freud and Jung were called to venture into the shadowed continent and vestiges of their journeys still colour our psychological language: The convention informing geographical discoveries and the expansion of white consciousness over Africa continue to inform psychic geography. The topological language used by Freud for “the unconscious” as a place below, different, timeless, primordial, libidinal and separated from the consciousness recapitulates what white reporters centuries earlier said about West Africa. From Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to van der Post’s Venture to the Interior, Africa and the unconscious allegorize the other place.... “Just don’t stay in the topical colonies too long; you must reign at home,” writes Freud in 1911 to Jung, who himself made the African journey fourteen years later, describing the vast lands and dark peoples he encountered in language he applies as well to the immemorial unconscious psyche.... Part of psychology’s myth is that the unconscious was “discovered” as its contents are “explored”. Thus Africa has become a topology of the mind — its location, its shape, its cultures, its textures, its rhythms, its foliage, its hues, its wildness — all calling forth something lost in the psychology of the white European. It is with an understanding of our destiny to explore that symbolic lost continent within ourselves that we can begin to appreciate the prescience of Jungian psychology in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

Direction For question : As the Heart of Darkness makes its way into the savage shadows of the African continent, Joseph Conrad exposes a psycho-geography of the collective unconscious in the entangling symbolic realities of the serpentine Congo. Conrad’s novella descends into the unknowable darkness at the heart of Africa, taking its narrator, Marlow, on an underworld journey of individuation, a modern odyssey toward the center of the Self and the center of the Earth. Ego dissolves into soul as, in the interior; Marlow encounters his double in the powerful image of ivory-obsessed Kurtz, the dark shadow of European imperialism. The dark meditation is graced by personifications of anima in Kurtz’ black goddess, the savagely magnificent consort of the underworld, and in his porcelain -skinned Persephone, innocent intended of the upper world. “Africa,” wrote Graham Greene, “will always be the Africa in the Victorian atlas, the blank unexplored continent in the shape of the human heart.” The African heart described by Greene “acquired a new layer of meaning when Conrad portrayed the Congo under King Leopold as the Heart of Darkness, a place where barbarism triumphs over humanity, nature over technology, biology over culture, id over super ego.” The unknown and uncharted topography of the African continent first beckoned Conrad’s narrator, Marlow, into its depths in his boyhood: “Now, when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration”. When Marlow was grown and Africa was no longer a blank space on the map, but rather “a place of darkness,” there was still one river there that drew him especially, “a mighty big river, that you could see on the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land”. This same deep place, the Congo, that had seduced Conrad’s ivory hunting Kurtz into the horrors of its savage embrace had, in 1890, lured Conrad himself into adventure that turned him from sailor to writer and severely affected his health for the rest of his life. As the voyage up the Congo pro ved fateful for the development of Conrad’s narrator, Marlow, it was equally fateful for Conrad’s individuation, as he reflects in his letters “Before the Congo I was just a mere animal.” Hillman, in “Notes on White Supremacy” reminds us that, like Conrad, both Freud and Jung were called to venture into the shadowed continent and vestiges of their journeys still colour our psychological language: The convention informing geographical discoveries and the expansion of white consciousness over Africa continue to inform psychic geography. The topological language used by Freud for “the unconscious” as a place below, different, timeless, primordial, libidinal and separated from the consciousness recapitulates what white reporters centuries earlier said about West Africa. From Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to van der Post’s Venture to the Interior, Africa and the unconscious allegorize the other place.... “Just don’t stay in the topical colonies too long; you must reign at home,” writes Freud in 1911 to Jung, who himself made the African journey fourteen years later, describing the vast lands and dark peoples he encountered in language he applies as well to the immemorial unconscious psyche.... Part of psychology’s myth is that the unconscious was “discovered” as its contents are “explored”. Thus Africa has become a topology of the mind — its location, its shape, its cultures, its textures, its rhythms, its foliage, its hues, its wildness — all calling forth something lost in the psychology of the white European. It is with an understanding of our destiny to explore that symbolic lost continent within ourselves that we can begin to appreciate the prescience of Jungian psychology in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

