CAT Reading Comprehension Questions & Solutions

A sample of real CAT Reading Comprehension past-year questions, each with a worked solution and the correct answer highlighted. AthenaPrep has 858 Reading Comprehension questions in all — sign up free to practise them timed.

1. Passage

   The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

   Over the course of the twentieth century, humans built, on average, one large dam a day, hulking structures of steel and concrete designed to control flooding, facilitate irrigation, and generate electricity. Dams were also lucrative contracts, large-scale employers, and the physical instantiation of a messianic drive to conquer territories and control nature. Some of the results of that drive were charismatic mega-infrastructure—the Hoover on the Colorado River or the Aswan on the Nile—but most of the tens of thousands of dams that dot the Earth's landscape have drawn little attention. These are the smaller, though not inconsequential, barriers that today impede the flow of water on nearly two-thirds of the world's large waterways. Chances are, what your map calls a “lake” is actually a reservoir, and that thin blue line that emerges from it once flowed very differently.

   Damming a river is always a partisan act. Even when explicit infrastructure goals— irrigation, flood control, electrification—were met, other consequences were significant and often deleterious. Across the world, river control displaced millions of people, threatening livelihoods, foodways, and cultures. In the western United States, dams were often an instrument of colonialism, used to dispossess Indigenous people and subsidize settler agriculture. And as dams slowed the flow of water, inhibited the movement of nutrients, and increased the amount of toxic algae and other parasites, they snuffed out entire river ecologies. Declining fish populations are the most evident effect, but dams also threaten a host of other animals—from birds and reptiles to fungi and plants—with extinction. Every major dam, then, is also a sacrifice zone, a place where lives, livelihoods, and ways of life are eliminated so that new sorts of landscapes can support water-intensive agriculture and cities that sprout downstream of new reservoirs.

   Such sacrifices have been justified as offerings at the temples of modernity. Justified by—and for—whom, though? Over the course of the twentieth century, rarely were the costs and benefits weighed thoughtfully and decided democratically. As Kader Asmal, chair of the landmark 2000 World Commission on Dams, concluded, “There have been precious few, if any, comprehensive, independent analyses as to why dams came about, how dams perform over time, and whether we are getting a fair return from our $2 trillion investment.” A quarter- century later, Asmal’s words ring ever truer. A litany of dams built in the mid- twentieth century are approaching the end of their expected lives, with worrying prospects for their durability. Droughts, magnified and multiplied by the effects of climate change, have forced more and more to run below capacity. If ever there were a time to rethink the mania for dams, it would be now.

   There is some evidence that a combination of opposition, alternative energy sources, and a lack of viable projects has slowed the construction of major dams. But a wave of recent and ongoing construction, from India and China to Ethiopia and Canada, continues to tilt the global balance firmly in favor of water impoundment.

   Q1.CAT 2025

   Which one of the following sets of terms is closest to mapping the key arguments of the passage?

   • Partisan act - Threatened livelihoods - Toxic algae - Quarter century

   • Lucrative contracts - Sacrifice zone - Expected lives - Global balance

   • Mega-infrastructure - Sacrifice zone - Worshipping modernity - Water impoundment

   • Physical instantiation - Partisan act - Decided democratically - Alternative energy

   Show solution

   There is a distinct argumentative arc in the passage. Using examples of well-known and pervasive mega-infrastructure, the passage begins by portraying dams as symbols of ambition and extensive control over nature. It then demonstrates how every significant dam serves as a sacrifice zone, uprooting people, devastating ecosystems, and eradicating lifestyles. These losses have been justified as offerings at the "temples of modernity" or in the name of progress. Lastly, the passage notes that global trends continue to favour water impoundment despite mounting evidence of harm and the aging of existing dams.
   
   Option (c), which maps motivation, consequence, justification, and the current trajectory of dam building, best captures this progression. The other options do not represent this overall argument; instead, they list isolated terms or partial effects.

2. Passage

   The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

   . . . [T]he idea of craftsmanship is not simply nostalgic. . . . Crafts require distinct skills, an allround approach to work that involves the whole product, rather than individual parts, and an attitude that necessitates devotion to the job and a focus on the communal interest. The concept of craft emphasises the human touch and individual judgment.

   Essentially, the crafts concept seems to run against the preponderant ethos of management studies which, as the academics note, have long prioritised efficiency and consistency. . . . Craft skills were portrayed as being primitive and traditionalist.

   The contrast between artisanship and efficiency first came to the fore in the 19th century when British manufacturers suddenly faced competition from across the Atlantic as firms developed the “American system” using standardised parts. . . . the worldwide success of the Singer sewing machine showed the potential of a mass-produced device. This process created its own reaction, first in the form of the Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th century, and then again in the “small is beautiful” movement of the 1970s. A third crafts movement is emerging as people become aware of the environmental impact of conventional industry.

   There are two potential markets for those who practise crafts. The first stems from the existence of consumers who are willing to pay a premium price for goods that are deemed to be of extra quality. . . . The second market lies in those consumers who wish to use their purchases to support local workers, or to reduce their environmental impact by taking goods to craftspeople to be mended, or recycled.

   For workers, the appeal of craftsmanship is that it allows them the autonomy to make creative choices, and thus makes a job far more satisfying. In that sense, it could offer hope for the overall labour market. Let the machines automate dull and repetitive tasks and let workers focus purely on their skills, judgment and imagination. As a current example, the academics cite the “agile” manifesto in the software sector, an industry at the heart of technological change. The pioneers behind the original agile manifesto promised to prioritise “individuals and interactions over processes and tools”. By bringing together experts from different teams, agile working is designed to improve creativity.

   But the broader question is whether crafts can create a lot more jobs than they do today. Demand for crafted products may rise but will it be easy to retrain workers in sectors that might get automated (such as truck drivers) to take advantage? In a world where products and services often have to pass through regulatory hoops, large companies will usually have the advantage.

   History also suggests that the link between crafts and creativity is not automatic. Medieval craft guilds were monopolies which resisted new entrants. They were also highly hierarchical with young men required to spend long periods as apprentices and journeymen before they could set up on their own; by that time the innovative spirit may have been knocked out of them. Craft workers can thrive in the modern era, but only if they don’t get too organised.

   Q2.CAT 2024

   The most recent revival in interest in the crafts is a result of the emergence of all of the following EXCEPT:

   • support for individual creations as opposed to mass-produced objects

   • concerns about the environmental impact of mass production.

   • a niche market for discerning buyers of quality products.

   • a greater interest in buying locally produced goods.

   Show solution

   Option A is the correct answer.
   
