It is exceedingly difficult to make people realize that an
evil is an evil. For instance, we seize a man and deliberately do him a
malicious injury: say, imprison him for years. One would not suppose that it
needed any exceptional clearness of wit to recognize in this an act of
diabolical cruelty. But in England such recognition provokes a share of
surprise, followed by an explanation that the outrage is punishment or justice
or something else that is all right or perhaps by a heated attempt to argue
that we should all be robbed and murdered in our beds if such senseless
villainies as sentences of imprisonment were not committed daily. It is useless
to argue that even if this were true, which it is not, the alternative to
adding crimes of our own to the crimes from which we suffer is not helpless
submission.
Chickenpox is an evil; but if I were to declare that we must
either submit to it or else repress it by seizing everyone who suffers from it
and punishing them by inoculation with
smallpox, I should be laughed at; for though nobody could deny that the result
would be to prevent chickenpox to some extent by making people avoid it much
more carefully and to effect a further apparent prevention by making them
conceal it very anxiously, yet people would have sense enough to see that the
deliberate propagation of smallpox was
creation of evil, and must therefore be ruled out in favour of purely humane and hygienic measures . Yet
in the precisely parallel case of a man breaking into my house and stealing my
diamonds I am expected as matter of courses to steal ten years of his life. If
he tries to defeat that monstrous retaliation by shooting me, my survivors hang
him. The net result suggested by the police statistics is that we inflict
atrocious injuries on the burglars we catch in order to make the rest take
effectual precautions against detection; so that instead of saving our diamonds
from burglary we only greatly decrease our chances of ever getting them back,
and increase our chances of being shot by the robber.
But the thoughtless wickedness with which we scatter
sentences of imprisonment is as nothing compared to the stupid levity with
which we tolerate poverty as if it were either a wholesome tonic for lazy
people or else a virtue to be embraced as St. Francis embraced it. If a man is
indolent. Let him be poor. If he is addicted to the fine arts or to pure
science instead of to trade and finance, let him be poor. If he chooses to
spend his wages on his beer and his family instead of saving it up for his old
age, let him be poor. Let nothing be done for “the undeserving”. Let be poor.
Serve him right! Also somewhat inconsistency- blessed is the poor!
17.
The passage is must probably intended to
A.
Serve as an introduction to a more detailed
discussion of poverty
B.
Censure imprisonment as a punitive measure
C.
Analyze the possible repercussions of social
evils
D.
Continue a prior discussion of strong measures
against social evils
18.
It can be inferred from the passage that the
author would agree with all the following except
A.
Most people don’t realize that by punishing
offenders they are surrendering themselves to the vicious cycle of crime and
punishment.
B.
Sentences of imprisonment have little success in
reducing the crime rate in society.
C.
It would be ridiculous to inoculate people
suffering from chicken pox with small pox.
D.
If criminals were not strongly punished for
their misdeeds there would be no law and other order in society.
19.
The author’s argument about imprisonment would
be most weakened by showing that
A.
Imprisonment is not widely regarded as an of
cruelty
B.
Chicken pox and burglary are not analogous
evils.
C.
Imprisonment does not cause malicious injury
D.
Sentences of imprisonment are given increasingly
rarely
20.
The author apparently believes that people at the time he wrote the passage were
A.
Inclined to consider poverty a social evil
B.
Anxious to take the right steps to ensure an
orderly society
C.
Too ready to judge other people unfairly
D.
Inconsistent in their attitude to poverty
Answer:
17.
A the
structure of the passage is important. The author starts with a general
statement about its being difficult to get people to recognize “an evil”. He
goes on to say “for instance” and then talks about imprisonment. His last
paragraph starts with the word “but “and introduces the idea of poverty as
something we tolerate. He would probably go on to show how poverty is an evil
that we don’t recognize; but ought to do something about.
18.
D The
author apparently believes that there is an alternative to imprisonment and
therefore does not think that law and order would break down in the absence of
strong punishment.
19.
B the author makes his case mainly by
recourse to discussion of a way of preventing chicken pox which he describes as
closely parallel to our response to burglary. If the type of evil that
chickenpox represents is not at all similar (analogous) to the evil that
burglary represents, his case falls flat
20.
D the
last sentence tells us that the word “inconsistent” is appropriate (the poor
are both “undeserving” and “blessed”).
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