The golden toad of Costa Rica, whose beauty and rarity inspired an unusual degree of human interest from a public generally unconcerned about amphibians, may have been driven to extinction by human activity nevertheless. In the United States, a public relations campaign featuring the toad raised money to purchase and protect the toad’s habitat in Costa Rica, establishing the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve in 1972. Although this action seemed to secure the toad’s future, it is now apparent that setting aside habitat was not enough to save this beautiful creature. The toad’s demise in the late 1980s was a harbinger of further species extinction in Costa Rica. Since that time, another twenty of the fifty species of frogs and toads known to once inhabit a 30 square kilometer area near Monteverde have disappeared.
The unexplained, relatively sudden disappearance of amphibians in Costa Rica is not a unique story. Populations of frogs, toads, and salamanders have declined or disappeared the world over. Scientists hypothesize that the more subtle effects of human activities on the world’s ecosystems, such as the build-up of pollutants, the decrease in atmospheric ozone, and changing weather patterns due to global warming, are beginning to take their toll. Perhaps amphibians - whose permeable skin makes them sensitive to environmental changes - are the “canary in the coal mine,” giving us early notification of the deterioration of our environment. If amphibians are the biological harbingers of environmental problems, humans would be wise to heed their warning.
Q. 
It can be inferred from the passage that

Film scholars agree that Hollywood portrayals of America at war follow a cyclical pattern. During and immediately after a conflict, important films trumpet glory and sacrifice. Ten to fifteen years later, questioning and sometimes pacifistic movies about the conflict dominate. In the late 1960’s, “the raging bulls” of Hollywood—the young trendsetters rising to prominence—proclaimed this pattern obsolete. However, the passage of time has demonstrated this cultural pattern to be more resilient than it seemed in those days of social change.
Throughout the majority of the last century, evidence of the cyclical portrayal of war in film abounds. After America declared war against Germany during World War I, the still infant film industry glorified the fight against “the Hun.” By the early 1930’s, major releases had changed their tone; for example, All Quiet on the Western Front put forth an anti-war message by displaying the horrors of combat. After World War II began, the industry shifted gears. Suddenly, important pictures again portrayed glories and courage without the questioning or despair. For example, Guadalcanal Diary, produced during the war, showed “the ultimate sacrifice” as a noble and undoubted good. Once again, though, by 1957, films such as The Bridge on the River Kwai won awards for depicting the moral confusion of war.
Those who later declared this pattern dead based their conviction on their hearts rather than their minds. During the Vietnam War, the only major film about that conflict was The Green Berets, starring John Wayne and far closer in tone to Guadalcanal Diary than to The Bridge on the River Kwai. Similarly, years went by before more complex visions of war, such as Apocalypse Now, and then Platoon, emerged.
While today’s film industry is more diverse and its audience more culturally fragmented, this cycle largely continues. Jarhead, a layered depiction of the first gulf war, premiered more than ten years after that conflict. Further evidence of this pattern can be seen in the release of Apocalypse Now Redux, which contained additional footage that the producers originally thought would repel audiences. Thus, the famous aphorism “The more things change, the more they stay the same” certainly applies to this aspect of the film industry.
Q.
According to the passage, Apocalypse Now Redux  differed from Apocalypse Now in which of the following ways?

The golden toad of Costa Rica, whose beauty and rarity inspired an unusual degree of human interest from a public generally unconcerned about amphibians, may have been driven to extinction by human activity nevertheless. In the United States, a public relations campaign featuring the toad raised money to purchase and protect the toad’s habitat in Costa Rica, establishing the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve in 1972. Although this action seemed to secure the toad’s future, it is now apparent that setting aside habitat was not enough to save this beautiful creature. The toad’s demise in the late 1980s was a harbinger of further species extinction in Costa Rica. Since that time, another twenty of the fifty species of frogs and toads known to once inhabit a 30 square kilometer area near Monteverde have disappeared.
The unexplained, relatively sudden disappearance of amphibians in Costa Rica is not a unique story. Populations of frogs, toads, and salamanders have declined or disappeared the world over. Scientists hypothesize that the more subtle effects of human activities on the world’s ecosystems, such as the build-up of pollutants, the decrease in atmospheric ozone, and changing weather patterns due to global warming, are beginning to take their toll. Perhaps amphibians - whose permeable skin makes them sensitive to environmental changes - are the “canary in the coal mine,” giving us early notification of the deterioration of our environment. If amphibians are the biological harbingers of environmental problems, humans would be wise to heed their warning.
Q. 
The passage implies that

By regarding the expanding universe as a motion picture, you can easily imagine ―running the film backward.‖ If you do so, you find the universe getting smaller and smaller, and eventually you come to the moment when its whole mass is crammed into an infinitely dense point. Before that time it didn‘t exist, or at least it didn‘t exist in its present form. Though there is some controversy about its exact age, most cosmologists would be inclined to agree that the universe has existed for about ten to twenty billion years. For scale, this can be compared to the four-and-a-half-billion-year age of the solar system, the time since the disappearance of the dinosaurs (sixty-five million years), and the age of the human race (about three million years).  