   While the passage mentions the premium for high-quality crafted goods and the contrast between mass production and craftsmanship, it does not mention that there is support for "individual creations" as opposed to mass-produced goods. The focus is on quality and sustainability rather than explicitly advocating for individuality in products.

   Option B: This is mentioned. The passage talks about consumers wanting to reduce environmental impact by supporting local workers or recycling goods, which reflects growing concerns over mass production.

   Option C: This is mentioned. The passage describes a market of consumers who pay a premium for high-quality, hand-crafted goods.

   Option D: This is mentioned. The passage highlights a market where consumers buy from local workers to support the community and reduce environmental impact.

3. Passage

   The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

   For early postcolonial literature, the world of the novel was often the nation. Postcolonial novels were usually [concerned with] national questions. Sometimes the whole story of the novel was taken as an allegory of the nation, whether India or Tanzania. This was important for supporting anti-colonial nationalism, but could also be limiting - land-focused and inward-looking.

   My new book “Writing Ocean Worlds” explores another kind of world of the novel: not the village or nation, but the Indian Ocean world. The book describes a set of novels in which the Indian Ocean is at the centre of the story. It focuses on the novelists Amitav Ghosh, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Lindsey Collen and Joseph Conrad [who have] centred the Indian Ocean world in the majority of their novels. . . . Their work reveals a world that is outward-looking - full of movement, border-crossing and south-south interconnection. They are all very different - from colonially inclined (Conrad) to radically anti-capitalist (Collen), but together draw on and shape a wider sense of Indian Ocean space through themes, images, metaphors and language. This has the effect of remapping the world in the reader’s mind, as centred in the interconnected global south. . . .

   The Indian Ocean world is a term used to describe the very long-lasting connections among the coasts of East Africa, the Arab coasts, and South and East Asia. These connections were made possible by the geography of the Indian Ocean. For much of history, travel by sea was much easier than by land, which meant that port cities very far apart were often more easily connected to each other than to much closer inland cities. Historical and archaeological evidence suggests that what we now call globalisation first appeared in the Indian Ocean. This is the interconnected oceanic world referenced and produced by the novels in my book. . . .

   For their part Ghosh, Gurnah, Collen and even Conrad reference a different set of histories and geographies than the ones most commonly found in fiction in English. Those [commonly found ones] are mostly centred in Europe or the US, assume a background of Christianity and whiteness, and mention places like Paris and New York. The novels in [my] book highlight instead a largely Islamic space, feature characters of colour and centralise the ports of Malindi, Mombasa, Aden, Java and Bombay. . . . It is a densely imagined, richly sensory image of a southern cosmopolitan culture which provides for an enlarged sense of place in the world.

   This remapping is particularly powerful for the representation of Africa. In the fiction, sailors and travellers are not all European. . . . African, as well as Indian and Arab characters, are traders, nakhodas (dhow ship captains), runaways, villains, missionaries and activists. This does not mean that Indian Ocean Africa is romanticised. Migration is often a matter of force; travel is portrayed as abandonment rather than adventure, freedoms are kept from women and slavery is rife. What it does mean is that the African part of the Indian Ocean world plays an active role in its long, rich history and therefore in that of the wider world.

   Q3.CAT 2023

   All of the following claims contribute to the “remapping” discussed by the passage,
   EXCEPT:

   • Indian Ocean novels have gone beyond the specifics of national concerns to explore rich regional pasts.

   • the world of early international trade and commerce was not the sole domain of white Europeans.

   • cosmopolitanism originated in the West and travelled to the East through globalisation.

   • the global south, as opposed to the global north, was the first centre of globalisation.

   Show solution

   Option C is the correct answer because it contradicts the idea of "remapping" discussed in the passage. The passage emphasizes that the novels under consideration challenge the common representations found in English fiction, particularly those centered in the West. Option C, suggesting that cosmopolitanism originated in the West and traveled to the East through globalization, aligns with the conventional Western-centric narrative rather than the passage's argument of reshaping perspectives and centralizing the interconnected global south, particularly the Indian Ocean world, as a key space in the reimagined literary landscape.

   Option A aligns with the passage's discussion of the novels focusing on the Indian Ocean world, contributing to the "remapping" beyond national concerns.

   Option B aligns with the passage's emphasis on the interconnected Indian Ocean world, challenging the Eurocentric perspective on trade and commerce.

   Option D supports the passage's claim that historical evidence suggests that globalization first appeared in the Indian Ocean, contributing to the "remapping" of the world's historical and geographical perspectives.

4. Passage

   The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

   Back in the early 2000s, an awesome thing happened in the New X-Men comics. Our mutant heroes had been battling giant robots called Sentinels for years, but suddenly these mechanical overlords spawned a new threat: Nano-Sentinels! Not content to rule Earth with their metal fists, these tiny robots invaded our bodies at the microscopic level. Infected humans were slowly converted into machines, cell by cell.

   Now, a new wave of extremely odd robots is making at least part of the Nano-Sentinels story come true. Using exotic fabrication materials like squishy hydrogels and elastic polymers, researchers are making autonomous devices that are often tiny and that could turn out to be more powerful than an army of Terminators. Some are 1-centimetre blobs that can skate over water. Others are flat sheets that can roll themselves into tubes, or matchstick-sized plastic coils that act as powerful muscles. No, they won’t be invading our bodies and turning us into Sentinels - which I personally find a little disappointing - but some of them could one day swim through our bloodstream to heal us. They could also clean up pollutants in water or fold themselves into different kinds of vehicles for us to drive. . . .

   Unlike a traditional robot, which is made of mechanical parts, these new kinds of robots are made from molecular parts. The principle is the same: both are devices that can move around and do things independently. But a robot made from smart materials might be nothing more than a pink drop of hydrogel. Instead of gears and wires, it’s assembled from two kinds of molecules - some that love water and some that avoid it - which interact to allow the bot to skate on top of a pond.

   Sometimes these materials are used to enhance more conventional robots. One team of researchers, for example, has developed a different kind of hydrogel that becomes sticky when exposed to a low-voltage zap of electricity and then stops being sticky when the electricity is switched off. This putty-like gel can be pasted right onto the feet or wheels of a robot. When the robot wants to climb a sheer wall or scoot across the ceiling, it can activate its sticky feet with a few volts. Once it is back on a flat surface again, the robot turns off the adhesive like a light switch.

