首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
The process of transforming all direct experience into imaginary or into that supreme mode of symbolic expression, language, has
The process of transforming all direct experience into imaginary or into that supreme mode of symbolic expression, language, has
admin
2015-08-29
1.8K+
问题
The process of transforming all direct experience into imaginary or into that supreme mode of symbolic expression, language, has so completely taken possession of the human mind that it is not only a special talent but a dominant, organic need. All our sense impressions leave their traces in our memory not only as signs disposing our practical reaction in the future but also as symbols, images representing our idea of things: and the tendency to manipulate ideas, to combine and abstract, mix and extend them by playing with symbols, is man’s outstanding characteristic. It seems to be what his brain most naturally and spontaneously does. Therefore his primitive mental function is not judging reality, but dreaming his desires.
Dreaming is apparently a basic function of human brains, for it is free and unexhausting like our metabolism, heartbeat, and breath. It is easier to dream than not to dream, as it is easier to breathe than to refrain from breathing .The symbolic character of dreams is fairly well established. Symbol mongering, on this ineffectual, uncritical level, seems to be instinctive, the fulfillment of an elementary need rather than the purposeful exercise of a high and difficult talent.
The special power of man’s mind rests on the evolution of this special activity, not on any transcendently high development of animal intelligence. We are not immeasurably higher than other animals: we are different. We have a biological need and with it a biological gift that they do not share.
Because man has not only the ability but the constant need of conceiving what has happened to him, what surrounds him, what is demanded of him in short, of symbolizing nature, himself, and his hopes and fears he has a constant and crying need of expression. What he cannot express, he cannot conceive: what he cannot conceive is chaos, and fills him with terror.
If we bear in mind this all-important craving for expression we get a new picture of man’s behavior: for from this trait spring his powers and his weaknesses. The process of symbolic transformation that all our experiences undergo is nothing more or less than the process of conception, underlying the human faculties of abstraction and imagination.
When we are faced with a strange or difficult situation, we cannot react directly, as other creatures do, with flight, aggression, or any such simple instinctive pattern. Our whole reaction depends on how we manage to conceive the situation whether we cast it in a definite dramatic form, whether we see it as a disaster, a fulfillment of doom, or a fiat of the Devine Will. In words or dreamlike images, in artistic or religious or even in cynical form, we must construe the events of life. There is great virtue in the figure of speech. "I can make nothing of it," to express a failure to understand something. Thought and memory are processes of making the thought content and memory image: the pattern of our ideas is given by the symbols through which we express them. And in the course of manipulating those symbols we inevitably distort the original experience, as we abstract certain features of it, embroider and reinforce those features with other ideas, until the conception we project on the screen of memory is quite different from anything in our real history.
Conception is a necessary and elementary process: what we do with our conceptions is another story. That is the entire history of human culture—of intelligence and morality, folly and superstition, ritual, language, and the arts—all the phenomena that set man apart from, and above, the rest of animal kingdom. As the religious mind has to make all human history a drama of sins and salvation in order to define its own moral attitudes, so a scientist wrestles with the mere presentation of "the facts" before he can reason about them. The process of envisaging facts, values, hopes, and fears underlies our whole behavior pattern: and this process is reflected in the evolution of an extraordinary phenomenon found always, and only, in human societies the phenomenon of language.
The italicized sentence in Paragraph Two is an example of
选项
A、irony.
B、metaphor.
C、analogy.
D、euphemism.
答案
C
解析
修辞题。由题干定位至第二段斜体部分,即做梦比不做梦更容易,就像呼吸比不呼吸更容易一样。这显然是一个类比,故选[C]。
转载请注明原文地址:https://jikaoti.com/ti/2RYYFFFM
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
HowInterpretersWork?Ⅰ.UnderstandingA.Aboutwordsandexpressions—【1】______wordsmaybeleftout:【1】______—Ifnot
Therearesomanythingsaboutourlivesthatbelongtothecontentofculturethatitisimpossibletocoverthemall.Inthis
AccordingtoSharon,whoisthemostlylikelytofallvictimtohemochromatosis?
Psycholinguisticsinvestigatestheinterrelationoflanguageand______.
Thechangesinlanguagewillcontinueforever,butnooneknowssure【M1】______whodoesthechanging.Onepossibilityi
Thechangesinlanguagewillcontinueforever,butnooneknowssure【M1】______whodoesthechanging.Onepossibilityi
TonyBlairmayinterviewinthe_____withofficialscomingfromforeigncountries.
TheWorldBankfiguresshowsharppriceincreasesinwheat,maize,sugar,and【N1】______overthepastsixmonths,withpricesal
我不敢说生命是什么,我只能说生命像什么。生命像向东流的一江春水,他从最高处发源,冰雪是他的前身。他聚集起许多细流,合成一股有力的洪涛,向下奔注,他曲折的穿过了悬崖峭壁,冲倒了层沙积土,挟卷着滚滚的沙石,快乐勇敢地流走,一路上他享受着他所遭遇的一切
我不敢说生命是什么,我只能说生命像什么。生命像向东流的一江春水,他从最高处发源,冰雪是他的前身。他聚集起许多细流,合成一股有力的洪涛,向下奔注,他曲折的穿过了悬崖峭壁,冲倒了层沙积土,挟卷着滚滚的沙石,快乐勇敢地流走,一路上他享受着他所遭遇的一切
随机试题
商标评审委员会对注册不当商标的撤销裁定为()
Hesleptinthe______ofthetreesonsuchahotday.
依据我国《继承法》的规定,继承从()时开始。
下列哪项检查对患者诊断无任何意义疼痛是困扰晚期肝癌患者的大问题,最新镇痛方式是
某女,40岁。常太息,情志不遂时尤甚,两胁胀满,脉弦,为
下列关于卡托普利不良反应的描述,错误的是
A.多发于青春期或更年期妇女,出血无规律,基础体温测定为单相B.黄体发育良好,但萎缩过程延长C.黄体期孕激素分泌不足,月经周期缩短D.月经中期有少量出血E.排卵正常,雌激素水平较高无排卵性功血()
下列关于ProjectControlling模式的说法中,正确的是()。
网络暴力是行为主体的网络行为对当事人造成实质性伤害的网络失范现象。根据上述定义,下列选项属于网络暴力的是()。
某省在机构改革后,该省财政厅由原来的70人,减少到现在的40人,人员精简了,扯皮的事情减少了。但该厅王厅长仍感到事务纷繁,没有头绪。事情还是那么多,原来2个人干的活现在压到了一个人身上。厅里原来有两个副厅长,王厅长希望能再增加两个副手替自己分担一些工作。因
最新回复
(
0
)