The event that marked the beginning of the universe was christened the Big Bang; the term has now entered the vernacular of our culture. Originally the name referred only to the single initiating event; now, however, astronomers have come to use it to mean the entire developmental process of the birth and expansion of the cosmos.

 The simple statement that the universe had a beginning in time is by now so obvious to astrophysicists that few give it a second thought. Yet it is a statement that has profound implications. Most civilizations embrace one of two opposite concepts of time. Linear time has a beginning, a duration, and an end; cyclical time, as its name suggests, continues around and around forever. In a universe that functions through cyclical time, the question of creation never arises; the universe always was and always will be. The minute you switch to linear time you immediately confront the vexing question not only of creation, but also of the Creator. Although there is no logical reason for the assumption, many people believe that if something comes into existence, it must do so in response to the actions of some rational being. Because of that belief, astronomers, even though they resist becoming involved in theological discussion, find themselves in one when they posit the Big Bang universe. It puts them squarely in the middle of an age-old debate.  

One common misconception about the Big Bang that should be disposed of immediately is the notion that the universal expansion is analogous to the explosion of an artillery shell. The galaxies are not like bits of shrapnel speeding away from a central explosion. The raisin-indough analogy is a more satisfactory way to think about the whole process.  

Q.Why does the author compare the universe to a motion picture?  

As formal organizations, business corporations are distinguished by their particular goals, which include maximization of profits, growth, and survival. Providing goods and services is a means to this end. If, for example, a number of individuals (outsiders or even insiders) believe that a company‘s aggressive marketing of infant formula in third world countries is morally wrong, the company is unlikely to be moved by arguments based on ethos alone as long as what it is doing remains profitable. But if those opposed to the company‘s practice organize a highly effective boycott of the company‘s products, their moral views will soon enter into the company‘s deliberations indirectly as limiting operating conditions. They can, at this point, no more be ignored than a prohibitive increase in the costs of certain raw materials.  

Although the concepts and categories of ethics may be applied to the conduct of corporations, there are important differences between the values and principles underlying corporate behaviour and those underlying the actions of most individuals. If corporations are by their nature end- or goal-directed how can they acknowledge acts as wrong in and of themselves? Is it possible to hold one criminally responsible for acts that if performed by a human person would result in criminal liability?  

The first case of this type to achieve widespread public attention was the attempt to prosecute the Ford Motor Company for manslaughter as the result of alleged negligent or reckless decision making concerning the safety engineering of the Pinto vehicle. Although the defendant corporation and its officers were found innocent after trial, the case can serve as an exemplar for our purposes.  

In essence, the prosecution in this case attempted to show that the corporation had produced and distributed a vehicle that was known to be defective at the time of production and sale, and that even after a great deal of additional information accumulated regarding the nature of the problems, the corporation took no action to correct them. The obvious non-corporate analogy would be the prosecution of a person who was driving a car with brakes known to be faulty, who does not have them repaired because it would cost too much, and who kills someone when the brakes eventually fail and the car does not stop in time. Such cases involving individuals are prosecuted and won regularly.

If corporations have no concept of right or wrong because they are exclusively goal-directed, can they be convicted in cases of this type, and what purpose would be served by such a conviction? Perhaps we can make a utilitarian argument for convicting corporations of such crimes. The argument would be that of deterrence; conviction and punishment would deter other corporations from taking similar actions under similar circumstances. However, there appears to be considerable evidence that deterrence does not work on corporations, even if, arguably, it works on individuals. The possibility of being discovered and the potential magnitude of the fine merely become more data to be included in the analysis of limiting conditions.  

Q.A claim that things have ethical value to corporations only insofar as they are instrumental in furthering the ultimate goals of the corporation is:  

In public Greek life, a man had to make his way at every step through the immediate persuasion of the spoken word. Whether it be addressing an assembly, a law-court or a more restricted body, his oratory would be a public affair rather than under the purview of a quiet committee, without the support of circulated commentary, and with no backcloth of daily reportage to make his own or others‘ views familiar to his hearers. The oratory's immediate effect was all-important; it would be naive to expect that mere reasonableness or an inherently good case would equate to a satisfactory appeal. Therefore, it was early realized that persuasion was an art, up to a point teachable, and a variety of specific pedagogy was well established in the second half of the fifth century. When the sophists claimed to teach their pupils how to succeed in public life, rhetoric was a large part of what they meant, though, to do them justice, it was not the whole.