   Robots that are wholly or partly made of gloop aren’t the future that I was promised in science fiction. But it’s definitely the future I want. I’m especially keen on the nanometre-scale “soft robots” that could one day swim through our bodies. Metin Sitti, a director at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Germany, worked with colleagues to prototype these tiny, synthetic beasts using various stretchy materials, such as simple rubber, and seeding them with magnetic microparticles. They are assembled into a finished shape by applying magnetic fields. The results look like flowers or geometric shapes made from Tinkertoy ball and stick modelling kits. They’re guided through tubes of fluid using magnets, and can even stop and cling to the sides of a tube.

   Q4.CAT 2021

   Which one of the following statements, if true, would be the most direct extension of the arguments in the passage?

   • Sentinel robots will be used in warfare to cause large-scale destructive mutations amongst civilians.

   • X-Men may be created by injecting people with mutant nano-gels that will respond to the brain’s magnetic field.

   • In the future, robots will be used to search and destroy diseases even in the deepest recesses of the human body.

   • 1-centimetre blobs of gel that have nano-robots in them will be used to send messages.

   Show solution

   A: Sentinel robots are just fiction that is mentioned in the passage to introduce the new wave of development that has taken place. Option A is eliminated.

   B: The author has introduced X-men as an example only. His arguments are not related to the creation of X-men in any way. Option B can be eliminated.

   C: .....but some of them could one day swim through our bloodstream to heal us.

   Throughout the passage, the author is trying to highlight the positives of the new robots. Hence, a direct extension of the argument would be the robots healing us at a microscopic level, as is hinted in the above excerpt. Option C is the answer.

   D: Option D, though not entirely incorrect, is not a direct extension of the arguments presented in the passage. Unlike Option C, D has not been hinted at in the passage. Hence, it can be eliminated too.

5. Passage

   The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

   I’ve been following the economic crisis for more than two years now. I began working on the subject as part of the background to a novel, and soon realized that I had stumbled across the most interesting story I’ve ever found. While I was beginning to work on it, the British bank Northern Rock blew up, and it became clear that, as I wrote at the time, “If our laws are not extended to control the new kinds of super-powerful, super-complex, and potentially super  risky investment vehicles, they will one day cause a financial disaster of global-systemic proportions.” . . . I was both right and too late, because all the groundwork for the crisis had already been done—though the sluggishness of the world’s governments, in not preparing for the great unraveling of autumn 2008, was then and still is stupefying. But this is the first reason why I wrote this book: because what’s happened is extraordinarily interesting. It is an absolutely amazing story, full of human interest and drama, one whose byways of mathematics, economics, and psychology are both central to the story of the last decades and mysteriously unknown to the general public. We have heard a lot about “the two cultures” of science and the arts—we heard a particularly large amount about it in 2009, because it was the fiftieth anniversary of the speech during which C. P. Snow first used the phrase. But I’m not sure the idea of a huge gap between science and the arts is as true as it was half a century ago—it’s certainly true, for instance, that a general reader who wants to pick up an education in the fundamentals of science will find it easier than ever before. It seems to me that there is a much bigger gap between the world of finance and that of the general public and that there is a need to narrow that gap, if the financial industry is not to be a kind of priesthood, administering to its own mysteries and feared and resented by the rest of us. Many bright, literate people have no idea about all sorts of economic basics, of a type that financial insiders take as elementary facts of how the world works. I am an outsider to finance and economics, and my hope is that I can talk across that gulf.

   My need to understand is the same as yours, whoever you are. That’s one of the strangest ironies of this story: after decades in which the ideology of the Western world was personally and economically individualistic, we’ve suddenly been hit by a crisis which shows in the starkest terms that whether we like it or not—and there are large parts of it that you would have to be crazy to like—we’re all in this together. The aftermath of the crisis is going to dominate the economics and politics of our societies for at least a decade to come and perhaps longer.

   Q5.CAT 2020

   Which one of the following best captures the main argument of the last paragraph of
   the passage?

   • The aftermath of the crisis will strengthen the central ideology of individualism in the
     Western world

   • Whoever you are, you would be crazy to think that there is no crisis.

   • In the decades to come, other ideologies will emerge in the aftermath of the crisis.

   • The ideology of individualism must be set aside in order to deal with the crisis.

   Show solution

   In the final paragraph, the author highlights the crisis as an ironical situation: a group of individualistic entities facing an issue with collective impact and thereby, needs to be dealt with "together" or by shifting from the existing self-centred setup {"...That’s one of the strangest ironies of this story: after decades in which the ideology of the Western world was personally and economically individualistic, we’ve suddenly been hit by a crisis which shows in the starkest terms that whether we like it or not—and there are large parts of it that you would have to be crazy to like—we’re all in this together...."}. Option D is the closest choice that captures this element. Option A is contrary to the point presented in the concluding para. Options B and C are either divergent to the point made or merely distorted comments. Hence, Option D is the correct answer. 

6. Passage

   Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow:
   
   Economists have spent most of the 20th century ignoring psychology, positive or otherwise. But today there is a great deal of emphasis on how happiness can shape global economies, or — on a smaller scale — successful business practice. This is driven, in part, by a trend in "measuring" positive emotions, mostly so they can be optimized. Neuroscientists, for example, claim to be able to locate specific emotions, such as happiness or disappointment, in particular areas of the brain. Wearable technologies, such as Spire, offer data-driven advice on how to reduce stress.

   We are no longer just dealing with "happiness" in a philosophical or romantic sense — it has become something that can be monitored and measured, including by our behavior, use of social media and bodily indicators such as pulse rate and facial expressions.

   There is nothing automatically sinister about this trend. But it is disquieting that the businesses and experts driving the quantification of happiness claim to have our best interests at heart, often concealing their own agendas in the process. In the workplace, happy workers are viewed as a "win-win." Work becomes more pleasant, and employees, more productive. But this is now being pursued through the use of performance-evaluating wearable technology, such as Humanyze or Virgin Pulse, both of which monitor physical signs of stress and activity toward the goal of increasing productivity.

   Cities such as Dubai, which has pledged to become the "happiest city in the world," dream up ever-more elaborate and intrusive ways of collecting data on well-being — to the point where there is now talk of using CCTV cameras to monitor facial expressions in public spaces. New ways of detecting emotions are hitting the market all the time: One company, Beyond Verbal, aims to calculate moods conveyed in a phone conversation, potentially without the knowledge of at least one of the participants. And Facebook [has] demonstrated . . . that it could influence our emotions through tweaking our news feeds — opening the door to ever-more targeted manipulation in advertising and influence.

   As the science grows more sophisticated and technologies become more intimate with our thoughts and bodies, a clear trend is emerging. Where happiness indicators were once used as a basis to reform society, challenging the obsession with money that G.D.P. measurement entrenches, they are increasingly used as a basis to transform or discipline individuals.

