问题详情

A stout old lady was walking with her basket down the middle of a street in Petrograd to the great confusion of the traffic and with no small peril to herself. It was pointed out to her that the pavement was the place for pedestrians, but she replied, “I’m going to walk where I like. We’ve got liberty now.” It did not occur to the dear old lady that if liberty entitled the pedestrian to walk down the middle of the road, then the end of such liberty would be universal chaos. Everybody would be getting in everybody else’s way and nobody would get anywhere. Individual liberty would have become social anarchy.There is a danger of the world getting liberty — drunk in these days like the old lady with the basket, and it is just as well to remind ourselves of what the rule of the road means. It means that in order that the liberties of all may be preserved, the liberties of everybody must be curtailed. When the policeman, say, at Piccadilly Circus steps into the middle of the road and puts out his hand, he is the symbol not of tyranny, but of liberty. You may not think so. You may, being in a hurry, and seeing your car pulled up by this insolence of office, feel that your liberty has been outraged. How dare this fellow interfere with your free use of the public highway? Then, if you are a reasonable person, you will reflect that if he did not interfere with you, he would interfere with no one, and the result would be that Piccadilly Circus would be a maelstrom that you would never cross at all. You have submitted to a curtailment of private liberty in order that you may enjoy a social order which makes your liberty a reality.Liberty is not a personal affair only, but a social contract. It is an accommodation of interests. In matters which do not touch anybody else’s liberty, of course, I may be as free as I like. If I choose to go down the road in a dressing-gown who shall say me nay? You have liberty to laugh at me, but I have liberty to be indifferent to you. And if I have a fancy for dyeing my hair, or waxing my moustache (which heaven forbid), or wearing an overcoat and sandals, or going to bed late or getting up early, I shall follow my fancy and ask no man’s permission. I shall not inquire of you whether I may eat mustard with my mutton. And you will not ask me whether you may follow this religion or that, whether you may prefer Ella Wheeler Wilcox to Wordsworth, or champagne to shandy.In all these and a thousand other details you and I please ourselves and ask no one’s leave. We have a whole kingdom in which we rule alone, can do what we choose, be wise or ridiculous, harsh or easy, conventional or odd. But directly we step out of that kingdom, our personal liberty of action becomes qualified by other people’s liberty. I might like to practice on the trombone from midnight till three in the morning. If I went on to the top of Everest to do it, I could please myself, but if I do it in my bedroom my family will object, and if I do it out in the streets the neighbors will remind me that my liberty to blow the trombone must not interfere with their liberty to sleep in quiet. There are a lot of people in the world, and I have to accommodate my liberty to their liberties.We are all liable to forget this, and unfortunately we are much more conscious of the imperfections of others in this respect than of our own. A reasonable consideration for the rights or feelings of others is the foundation of social conduct. It is in the small matters of conduct, in the observance of the rule of the road, that we pass judgment upon ourselves, and declare that we are civilized or uncivilized. The great moments of heroism and sacrifice are rare. It is the little habits of commonplace intercourse that make up the great sum of life and sweeten or make bitter the journey.1.The author might have stated his “rule of the road” as( ).2.The author’s attitude to the old lady in Paragraph 1 is( ).3.A situation analogous to the “insolence of office” described in Paragraph 2 would be ( ).4.The author assumes that he may be as free as he likes in( ).5.I

未搜索到的试题可在搜索页快速提交,您可在会员中心"提交的题"快速查看答案。 收藏该题
查看答案

相关问题推荐

The actress was very( ) at the insulting question raised by her opponent at theconference.



A.extraterrestrial B.explicit C.indignant D.innovative
s="" work="" would="" the="" author="" be="" most="" likely="" to="" agree?33.Which one of the following stances toward the United States does the passage mention as characterizing Mexican nationalists in the early twentieth century?34.In the context of the passage, which one of the following phrases could best be substituted for the word "romantic"(Paragraph 2, Line 7) without substantially changing the author's meaning?35.The passage implies that Kahlo's attitude toward the economic development of Mexico was().'>