Skill naturally bred mistrust. If a man of good will had need of expression advanced of mere twaddle, to learn how to expound his contention effectively, the truculent or pugnacious could be taught to dress their case in well-seeming guise. It was a standing charge against the sophists that they ‗made the worse appear the better cause,‘ and it was this immoral lesson which the hero of Aristophanes‘ Clouds went to learn from, of all people, Socrates. Again, the charge is often made in court that the opponent is an adroit orator and the jury must be circumspect so as not to let him delude them. From the frequency with which this crops up, it is patent that the accusation of cleverness might damage a man. In Greece, juries, of course, were familiar with the style, and would recognize the more evident artifices, but it was worth a litigant‘s while to get his speech written for him by an expert. Persuasive oratory was certainly one of the pressures that would be effective in an Athenian law-court.

A more insidious danger was the inevitable desire to display this art as an art. It is not easy to define the point at which a legitimate concern with style shades off into preoccupation with manner at the expense of matter, but it is easy to perceive that many Greek writers of the fourth and later centuries passed that danger point. The most influential was Isocrates, who polished for long years his pamphlets, written in the form of speeches, and taught to many pupils the smooth and easy periods he had perfected. Isocrates took to the written word in compensation for his inadequacy in live oratory; the tough and nervous tones of a Demosthenes were far removed from his, though they, too, were based on study and practice. The exaltation of virtuosity did palpable harm. The balance was always delicate, between style as a vehicle and style as an end in itself.

 We must not try to pinpoint a specific moment when it, once and for all, tipped over; but certainly, as time went on, virtuosity weighed heavier. While Greek freedom lasted, and it mattered what course of action a Greek city decided to take, rhetoric was a necessary preparation for public life, whatever its side effects. It had been a source of strength for Greek civilization that its problems, of all kinds, were thrashed out very much in public. The shallowness which the study of rhetoric might (not must) encourage was the corresponding weakness.  

Q.If the author of the passage travelled to a political convention and saw various candidates speak he would most likely have the highest regard for an orator who:  

While many points are worth making in an evaluation of the single sixyear presidential term, one of the most telling points against the single term has not been advanced. This kind of constitutional limitation on elections is generally a product of systems with weak or non-existent political parties.

Since there is no party continuity or corporate party integrity in such systems, there is no basis for putting trust in the desire for re-election as a safeguard against mismanagement in the executive branch. Better under those conditions to operate on the basis of negative assumptions against incumbents. I do not know if the earliest proposal for a single, nonrepeatable term was made in the 1820s because that was a period of severely weak political parties. But I do feel confident that this is a major reason, if not the only reason, that such a proposal has been popular since the 1940s.

Though the association of the non-repeatable election with weak political parties is not in itself an argument against the limitation, the fallout from this association does contribute significantly to the negative argument. Single-term limitations are strongly associated with corruption. In any weak party system, including the presidential system, the onus of making deals and compromises, both shady and honourable, rests heavily upon individual candidates. Without some semblance of corporate integrity in a party, individual candidates have few opportunities to amortize their obligations across the spectrum of elective and appointive jobs and policy proposals. The deals tend to be personalized and the payoffs come home to roost accordingly.

If that situation is already endemic in conditions of weak or nonexistent parties, adding to it the limitation against re-election means that candidates and officials, already prevented from amortizing their deals across space, are also unable to amortize their obligations temporally. This makes for a highly beleaguered situation. The single six-year term for presidents is an effort to compensate for the absence of a viable party system, but it is a compensation ultimately paid for by further weakening the party system itself.

 Observers, especially foreign observers, have often noted that one source of weakness in American political parties is the certainty of election every two or four years, not only because any artificial limitation on elections is a violation of democratic principles but also because when elections are set in a certain and unchangeable cycle, political parties do not have to remain alert but can disappear into inactivity until a known point prior to the next election. To rigidify matters by going beyond the determinacy of the electoral cycle to add an absolute rule of one term would hang still another millstone around the neck of already doddering political parties.  

Q. Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the author‘s claim about single-term political systems?  

While many points are worth making in an evaluation of the single sixyear presidential term, one of the most telling points against the single term has not been advanced. This kind of constitutional limitation on elections is generally a product of systems with weak or non-existent political parties.

 Since there is no party continuity or corporate party integrity in such systems, there is no basis for putting trust in the desire for re-election as a safeguard against mismanagement in the executive branch. Better under those conditions to operate on the basis of negative assumptions against incumbents. I do not know if the earliest proposal for a single, nonrepeatable term was made in the 1820s because that was a period of severely weak political parties. But I do feel confident that this is a major reason, if not the only reason, that such a proposal has been popular since the 1940s.