   Happiness becomes a personal project, that each of us must now work on, like going to the gym. Since the 1970s, depression has come to be viewed as a cognitive or neurological defect in the individual, and never a consequence of circumstances. All of this simply escalates the sense of responsibility each of us feels for our own feelings, and with it, the sense of failure when things go badly. A society that deliberately removed certain sources of misery, such as precarious and exploitative employment, may well be a happier one. But we won't get there by making this single, often fleeting emotion, the over-arching goal.

   Q6.CAT 2018

   From the passage we can infer that the author would like economists to:

   • work closely with neuroscientists to understand human behaviour.

   • incorporate psychological findings into their research cautiously.

   • correlate measurements of happiness with economic indicators.

   • measure the effectiveness of Facebook and social media advertising.

   Show solution

   We can infer that the author adopts a cautionary tone in the passage. He warns that quantification of happiness might be useful in certain contexts but making measuring happiness the primary goal can lead to unwanted consequences. He warns that happiness will become a personal project if we take the metrics too seriously. Therefore, the author is likely to recommend economists to incorporate the research findings cautiously and hence, option B is the right answer. 

7. Passage

   The passage below is accompanied by a set of three questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

   Despite their fierce reputation, Vikings may not have always been the plunderers and pillagers popular culture imagines them to be. In fact, they got their start trading in northern European markets, researchers suggest.

   Combs carved from animal antlers, as well as comb manufacturing waste and raw antler material has turned up at three archaeological sites in Denmark, including a medieval marketplace in the city of Ribe. A team of researchers from Denmark and the U.K. hoped to identify the species of animal to which the antlers once belonged by analyzing collagen proteins in the samples and comparing them across the animal kingdom, Laura Geggel reports for LiveScience. Somewhat surprisingly, molecular analysis of the artifacts revealed that some combs and other material had been carved from reindeer antlers.... Given that reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) don't live in Denmark, the researchers posit that it arrived on Viking ships from Norway. Antler craftsmanship, in the form of decorative combs, was part of Viking culture. Such combs served as symbols of good health, Geggel writes. The fact that the animals shed their antlers also made them easy to collect from the large herds that inhabited Norway.

   Since the artifacts were found in marketplace areas at each site it's more likely that the Norsemen came to trade rather than pillage. Most of the artifacts also date to the 780s, but some are as old as 725. That predates the beginning of Viking raids on Great Britain by about 70 years. (Traditionally, the so-called "Viking Age" began with these raids in 793 and ended with the Norman conquest of Great Britain in l066.) Archaeologists had suspected that the Vikings had experience with long maritime voyages [that] might have preceded their raiding days. Beyond Norway, these combs would have been a popular industry in Scandinavia as well: It's possible that the antler combs represent a larger trade network, where the Norsemen supplied raw material to craftsmen in Denmark and elsewhere.

   Q7.CAT 2017

   The primary purpose of the passage is:

   • to explain the presence of reindeer antler combs in Denmark.

   • to contradict the widely-accepted beginning date for the Viking Age in Britain, and propose an alternate one.

   • to challenge the popular perception of Vikings as raiders by using evidence that suggests their early trade relations with Europe.

   • to argue that besides being violent pillagers, Vikings were also skilled craftsmen and efficient traders.

   Show solution

   The passage revolves around how vikings did not start out as pillagers but as traders. The intention of the author seems to dispel the notion that the Vikings were pillagers. The combs have been used just as an illustration to prove the author's hypothesis. Therefore, option A can be ruled out.
   
   Option B states that the purpose was to change the period of Viking age. However, the passage does not hint any such intention. The author cites that the combs had made their way to Britain before the Viking age to substantiate the fact that Vikings were traders before they became pillagers.
   Therefore, we can rule out option B too.
   
   Option D states that despite being pillagers, Vikings were efficient traders and craftsmen. However, the passage talks about a period prior to which Vikings turned pillagers. Therefore, we can eliminate option D too.
   
   Option C states that the purpose of the passage is to dispel the notion that Vikings were pillagers. This seems the most appropriate option as the passage tries to establish the fact that Vikings started out as traders. Therefore, option C is the right answer.
   
   
   

8. Passage

   The painter is now free to paint anything he chooses. There are scarcely any forbidden subjects, and today everybody is prepared to admit that a painting of some fruit can be as important as a painting of a hero dying. The Impressionists did as much as anybody to win this previously unheard-of freedom for the artist. Yet, by the next generation, painters began to abandon the subject altogether, and began to paint abstract pictures. Today the majority of pictures painted are abstract.

   Is there a connection between these two developments? Has art gone abstract because the artist is embarrassed by his freedom? Is it that, because he is free to paint anything, he doesn’t know what to paint? Apologists for abstract art often talk of it as the art of maximum freedom. But could this be the freedom of the desert island? It would take too long to answer these questions properly. I believe there is a connection. Many things have encouraged the development of abstract art. Among them has been the artists’ wish to avoid the difficulties of finding subjects when all subjects are equally possible.

   I raise the matter now because I want to draw attention to the fact that the painter’s choice of a subject is a far more complicated question than it would at first seem. A subject does not start with what is put in front of the easel or with something which the painter happens to remember. A subject starts with the painter deciding he would like to paint such-and-such because for some reason or other he finds it meaningful. A subject begins when the artist selects something for special mention. (What makes it special or meaningful may seem to the artist to be purely visual - its colours or its form.) When the subject has been selected, the function of the painting itself is to communicate and justify the significance of that selection.

   It is often said today that subject matter is unimportant. But this is only a reaction against the excessively literary and moralistic interpretation of subject matter in the nineteenth century. In truth, the subject is literally the beginning and end of a painting. The painting begins with a selection (I will paint this and not everything else in the world); it is finished when that selection is justified (now you can see all that I saw and felt in this and how it is more than merely itself).

   Thus, for a painting to succeed it is essential that the painter and his public agree about what is significant. The subject may have a personal meaning for the painter or individual spectator; but there must also be the possibility of their agreement on its general meaning. It is at this point that the culture of the society and period in question precedes the artist and his art. Renaissance art would have meant nothing to the Aztecs -and vice versa. If, to some extent, a few intellectuals can appreciate them both today it is because their culture is an historical one; its inspiration is history and therefore it can include within itself, in principle if not in every particular, all known developments to date.

   When a culture is secure and certain of its values, it presents its artists with subjects. The general agreement about what is significant is so well established that the significance of a particular subject accrues and becomes traditional. This is true, for instance, of reeds and water in China, of the nude body in Renaissance, of the animal in Africa. Furthermore, in such cultures the artist is unlikely to be a free agent: he will be employed for the sake of particular subjects, and the problem, as we have just described it, will not occur to him.

