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  3. A new degree of intellectual power seems cheap at any price. The use of the world is that man may learn its laws. And the human

A new degree of intellectual power seems cheap at any price. The use of the world is that man may learn its laws. And the human

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问题    A new degree of intellectual power seems cheap at any price. The use of the world is that man may learn its laws. And the human race has wisely signified their sense of this, by calling wealth, means — "Man" being the end. Language is always wise.
   Therefore I praise New England because it is the place in the world where there is the freest expenditure for education. We have already taken, at the planting of the colonies, the initial step, which for its importance might have been resisted as the most radical of revolutions, thus deciding at the start the destiny of this country — this, namely, that the poor man, whom the law does not allow to take an ear of corn when starving, nor a pair of shoes for his freezing feet, is allowed to put his hand into the pocket of the rich, and say, "You shall educate me, not as you will, but as I will: not alone in the elements, but, by further provision, in the languages, in sciences, in the useful and in elegant arts. The child shall be taken up by the State, and taught, at the public cost, the rudiments of knowledge, and, at last, the ripest results of art and science."
   Humanly speaking, the school, the college, society, make the difference between men. All the fairy tales of Aladdin or the invisible Gyges or the talisman that opens kings’ palaces or the enchanted halls underground or in the sea, are any fictions to indicate the one miracle of intellectual enlargement. When a man stupid becomes a man inspired, when one and the same man passes out of the torpid into the perceiving state, leaves the din of trifles, the stupor of the senses, to enter into the quasi-omniscience of high thought — up and down, around, all limits disappear. No horizon shuts down. He sees things in their causes, all facts in their connection.
   One of the problems of history is the beginning of civilization. The animals that accompany and serve man make no progress as races. Those called domestic are capable of learning man’s a few tricks of utility or amusement, but they cannot communicate the skill to their race. Each individual must be taught anew. The trained dog cannot train another dog. And man himself in many faces retains almost the unteachableness of the beast. For a thousand years the islands and forests of a great part of the world have been led with savages who made no steps of advance in art or skill beyond the necessity of being fed and warmed. Certain nations with a better brain and usually in more temperate climates have made such progress as to compare with these as these compare with the bear and the wolf.
   Victory over things is the office of man. Of course, until it is accomplished, it is the war and insult of things over him. His continual tendency, his great danger, is to overlook the fact that the world is only his teacher, and the nature of sun and moon, plant and animal only means of arousing his interior activity. Enamored of their beauty, comforted by their convenience, he seeks them as ends, and fast loses sight of the fact that they have worse than no values, that they become noxious, when he becomes their slave.
   This apparatus of wants and faculties, this craving body, whose organs ask all the elements and all the functions of nature for their satisfaction, educate the wondrous creature which they satisfy with light, with heat, with water, with wood, with bread, with wool. The necessities imposed by his most irritable and all-related texture have taught man hunting, pasturage, agriculture, commerce, weaving, joining, masonry, geometry, and astronomy. Here is a world pierced and belted with natural laws, and fenced and planted with civil partitions and properties, which all put new restraints on the young inhabitant. He too must come into this magic circle of relations, and know health and sickness, the fear of injury, the desire of external good, the charm of riches, the charm of power. The household is a school of power. There, within the door, he learns the tragicomedy of human life. Here is the sincere thing, the wondrous composition for which day and night go round. In that routine are the sacred relations, the passions that bind and sever. Here is poverty and all the wisdom its hated necessities can teach, here labor drudges, here affections glow, here the secrets of character are told, the guards of man, the guards of woman, the compensations which, like angels of justice, pay every debt: the opium of custom, whereof all drink and many go mad. Here is Economy, and Glee, and Hospitality, and Ceremony, and Frankness, and Calamity, and Death, and Hope.
What is the passage mainly about?
选项 A、The power of human civilization.
B、The relationship between man and nature.
C、Man learning the laws of society.
D、The education empowerment of man.
答案D
解析 本题考查对全文主旨的理解。通读全文可知，这篇文章主要讲述了人类接受教育的权利。人类通过接受教育来摆脱迟钝。学校和社会让人之间变得不同。人与动物之间的区别在于：人类能够教授他人，而动物不可以。世界只是人类的老师，人类需要认清这一事实，才不会沦为自然的奴隶。而接受教育并不仅局限于教室和学校，家也是一处很好的学习场所。本题选D。
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