 Though the association of the non-repeatable election with weak political parties is not in itself an argument against the limitation, the fallout from this association does contribute significantly to the negative argument. Single-term limitations are strongly associated with corruption. In any weak party system, including the presidential system, the onus of making deals and compromises, both shady and honourable, rests heavily upon individual candidates. Without some semblance of corporate integrity in a party, individual candidates have few opportunities to amortize their obligations across the spectrum of elective and appointive jobs and policy proposals.

The deals tend to be personalized and the payoffs come home to roost accordingly.  If that situation is already endemic in conditions of weak or nonexistent parties, adding to it the limitation against re-election means that candidates and officials, already prevented from amortizing their deals across space, are also unable to amortize their obligations temporally. This makes for a highly beleaguered situation. The single six-year term for presidents is an effort to compensate for the absence of a viable party system, but it is a compensation ultimately paid for by further weakening the party system itself.

 Observers, especially foreign observers, have often noted that one source of weakness in American political parties is the certainty of election every two or four years, not only because any artificial limitation on elections is a violation of democratic principles but also because when elections are set in a certain and unchangeable cycle, political parties do not have to remain alert but can disappear into inactivity until a known point prior to the next election. To rigidify matters by going beyond the determinacy of the electoral cycle to add an absolute rule of one term would hang still another millstone around the neck of already doddering political parties.  

According to the passage, which of the following is most likely to be true of a political system with weak political parties? 

In all battles two things are usually required of the Commander-in-Chief: to make a good plan for his army and to keep a strong reserve. Both of these are also obligatory for the painter. To make a plan, thorough reconnaissance of the country where the battle is to be fought is needed. Its fields, its mountains, its rivers, its bridges, its trees, its flowers, its atmosphere—all require and repay attentive observation from a special point of view.

I think this is one of the chief delights that have come to me through painting. No doubt many people who are lovers of art have acquired it to a high degree without actually practicing. But I expect that nothing will make one observe more quickly or more thoroughly than having to face the difficulty of representing the thing observed. And mind you, if you do observe accurately and with refinement, and if you do record what you have seen with tolerable correspondence, the result follows on the canvas with startling obedience.

But in order to make his plan, the General must not only reconnoitre the battle-ground; he must also study the achievements of the great Captains of the past. He must bring the observations he has collected in the field into comparison with the treatment of similar incidents by famous chiefs.

Considering this fact, the galleries of Europe take on a new—and to me at least — a severely practical interest. You see the difficulty that baffled you yesterday; and you see how easily it has been overcome by a great or even by a skilful painter. Not only is your observation of Nature sensibly improved and developed, but also your comprehension of the masterpieces of art.

But it is in the use and withholding of their reserves that the great commanders have generally excelled. After all, when once the last reserve has been thrown in, the commander‘s part is played. If that does not win the battle, he has nothing else to give. Everything must be left to luck and to the fighting troops. But these last reserves, in the absence of high direction, are apt to get into sad confusion, all mixed together in a nasty mess, without order or plan—and consequently without effect.  

Mere masses count no more. The largest brush, the brightest colours cannot even make an impression. The pictorial battlefield becomes a sea of mud mercifully veiled by the fog of war. Even though the General plunges in himself and emerges bespattered, as he sometimes does, he will not retrieve the day. In painting, the reserves consist in Proportion or Relation. And it is here that the art of the painter marches along the road which is traversed by all the greatest harmonies in thought. At one side of the palette there is white, at the other black; and neither is ever used 'neat.‘ Between these two rigid limits all the action must lie, all the power required must be generated. Black and white themselves placed in juxtaposition make no great impression; and yet they are the most that you can do in pure contrast.  

Q.Following the example of the master Manet, the young Matisse often inserted in his pictures areas of white such as tablecloths or crockery that allowed for striking contrasts with black objects such as a knife or a dark bottle. What is the relevance of this information to the passage?  

In all battles two things are usually required of the Commander-in-Chief: to make a good plan for his army and to keep a strong reserve. Both of these are also obligatory for the painter. To make a plan, thorough reconnaissance of the country where the battle is to be fought is needed. Its fields, its mountains, its rivers, its bridges, its trees, its flowers, its atmosphere—all require and repay attentive observation from a special point of view.

I think this is one of the chief delights that have come to me through painting. No doubt many people who are lovers of art have acquired it to a high degree without actually practicing. But I expect that nothing will make one observe more quickly or more thoroughly than having to face the difficulty of representing the thing observed. And mind you, if you do observe accurately and with refinement, and if you do record what you have seen with tolerable correspondence, the result follows on the canvas with startling obedience.