   When a culture is in a state of disintegration or transition, the freedom of the artist increases - but the question of subject matter becomes problematic for him: he, himself, has to choose for society. This was at the basis of all the increasing, crises in European art during the nineteenth century. It is too often forgotten how many of the art scandals of that time were provoked by the choice of subject (Gericault, Courbet, Daumier, Degas, Lautrec, Van Gogh, etc.).

   By the end of the nineteenth century there were, roughly speaking, two ways in which the painter could meet this challenge of deciding what to paint and so choosing for society. Either he identified himself with the people and so allowed their lives to dictate his subjects to him, or he had to find his subjects within himself as a painter. By people, I mean everybody except the bourgeoisie. Many painters did of course work for the bourgeoisie according to their copy-book of approved subjects, but all of them, filling the Salon and the Royal Academy year after year, are now forgotten, buried under the hypocrisy of those they served so sincerely.

   Q8.CAT 2004

   In the context of the passage, which of the following statements would NOT be true?

   • Painters decided subjects based on what they remembered from their own lives.

   • Painters of reeds and water in China faced no serious problem of choosing a subject.

   • The choice of subject was a source of scandals in nineteenth century European art.

   • Agreement on the general meaning of a painting is influenced by culture and historical context.

   Show solution

   Refer to the lines of the third paragraph:"A subject does not start with what is put in front of the easel or with something which the painter happens to remember."

9. Passage

   Cells are the ultimate multi-taskers: they can switch on genes and carry out their orders, talk to each other, divide in two, and much more, all at the same time. But they couldn’t do any of these tricks without a power source to generate movement. The inside of a cell bustles with more traffic than Delhi roads, and, like all vehicles, the cell’s moving parts need engines. Physicists and biologists have looked ‘under the hood’ of the cell and laid out the nuts and bolts of molecular engines.

   The ability of such engines to convert chemical energy into motion is the envy of nanotechnology researchers looking for ways to power molecule-sized devices. Medical researchers also want to understand how these engines work. Because these molecules are essential for cell division, scientists hope to shut down the rampant growth of cancer cells by deactivating certain motors. Improving motor-driven transport in nerve cells may also be helpful for treating diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

   We wouldn’t make it far in life without motor proteins. Our muscles wouldn’t contract. We couldn’t grow because the growth process requires cells to duplicate their machinery and pull the copies apart. And our genes would be silent without the services of messenger RNA, which carries genetic instructions over to the cell’s protein-making factories. The movements that make these cellular activities possible occur along a complex network of threadlike fibres, or polymers, along which bundles of molecules travel like trams. The engines that power the cell’s freight are three families of proteins called myosin, kinesin and dynein. For fuel, these proteins burn molecules of ATP, which cells make when they break down the carbohydrates and fats from the foods we eat. The energy from burning ATP causes changes in the proteins’ shape that allow them to heave themselves along the polymer track. The results are impressive: In one second, these molecules can travel between 50 and 100 times their own diameter. If a car with a five-foot-wide engine were as efficient, it would travel 170 to 340 kilometres per hour.

   Ronald Vale, a researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the University of California at San Francisco, and Ronald Milligan of the Scripps Research Institute, have realized a long-awaited goal by reconstructing the process by which myosin and kinesin move, almost down to the atom. The dynein motor, on the other hand, is still poorly understood. Myosin molecules, best known for their role in muscle contraction, form chains that lie between filaments of another protein called actin. Each myosin molecule has a tiny head that pokes out from the chain like oars from a canoe. Just as rowers propel their boat by stroking their oars through the water, the myosin molecules stick their heads into the actin and hoist themselves forward along the filament. While myosin moves along in short strokes, its cousin kinesin walks steadily along a different type of filament called a microtubule. Instead of using a projecting head as a lever, kinesin walks on two ‘legs’. Based on these differences, researchers used to think that myosin and kinesin were virtually unrelated. But newly discovered similarities in the motors’ ATP-processing machinery now suggest that they share a common ancestor — molecule. At this point, scientists can only speculate as to what type of primitive cell-like structure this ancestor occupied as it learned to burn ATP and use the energy to change shape. “We’ll never really know because we can’t dig up the remains of ancient proteins, but that was probably a big evolutionary leap,” says Vale.

   On a slightly larger scale, loner cells like sperm or infectious bacteria are prime movers that resolutely push their way through to other cells. As L. Mahadevan and Paul Matsudaira of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology explain, the engines, in this case, are springs or ratchets that are clusters of molecules rather than single proteins like myosin and kinesin. Researchers don’t yet fully understand these engines’ fueling process or the details of how they move, but the result is a force to be reckoned with. For example, one such engine is a spring-like stalk connecting a single-celled organism called a vorticellid to the leaf fragment it calls home. When exposed to calcium, the spring contracts, yanking the vorticellid down at speeds approaching three inches (eight centimetres) per second.

   Springs like this are coiled bundles of filaments that expand or contract in response to chemical cues. A wave of positively charged calcium ions, for example, neutralizes the negative charges that keep the filaments extended. Some sperm use spring-like engines made of actin filaments to shoot out a barb that penetrates the layers that surround an egg. And certain viruses use a similar apparatus to shoot their DNA into the host’s cell. Ratchets are also useful for moving whole cells, including some other sperm and pathogens. These engines are filaments that simply grow at one end, attracting chemical building blocks from nearby. Because the other end is anchored in place, the growing end pushes against any barrier that gets in its way.

   Both springs and ratchets are made up of small units that each move just slightly, but collectively produce a powerful movement. Ultimately, Mahadevan and Matsudaira hope to better understand just how these particles create an effect that seems to be so much more than the sum of its parts. Might such an understanding provide inspiration for ways to power artificial nano-sized devices in the future? “The short answer is absolutely,” says Mahadevan. “Biology has had a lot more time to evolve enormous richness in design for different organisms. Hopefully, studying these structures will not only improve our understanding of the biological world, it will also enable us to copy them, take apart their components and recreate them for other purpose.”

   Q9.CAT 2002

   Read the four statements below: A, B, C and D. From the options given, select the one which includes statements that are representative of arguments presented in the passage.

   A. Myosin, kinesin and dynein are three types of protein.

   B. Growth processes involve a routine in a cell that duplicates their machinery and pulls the copies apart.

   C. Myosin molecules can generate vibrations in muscles.

   D. Ronald and Mahadevan are researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

   • A and B but not C and D

   • B and C but not a

   • B and D but not A and C

   • A, B and C but not D

   Show solution

   Refer to the 3rd para"The engines that power the cell’s freight are three families of proteins, called myosin, kinesin and dynein." It is given that Actin is a protein in the sentence, "Myosin molecules, best known for their role in muscle contraction, form chains that lie between filaments of another protein called actin". Hence, argument A is true.