Painter Frida Kahlo (1910―1954) often used harrowing images derived from her Mexican heritage to express suffering caused by a disabling accident and a stormy marriage. Suggesting much personal and emotional content, her works—many of them self-portraits—have been exhaustively psychoanalyzed, while their political content has been less studied. Yet Kahlo was an ardent political activist who in her art sought not only to explore her own roots, but also to champion Mexico’s struggle for an independent political and cultural identity.Kahlo was influenced by Marxism, which appealed to many intellectuals in the 1920s and 1930s, and by Mexican nationalism. Interest in Mexico’s culture and history had revived in the nineteenth century, and by the early 1900s, Mexican indigenista tendencies ranged from a violently anti-Spanish idealization of Aztec Mexico to an emphasis on contemporary Mexican Indians as the key to authentic Mexican culture. Mexican nationalism, reacting against contemporary United States political intervention in labor disputes as well as against past domination by Spain, identified the Aztecs as the last independent rulers of an indigenous political unit. Kahlo’s form of Mexicanidad, a romantic nationalism that focused upon traditional art uniting all indigenistas, revered the Aztecs as a powerful pre-Columbian society that had united a large area of the Middle Americas and that was thought to have been based on communal labor, the Marxist ideal.In her paintings, Kahlo repeatedly employed Aztec symbols, such as skeletons or bleeding hearts that were traditionally related to the emanation of life from death and light from darkness. These images of destruction coupled with creation speak not only to Kahlo’s personal battle for life, but also to the Mexican struggle to emerge as a nation—by implication, to emerge with the political and cultural strength admired in the Aztec civilization. Self-portrait on the Border between Mexico and the United States (1932), for example, shows Kahlo wearing a bone necklace, holding a Mexican flag, and standing between a highly industrialized United States and an agricultural, preindustrial Mexico. On the United States side are mechanistic and modem images such as smokestacks, light bulbs, and robots. In contrast, the organic and ancient symbols on the Mexican side—a blood-drenched Sun, lush vegetation, an Aztec sculpture, a pre-Columbian temple, and a skull alluding to those that lined the walls of Aztec temples—emphasize the interrelation of life, death, the earth, and the cosmos.Kahlo portrayed Aztec images in the folkloric style of traditional Mexican paintings, thereby heightening the clash between modem materialism and indigenous tradition; similarly, she favored planned economic development, but not at the expense of cultural identity. Her use of familiar symbols in a readily accessible style also served her goal of being popularly understood; in turn, Kahlo is viewed by some Mexicans as a mythic figure representative of nationalism itself.

31.Which one of the following best expresses the main point of the passage?32.Which one of the following statements concerning psychoanalytic and political interpretations of Kahlo's work would the author be most likely to agree?33.Which one of the following stances toward the United States does the passage mention as characterizing Mexican nationalists in the early twentieth century?34.In the context of the passage, which one of the following phrases could best be substituted for the word "romantic&

The local residents were unhappy about the curfew in this region and decided to( )it.



A.disgrace B.disguise C.defy D.distress

The contemporary phenomenon of motorcar worship is to be explained not least by the sense of independence and freedom that ownership( ).



A.enrolls B.entraps C.enrages D.entails

While there have been countless attempts at correlating sunspot cycles with such diverse phenomena as the economy, crop yields, and the weather, there has been little evidence to support these correlations. The past few decades have seen a renewed interest in the sun-climate relationship with a comprehensive analysis of many different historical records of solar observation. Late in the seventeenth century, a period known as the Maunder Minimum, there were virtually no sunspots observed, indicating a “quiet” period in the sun’s activity coinciding with the height of a time known as the Little Ice Age, a period of lower temperatures in Europe. Once this evidence had been synthesized, it has become much clearer that there are indeed robust correlations between the Earth’s temperature and sunspots. Perhaps the most important development in the solar-climate link came when satellites were developed to measure, in rough terms, the Total Solar Irradiance (TSI), a factor shown to be directly related to these “activity” cycles. At the maxima of these cycles, there are more sunspots (magnetic phenomena that attenuate local irradiance), but new instruments show that these dark sunspots are more than compensated for by bright areas on the sun called faculae; therefore, the overall irradiance increases in correspondence with higher numbers of sunspots.Unfortunatedly, identifying this evident increase in minimum values as a trend provokes concern, as there have been only two minima ever measured in this way. We must be aware that the warming trend in the surface temperature goes far beyond the last two decades, and that an extension of the solar record is necessary to assess whether solar activity and irradiance is indeed increasing at the minima of the cycles and what the potential effect on the climate may be. The solar record has been extended by the use of the historical sunspot records already mentioned and correlations have been drawn between solar irradiance and the temperature curve since 1610, suggesting a predominant solar influence in the pre-industrial period. But since 1860 only half the observed warming could be attributable to the irradiance increase, indicating that some other influence is becoming more influential in controlling the temperature change: most likely industrial carbon-dioxide.Recent studies of global warming have necessitated a more comprehensive effort to quantify the natural climate variability so that the residual change may be attributed to the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. This attempt at quantification of the many different forces effect on the climate has re-emphasized the complexity of the climate system and the simultaneous interaction of many influences. Solar irradiance may indeed account for some of the temperature increases recorded over the last several decades, but as the atmospheric CO2 rises, due to the exponential increase in emissions from industrial sources, the influence of solar variability on the Earth’s climate will most likely decrease, and its relative contribution will be far surpassed by “greenhouse” gases.

31.The author focuses primarily on ( ) .32.Which of the following statements concerning the comparison between preindustrial and post-industrial climate change, as described in the passage, is accurate?33.According to the passage, extending solar record is important for which of the following reasons?34.According to the passage, sunspot cycles have which of the following characteristics?35.It can be inferred from the passage that the author regards the correlations drawn in recent decades between sunspots and terrestrial phenomena as( ).

A.pointing out the success of a certain line of scientific inquiry into the terrestrial effects of solar activity while qualifying its successes with regard to climate change B.giving a brief overview of some recent scientific developments in solar physics and explaining their possible implications for future research C.discussing the successes in linking terrestrial phenomena with solar activity and indica
联系我们 用户中心
返回顶部