But in order to make his plan, the General must not only reconnoitre the battle-ground; he must also study the achievements of the great Captains of the past. He must bring the observations he has collected in the field into comparison with the treatment of similar incidents by famous chiefs.

Considering this fact, the galleries of Europe take on a new—and to me at least — a severely practical interest. You see the difficulty that baffled you yesterday; and you see how easily it has been overcome by a great or even by a skilful painter. Not only is your observation of Nature sensibly improved and developed, but also your comprehension of the masterpieces of art.

But it is in the use and withholding of their reserves that the great commanders have generally excelled. After all, when once the last reserve has been thrown in, the commander‘s part is played. If that does not win the battle, he has nothing else to give. Everything must be left to luck and to the fighting troops. But these last reserves, in the absence of high direction, are apt to get into sad confusion, all mixed together in a nasty mess, without order or plan—and consequently without effect.  

Mere masses count no more. The largest brush, the brightest colours cannot even make an impression. The pictorial battlefield becomes a sea of mud mercifully veiled by the fog of war. Even though the General plunges in himself and emerges bespattered, as he sometimes does, he will not retrieve the day. In painting, the reserves consist in Proportion or Relation. And it is here that the art of the painter marches along the road which is traversed by all the greatest harmonies in thought. At one side of the palette there is white, at the other black; and neither is ever used 'neat.‘ Between these two rigid limits all the action must lie, all the power required must be generated. Black and white themselves placed in juxtaposition make no great impression; and yet they are the most that you can do in pure contrast.  

Q.As the author creates the analogy between war and painting in the passage, the Commander-in-Chief is to the battleground as the:  

The ―paradox of tolerance‖ admonishes us that tolerance of the intolerant leads to intolerance. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the constitutions and laws of Western European democracies that adhere to the principle of freedom of speech all heed the warning of this conundrum and do not afford legal protection to extremist speech.  

While in Western European democracies, the speech of nondemocratic extremists has been successfully outlawed, in the United States the first amendment right to freedom of speech has been interpreted to encompass radical oration. The traditional justifications of this American stance originate in the belief that speech is entitled to greater tolerance than other kinds of activity. They are based on the belief that speech itself is valuable, and thus ascribe positive value to a very broad range of speech.

 According to the classical model, freedom of speech serves an indispensable function in the process of democratic self-government. From this perspective, the free speech principle need only protect political speech, comprised of all the facts, theories, and opinions relating to any issue on which the citizens must vote. Proponents of this view insist that even extremist views cannot be concealed from voting citizens, if these views bear on any public issue before them.

Protection of free speech serves the collective self-interests of a selfgoverning society made up of all rational, equal, and fully participating citizens who take their civic duties seriously. The fortress model is built on a foundation of pessimism, individualism, relativism, and self-doubt. At its deepest level, the fortress model values freedom of speech as a necessary precondition to the discovery and preservation of truth, but even at this level the function of speech remains primarily negative.  

From this perspective, the government and a majority of the people pose a great danger of intolerance. In spite of the high probability that their beliefs will eventually prove to be false, it is argued, people nonetheless tend to feel certain about them and, consequently, feel justified in requiring others to conform. Thus, the fortress model‘s prescription for combating the tendency to censor nonconforming views is to overprotect speech by providing a broad ―buffer zone‖ that encompasses extremist speech because its protection substantially diminishes the probability that inherently valuable speech will be suppressed.  

Q. Which of the following scenarios, if true, would most weaken the argument contained in the paradox of tolerance which ―admonishes us that tolerance of the intolerant leads to intolerance?‖ 