   Statement B is given in para 3 in the third line.

   Statement C is not given - we know that Myosin causes contractions but not vibrations.

   Statement D is not true according to the paragraph.

10. Passage

    Each one has his reasons: for one art is a flight; for another, a means of conquering. But one can flee into a hermitage, into madness, into death. One can conquer by arms. Why does it have to be writing, why does one have to manage his escapes and conquests by writing? Because, behind the various aims of authors, there is a deeper and more immediate choice which is common to all of us. We shall try to elucidate this choice, and we shall see whether it is not in the name of this very choice of writing that the engagement of writers must be required.

    Each of our perceptions is accompanied by the consciousness that human reality is a 'revealer', that is, it is through human reality that 'there is' being, or, to put it differently, that man is the means by which things are manifested. It is our presence in the world which multiplies relations. It is we who set up a relationship between this tree and that bit of sky. Thanks to us, that star which has been dead for millennia, that quarter moon, and that dark river are disclosed in the unity of a landscape. It is the speed of our auto and our airplane which organizes the great masses of the earth. With each of our acts, the world reveals to us a new face. But, if we know that we are directors of being, we also know that we are not its producers. If we turn away from this landscape, it will sink back into its dark permanence. At least, it will sink back; there is no one mad enough to think that it is going to be annihilated. It is we who shall be annihilated, and the earth will remain in its lethargy until another consciousness comes along to awaken it. Thus, to our inner certainty of being 'revealers' is added that of being inessential in relation to the thing revealed. One of the chief motives of artistic creation is certainly the need of feeling that we are essential in relationship to the world. If I fix on canvas or in writing a certain aspect of the fields or the sea or a look on someone's face which I have disclosed, I am conscious of having produced them by condensing relationships, by introducing order where there was none, by imposing the unity of mind on the diversity of things. That is, I think myself essential in relation to my creation. But this time it is the created object which escapes me; I cannot reveal and produce at the same time. The creation becomes inessential in relation to the creative activity. First of all, even if it appears to others as definitive, the created object always seems to us in a state of suspension; we can always change this line, that shade, that word. Thus, it never forces itself. A novice painter asked his teacher, 'When should I consider my painting finished?' And the teacher answered, 'When you can look at it in amazement and say to yourself "I'm the one who did that!...

    Which amounts to saying 'never'. For it is virtually impossible considering one's work with someone else's eyes and revealing what has been created. But it is self-evident that we are proportionally less conscious of the thing produced and more conscious of our productive activity. When it is a matter of poetry or carpentry, we work according to traditional nonns, with tools whose usage is codified; it is Heidegger's famous 'they' who are working with our hands. In this case, the result can seem to us sufficiently strange to preserve its objectivity in our eyes. But if we ourselves produce the rules of production, the measures, the criteria, and if our creative drive comes from the very depths of our heart, then we never find anything but ourselves in our work. It is we who have invented the laws by which we judge it. It is our history, our love, our gaiety that we recognize in it. Even if we should regard it without touching it any further, we never receive from it that gaiety or love. We put them into it. The results which we have obtained on canvas or paper never seem to us objective. We are too familiar with the processes of which they are the effects. These processes remain a subjective discovery; they are ourselves, our inspiration, our ruse, and when we seek to perceive our work, we create it again, we repeat mentally the operations which produced it; each of its aspects appears as a result. Thus, in the perception, the object is given as the essential thing and the subject as the inessential.

    The latter seeks essentiality in the creation and obtains it, but then it is the object which becomes the inessential. The dialectic is nowhere more apparent than in the art of writing, for the literary object is a peculiar top which exists only in movement. To make it come into view a concrete act called reading is necessary, and it lasts only as long as this act can last. Beyond that, there are only black marks on paper. Now, the writer can not read what he writes, whereas the shoemaker can put on the shoes he has just made if they are to his size, and the architect can live in the house he has built. In reading, one foresees; one waits. He foresees the end of the sentence, the following sentence, the next page. He waits for them to confirm or disappoint his foresights. The reading is composed of a host of hypotheses, followed by awakenings, of hopes and deceptions, Readers are always ahead of the sentence they are reading in a merely probable future which partly collapses and partly comes together in proportion as they progress, which withdraws from one page to the next and forms the moving horizon of the literary object. Without waiting, without a future, without ignorance, there is no objectivity.

    Q10.CAT 1999

    The author holds that:

    • There is an objective reality and a subjective reality.

    • Nature is the sum total of disparate elements.

    • It is human action that reveals the various facets of nature.

    • Apparently disconnected elements in nature are unified in a fundamental sense.

    Show solution

    The passage states that "Each of our perceptions is accompanied by the consciousness that human reality is a 'revealer', that is, it is through human reality that 'there is' being, or, to put it differently, that man is the means by which things are manifested. It is our presence in the world which multiplies relations."
    Hence, option C is stated in the paragraph.
    

11. Passage

    If Western civilization is in a state of permanent crisis, it is not far-fetched to suggest that there may be something wrong with its education. No civilization, I am sure, has ever devoted more energy and resources to organised education, and if we believe in nothing else, we certainly believe that education is, or should be, the key to everything. In fact, the belief in education is so strong that we treat it as the residual legatee of all our problems. If the nuclear age brings new danger; if the advance of genetics engineering opens the doors of new abuses; if commercialism brings new temptations, the answer must be more and better education. The modern way of life is becoming more complex: this means that everybody must become more highly educated.

    “By 1984,” it was said recently, “it will be desirable that the most ordinary of men is not embarrassed by the use of a logarithm table, the elementary concepts of the calculus, and by the definitions and uses of such words as electron, coulomb, and volt. He should further have become able not only to handle a pen, and ruler but also a magnetic tape, valve, and transistor.

