This passage is adapted from The American Republic: Constitution, Tendencie

游客2024-01-11  35

问题      This passage is adapted from The American Republic: Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny by O. A. Brownson,  1866.
      The ancients summed up the whole of human wisdom in the maxim "Know Thyself,"
Line  and certainly there is for an individual no more important and no more difficult
      knowledge, than knowledge of himself. Nations are only individuals on a larger scale.
      They have a life, an individuality, a reason, a conscience, and instincts of their own,
(5)   and have the same general laws of development and growth, and, perhaps, of decay, as
      the individual man. Equally important, and no less difficult than for the individual, is it
      for a nation to know itself, understand its own existence, its own powers and faculties,
      rights and duties, constitution, instincts, tendencies, and destiny. A nation has a
      spiritual as well as a material existence, a moral as well as a physical existence, and is
(10)  subjected to internal as well as external conditions of health and virtue, greatness and
      grandeur, which it must in some measure understand and observe, or become lethargic
      and infirm, stunted in its growth, and end in premature decay and death.
           Among nations, no one has more need of full knowledge of itself than the
      United States, and no one has, to this point, had less. It has hardly had a distinct
(35)  consciousness of its own national existence, and has lived the naive life of the
      child, with no severe trial, till the recent civil war, to throw it back on itself
      and compel it to reflect on its own constitution, its own separate existence,
      individuality, tendencies, and end. The defection of the slaveholding States,
      and the fearful struggle that has followed for national unity and integrity, have
(20)  brought the United States at once to a distinct recognition of itself, and forced it
      to pass from thoughtless, careless, heedless, reckless adolescence to grave and
      reflecting manhood. The nation has been suddenly compelled to study itself, and
      from now on must act from reflection, understanding, science, and statesmanship,
      not from instinct, impulse, passion, or caprice, knowing well what it does, and
(25)  why it does it. The change that four years of civil war have wrought in the nation
      is great, and is sure to give it the seriousness, the gravity, and the dignity it has so
      far lacked. [br] Which of the following statements best summarizes the main point of the first paragraph?

选项 A、Understanding one’s own strengths and weaknesses is a difficult yet important task, not only for individuals, but for nations as a whole.
B、The spirituality of individuals should be dictated by the nation’s government.
C、The comparing of a nation to a person is inaccurate and leads only to confusion and misrepresentation.
D、The United States was founded upon a principle of law that originated from the ancient world.
E、A nation’s moral existence is governed by external conditions only.

答案 A

解析
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