Direction For Question : Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self- imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one’s own understanding without another’s guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one’s own mind without another’s guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) “Have the courage to use your own understanding,” is therefore the motto of the enlightenment. Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large part of mankind gladly remain minors all their lives, long after nature has freed them from external guidance. They are the reasons why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor. If I have a book that thinks for me, a pastor who acts as my conscience, a physician who prescribes my diet, and so on—then I have no need to exert myself. I have no need to think, if only I can pay; others will take care of that disagreeable business for me. Thus it is very difficult for the individual to work himself out of the nonage which has become almost second nature to him. He has even grown to like it, and is at first really incapable of using his own understanding because he has never been permitted to try it. Dogmas and formulas, these mechanical tools designed for reasonable use—or rather abuse— of his natural gifts, are the fetters of an everlasting nonage. The man who casts them off would make an uncertain leap over the narrowest ditch, because he is not used to such free movement. That is why there are only a few men who walk firmly, and who have emerged from nonage by cultivating their own minds. It is more nearly possible, however, for the public to enlighten itself; indeed, if it is only given freedom, enlightenment is almost inevitable. There will always be a few independent thinkers, even among the self- appointed guardians of the multitude. Once such men have thrown off the yoke of nonage, they will spread about them the spirit of a reasonable appreciation of man’s value and of his duty to think for himself. It is especially to be noted that the public which was earlier brought under the yoke by these men, afterwards forces these very guardians to remain in submission, if it is so incited by some of its guardians who are themselves incapable of any enlightenment. That shows how pernicious it is to implant prejudices: they will eventually revenge themselves upon their authors or their authors’ descendants. Therefore, a public can achieve enlightenment only slowly. A revolution may bring about the end of a personal despotism or of avaricious tyrannical oppression, but never a true reform of modes of thought. New prejudices will serve, in place of the old, as guide lines for the unthinking multitude. This enlightenment requires nothing but freedom— and the most innocent of all that may be called “freedom”: freedom to make public use of one’s reason in all matters. Now I hear the cry from all sides: “Do not argue!” The officer says: “Do not argue—drill!” The tax collector: “Do not argue—pay!” The pastor: “Do not argue—believe!” Only one ruler in the world says: “Argue as much as you please, but obey!” We find restrictions on freedom everywhere. But which restriction is harmful to enlightenment? Which restriction is innocent, and which advances enlightenment? I reply: the public use of one’s reason must be free at all times, and this alone can bring enlightenment to mankind.

Direction For question : As the Heart of Darkness makes its way into the savage shadows of the African continent, Joseph Conrad exposes a psycho-geography of the collective unconscious in the entangling symbolic realities of the serpentine Congo. Conrad’s novella descends into the unknowable darkness at the heart of Africa, taking its narrator, Marlow, on an underworld journey of individuation, a modern odyssey toward the center of the Self and the center of the Earth. Ego dissolves into soul as, in the interior; Marlow encounters his double in the powerful image of ivory-obsessed Kurtz, the dark shadow of European imperialism. The dark meditation is graced by personifications of anima in Kurtz’ black goddess, the savagely magnificent consort of the underworld, and in his porcelain -skinned Persephone, innocent intended of the upper world. “Africa,” wrote Graham Greene, “will always be the Africa in the Victorian atlas, the blank unexplored continent in the shape of the human heart.” The African heart described by Greene “acquired a new layer of meaning when Conrad portrayed the Congo under King Leopold as the Heart of Darkness, a place where barbarism triumphs over humanity, nature over technology, biology over culture, id over super ego.” The unknown and uncharted topography of the African continent first beckoned Conrad’s narrator, Marlow, into its depths in his boyhood: “Now, when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration”. When Marlow was grown and Africa was no longer a blank space on the map, but rather “a place of darkness,” there was still one river there that drew him especially, “a mighty big river, that you could see on the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land”. This same deep place, the Congo, that had seduced Conrad’s ivory hunting Kurtz into the horrors of its savage embrace had, in 1890, lured Conrad himself into adventure that turned him from sailor to writer and severely affected his health for the rest of his life. As the voyage up the Congo pro ved fateful for the development of Conrad’s narrator, Marlow, it was equally fateful for Conrad’s individuation, as he reflects in his letters “Before the Congo I was just a mere animal.” Hillman, in “Notes on White Supremacy” reminds us that, like Conrad, both Freud and Jung were called to venture into the shadowed continent and vestiges of their journeys still colour our psychological language: The convention informing geographical discoveries and the expansion of white consciousness over Africa continue to inform psychic geography. The topological language used by Freud for “the unconscious” as a place below, different, timeless, primordial, libidinal and separated from the consciousness recapitulates what white reporters centuries earlier said about West Africa. From Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to van der Post’s Venture to the Interior, Africa and the unconscious allegorize the other place.... “Just don’t stay in the topical colonies too long; you must reign at home,” writes Freud in 1911 to Jung, who himself made the African journey fourteen years later, describing the vast lands and dark peoples he encountered in language he applies as well to the immemorial unconscious psyche.... Part of psychology’s myth is that the unconscious was “discovered” as its contents are “explored”. Thus Africa has become a topology of the mind — its location, its shape, its cultures, its textures, its rhythms, its foliage, its hues, its wildness — all calling forth something lost in the psychology of the white European. It is with an understanding of our destiny to explore that symbolic lost continent within ourselves that we can begin to appreciate the prescience of Jungian psychology in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