    The improvement of communications between individuals and groups depends on it.” Most of all, it appears, the international situation calls for prodigious educational efforts. The classical statement on this point was delivered by Sir Charles (now Lord Snow in his Rede Lecture some years ago:

    To say that we must educate ourselves or perish, is a little more melodramatic than the facts warrant. To say we have to educate ourselves or watch a steep decline in our lifetime, is about right. According to Lord Snow, the Russians are apparently doing much better than anyone else and will 'have a clear edge', unless and until the Americans and we educate ourselves both sensibly and imaginatively'. Lord Snow, it will be recalled, talked about 'The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution' and expressed his concern that 'the intellectuals life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups . . . At one pole we have the literary intellectuals . . . at the other the scientists'. He deplores the 'gulf of mutual incomprehension' between these two groups and wants it bridged. It is quite clear how he thinks this 'bridging' operation is to be done; the aims of his educational policy would be, first, to get as many 'alpha-plus scientists as the country can throw up'; second, to train 'a much larger stratum of alpha professionals' to do the supporting research, high class design and development; third, to train 'thousands upon thousands' of other scientists and engineers; and finally, to train 'politicians, administrators, and entire community, who know enough science to have a sense of what the scientists are talking about'. If this fourth and last group can at least be educated enough to 'have sense' of what the real people, the scientists and engineers, are talking about, so Lord Snow seems to suggest, the gulf of mutual incomprehension between the 'Two Cultures' may be bridged.

    These ideas on education, which are by no means unrepresentative of our times, leave one with the uncomfortable feeling that ordinary people, including politicians, administrators, and so forth, are really not much use, they have failed to make the grade: but, at least, they should be educated enough to have a sense of what is going on, and to know what the scientists mean when they talk to quote Lord Snow's example about the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It is an uncomfortable feeling, because the scientists never tire of telling us that the fruits of their labours are 'neutral': whether they enrich humanity or destroy it depends on how they are used.

    And who is to decide how they are used? There is nothing in the training of scientists and engineers to enable them to take such decision, or else, what becomes of the neutrality of science? If so much reliance is today being placed in the power of education to enable ordinary people to cope with the problems thrown up by scientific and technological progress, then there must be something more to education than Lord Snow suggests. Can education help us to turn the potentiality into a reality to the benefit of man? To do so, the task of education would be, first and foremost the transmission of ideas of value, of what to do with our lives. There is no doubt also the need to transmit know-how but this must take second place, for it is obviously somewhat foolhardy to put great powers into the hands of people without making sure that they have a reasonable idea of what to do with them. At present, there can be little doubt that the whole of mankind is in mortal danger, not because we are short of scientific and technological know-how, but because we tend to use it destructively, without wisdom. More education can help us only if it produces more wisdom.

    The essence of education, I suggested, is the transmission of values, but values do not help us to pick our way through life unless they have become our own, a part, so to say, of our mental make-up. This means that they are more than mere formulae or dogmatic assertions: that we think and feel with them, that they are the very instruments through which we like and interpret, and experience the world. When we think, we do not just think: we think with ideas. Our mind is not a blank, a tabula rasa. When we begin to think we can do so only because our mind is already filled with all sorts of ideas with which to think. All through our youth and adolescence, before the conscious and critical mind begins to act as a sort of censor and guardian at the threshold, ideas seep into our mind, multitudes of them. These years are, one might say, our Dark Ages during which we are nothing but inheritors; it is only in later years that we can gradually learn to sort out our inheritance. First of all, there is language. Each word is an idea. If the language which seeps into us during our Dark Ages is English, our mind is thereby furnished by a set of ideas which is significantly different from the set represented by Chinese, Russian, German, or even American. Apart from words there are the rules of putting them together: grammar, another bundle of ideas, the study of which has fascinated some modern philosophers to such an extent that they thought they could reduce the whole of philosophy to a study of grammar. All philosophers and others have always paid a great deal of attention to ideas seen as the result of thought and observation; but in modern times all too little attention has been paid to the study of the ideas which form the very instruments by which thought and observation proceed. On the basis of experience and conscious thought small ideas may easily be dislodged, but when it comes to bigger, more universal, or more subtle ideas, it may not be so easy to change them. Indeed, it is often difficult to become aware of them, as they are the instruments and not the result of our thinking just as you can see what is outside you, but cannot easily see that with which you see, the eye itself.

    And even when one has become aware of them it is often impossible to judge them on the basis of ordinary experience. We often notice the existence of more or less fixed ideas in other people's minds — ideas with which they think without being aware of doing so. We then call them prejudices, which is logically quite correct because they have merely seeped into the mind and are in no way the result of judgement. But the word prejudice is generally applied to ideas that are patently erroneous and recognisable as such by anyone except the prejudiced man. Most of the ideas with which we think are not of that kind at all. To some of them, like those incorporated in words and grammar, the notions of truth or error cannot even be applied, others are quite definitely not prejudices but the result of a judgement; others again are tacit assumptions or presuppositions which may be very difficult to recognise. I say, therefore, that we think with or through ideas and that what we call thinking is generally the application of pre-existing ideas to a given situation or set of facts. When we think about, say the political situation.

    we apply to that situation our political ideas, more or less systematically, and attempt to make that situation' ‘intelligible' to ourselves by means of these ideas. Similarly, everywhere else we evaluate the situation in the light of our value-ideas. The way in which we experience and interpret the world obviously depends very much indeed on the kind of ideas that fill our minds. If they are mainly small, weak, superficial, and incoherent, life will appear insipid, uninteresting, petty and chaotic. It is difficult to bear the resultant feeling of emptiness, and the vacuum of our minds may only too easily be filled by some big, fantastic notion-political or otherwise — which suddenly seem to illumine everything and to give meaning and purpose to our existence. We feel that education will help solve each new problem or complexity that arises. It needs no emphasis that herein lies one of the great dangers of our times. When people ask for education they normally mean something more than mere training, something more than mere knowledge of facts, and something more than a mere diversion.

    Maybe they cannot themselves formulate precisely what they are looking for; but I think what they are really looking for is ideas that could make the world, and their own lives, intelligible to them. When a thing is intelligible you have a sense of participation; when a thing is unintelligible you have a sense of estrangement. 'Well, I don't know', you hear people say, as an impotent protest against the unintelligibility of the world as they meet it. If the mind cannot bring to the world a set — or, shall we say, a tool box — of powerful ideas, the world must appear to it as a chaos, a mass of unrelated phenomena, of meaningless events. Such a man is like a person in a strange world and without any signs of civilization, without maps or signposts or indicators of any kind. Nothing has any meaning to him; nothing can hold his vital interest; he has no means of making anything intelligible to himself.

    Q11.CAT 1998

    In the passage, the writer questions

    • the neutrality of science.

    • scientists' stand on the neutrality of science.

    • scientists' stand on the neutrality of their labours.

    • Lord Snow's assertion regarding the potential of intellectuals in society.

    Show solution

    From the passage, we can infer that the author feels that the neutrality of science would be under threat in the future. Hence, he does not question whether it is currently neutral or not. Similarly, we cannot infer that scientists question the neutrality of science. Hence, we can eliminate options A and B. 

    The author does question the scientists stand that their labours are neutral and the fruits depend on the actions of others. The author particularly worries about this given the fact that most people don't even understand the work of the scientists. Hence, the author questions the scientists stand on the neutrality of their labours. Hence, option C is the right answer.

12. Passage

    I want to stress this personal helplessness we are all stricken with in the face of a system that has passed beyond our knowledge and control. To bring it nearer home, I propose that we switch off from the big things like empires and their wars to more familiar little things. Take pins for example! I do not know why it is that I so seldom use a pin when my wife cannot get on without boxes of them at hand; but it is so; and I will therefore take pins as being for some reason specially important to women.

    There was a time when pinmakers would buy the material; shape it; make the head and the point; ornament it; and take it to the market, and sell it and the making required skill in several operations. They not only knew how the thing was done from beginning to end, but could do it all by themselves. But they could not afford to sell you a paper of pins for the farthing. Pins cost so much that a woman's dress allowance was calling pin money.

    By the end of the 18th century Adam Smith boasted that it took 18 men to make a pin, each man doing a little bit of the job and passing the pin on to the next, and none of them being able to make a whole pin or to buy the materials or to sell it when it was made. The most you could say for them was that at least they had some idea of how it was made, though they could not make it. Now as this meant that they were clearly less capable and knowledgeable men than the old pin-makers, you may ask why Adam Smith boasted of it as a triumph of civilisation when its effect had so clearly a degrading effect. The reason was that by setting each man to do just one little bit of the work and nothing but that, over and over again, he became very quick at it. The men, it is said, could turn out nearly 5000 pins a day each; and thus pins became plentiful and cheap. The country was supposed to be richer because it had more pins, though it had turned capable men into mere machines doing their work without intelligence and being fed by the spare food of the capitalist just as an engine is fed with coals and oil. That was why the poet Goldsmith, who was a farsighted economist as well as a poet, complained that 'wealth accumulates, and men decay'.

    Nowadays Adam Smith's 18 men are as extinct as the diplodocus. The 18 flesh-and-blood men have been replaced by machines of steel which spout out pins by the hundred million. Even sticking them into pink papers is done by machinery. The result is that with the exception of a few people who design the machines, nobody knows how to make a pin or how a pin is made: that is to say, the modern worker in pin manufacture need not be one-tenth so intelligent, skilful and accomplished as the old pinmaker; and the only compensation we have for this deterioration is that pins are so cheap that a single pin has no expressible value at all. Even with a big profit stuck on to the cost-price you can buy dozens for a farthing; and pins are so recklessly thrown away and wasted that verses have to be written to persuade children (without success) that it is a sin to steal, if even it’s a pin.

    Many serious thinkers, like John Ruskin and William Morris, have been greatly troubled by this, just as Goldsmith was, and have asked whether we really believe that it is an advance in wealth to lose our skill and degrade our workers for the sake of being able to waste pins by the ton. We shall see later on, when we come to consider the Distribution of Leisure, that the cure for this is not to go back to the old free for higher work than pin-making or the like. But in the meantime the fact remains that the workers are now not able to make anything themselves even in little bits. They are ignorant and helpless, and cannot lift their finger to begin their day's work until it has all been arranged for them by their employer's who themselves do not understand the machines they buy, and simply pay other people to set them going by carrying out the machine maker's directions.

    The same is true for clothes. Earlier the whole work of making clothes, from the shearing of the sheep to the turning out of the finished and washed garment ready to put on, had to be done in the country by the men and women of the household, especially the women; so that to this day an unmarried woman is called a spinster. Nowadays nothing is left of all this but the sheep shearing; and even that, like the milking of cows, is being done by machinery, as the sewing is. Give a woman a sheep today and ask her to produce a woollen dress for you; and not only will she be quite unable to do it, but you are likely to find that she is not even aware of any connection between sheep and clothes. When she gets her clothes, which she does by buying them at the shop, she knows that there is a difference between wool and cotton and silk, between flannel and merino, perhaps even between stockinet and other wefts; but as to how they are made, or what they are made of, or how they came to be in the shop ready for her to buy, she knows hardly anything. And the shop assistant from whom she buys is no wiser. The people engaged in the making of them know even less; for many of them are too poor to have much choice of materials when they buy their own clothes.

    Thus the capitalist system has produced an almost universal ignorance of how things are made and done, whilst at the same time it has caused them to be made and done on a gigantic scale. We have to buy books and encyclopaedias to find out what it is we are doing all day; and as the books are written by people who are not doing it, and who get their information from other books, what they tell us is twenty to fifty years out of date knowledge and almost impractical today. And of course most of us are too tired of our work when we come home to want to read about it; what we need is cinema to take our minds off it and feel our imagination.

    It is a funny place, this word of capitalism, with its astonishing spread of education and enlightenment. There stand the thousands of property owners and the millions of wage workers, none of them able to make anything, none of them knowing what to do until somebody tells them, none of them having the least notion of how it is made that they find people paying them money, and things in the shops to buy with it. And when they travel they are surprised to find that savages and Esquimaux and villagers who have to make everything for themselves are more intelligent and resourceful! The wonder would be if they were anything else. We should die of idiocy through disuse of our mental faculties if we did not fill our heads with romantic nonsense out of illustrated newspapers and novels and plays and films. Such stuff keeps us alive, but it falsifies everything for us so absurdly that it leaves us more or less dangerous lunatics in the real world.

    Excuse my going on like this; but as I am a writer of books and plays myself, I know the folly and peril of it better than you do. And when I see that this moment of our utmost ignorance and helplessness, delusion and folly, has been stumbled on by the blind forces of capitalism as the moment for giving votes to everybody, so that the few wise women are hopelessly overruled by the thousands whose political minds, as far as they can be said to have any political minds at all, have been formed in the cinema, I realise that I had better stop writing plays for a while to discuss political and social realities in this book with those who are intelligent enough to listen to me.

    Q12.CAT 1996

    Which of the following can be a suitable first line to introduce the hypothetical next paragraph at the end of the passage?

    • The distribution of leisure is not a term that can be explained in a few words.

    • If people wear clothes they hardly seem to think about the method of production.

    • Machines are the gods of our age and there seems to be no atheists.

    • None of the above.

    Show solution

    Option B is irrelevant to the passage.

    The author does not mention machines as gods => Option C is wrong.

    The quality of leisure activities differs from person to person. This serves as a suitable first line of the next paragraph as the author discussed about leisure in the passage.

CAT Reading Comprehension previous year questions with solutions — AthenaPrep