Film scholars agree that Hollywood portrayals of America at war follow a cyclical pattern. During and immediately after a conflict, important films trumpet glory and sacrifice. Ten to fifteen years later, questioning and sometimes pacifistic movies about the conflict dominate. In the late 1960’s, “the raging bulls” of Hollywood—the young trendsetters rising to prominence—proclaimed this pattern obsolete. However, the passage of time has demonstrated this cultural pattern to be more resilient than it seemed in those days of social change.
Throughout the majority of the last century, evidence of the cyclical portrayal of war in film abounds. After America declared war against Germany during World War I, the still infant film industry glorified the fight against “the Hun.” By the early 1930’s, major releases had changed their tone; for example, All Quiet on the Western Front put forth an anti-war message by displaying the horrors of combat. After World War II began, the industry shifted gears. Suddenly, important pictures again portrayed glories and courage without the questioning or despair. For example, Guadalcanal Diary, produced during the war, showed “the ultimate sacrifice” as a noble and undoubted good. Once again, though, by 1957, films such as The Bridge on the River Kwai won awards for depicting the moral confusion of war.
Those who later declared this pattern dead based their conviction on their hearts rather than their minds. During the Vietnam War, the only major film about that conflict was The Green Berets, starring John Wayne and far closer in tone to Guadalcanal Diary than to The Bridge on the River Kwai. Similarly, years went by before more complex visions of war, such as Apocalypse Now, and then Platoon, emerged.
While today’s film industry is more diverse and its audience more culturally fragmented, this cycle largely continues. Jarhead, a layered depiction of the first gulf war, premiered more than ten years after that conflict. Further evidence of this pattern can be seen in the release of Apocalypse Now Redux, which contained additional footage that the producers originally thought would repel audiences. Thus, the famous aphorism “The more things change, the more they stay the same” certainly applies to this aspect of the film industry.
Q.
The passage implies that the combat depicted in All Quiet on the Western Front least resembles the
depiction of combat in which of the following?

Measuring more than five feet tall and ten feet long, the Javan rhinoceros is often called the rarest large mammal on earth. None exist in zoos. Like the Indian rhino, the Javan has only one horn; African and Sumatran rhinos have two. While the Javan rhino habitat once extended across southern Asia, now there are fewer than one hundred of the animals in Indonesia and under a dozen in Vietnam. Very little is known about Javan rhinos because they lead secretive and solitary lives in remote jungles.
Until recently, scientists debated whether females even have horns, and most scientific work has had to rely on DNA garnered from dung.
The near extinction of the Javan rhino is the direct result of human actions. For centuries, farmers, who favored the same habitat, viewed them as crop eating pests and shot them on sight. During the colonial period, hunters slaughtered thousands. Now, human efforts to save them may well prove futile. The Vietnamese herd is probably doomed, as too few remain to maintain the necessary genetic variation. Rhinos from Java cannot supplement the Vietnamese numbers because in the millions of years since Indonesia separated from the mainland, the two groups have evolved into separate sub-species. In Indonesia, the rhinos are protected on the Ujung Kulon peninsula, which is unsettled by humans, and still have sufficient genetic diversity to have a chance at survival.
Ironically, however, the lack of human disturbance allows mature forests to replace the shrubby vegetation the animals prefer. Thus, human benevolence may prove little better for these rhinos than past human maltreatment.
Q.
Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?

The golden toad of Costa Rica, whose beauty and rarity inspired an unusual degree of human interest from a public generally unconcerned about amphibians, may have been driven to extinction by human activity nevertheless. In the United States, a public relations campaign featuring the toad raised money to purchase and protect the toad’s habitat in Costa Rica, establishing the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve in 1972. Although this action seemed to secure the toad’s future, it is now apparent that setting aside habitat was not enough to save this beautiful creature. The toad’s demise in the late 1980s was a harbinger of further species extinction in Costa Rica. Since that time, another twenty of the fifty species of frogs and toads known to once inhabit a 30 square kilometer area near Monteverde have disappeared.
The unexplained, relatively sudden disappearance of amphibians in Costa Rica is not a unique story. Populations of frogs, toads, and salamanders have declined or disappeared the world over. Scientists hypothesize that the more subtle effects of human activities on the world’s ecosystems, such as the build-up of pollutants, the decrease in atmospheric ozone, and changing weather patterns due to global warming, are beginning to take their toll. Perhaps amphibians - whose permeable skin makes them sensitive to environmental changes - are the “canary in the coal mine,” giving us early notification of the deterioration of our environment. If amphibians are the biological harbingers of environmental problems, humans would be wise to heed their warning.
Q. 
The author uses the adjective “subtle” in the second paragraph most probably to emphasize that