Question

Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.

The ignorant man is not the unlearned, but he who does not know himself, and the learned man is stupid when he relies on books, on knowledge and on authority to give him understanding. Understanding comes only through self-knowledge, which is awareness of one's total psychological process. Thus education, in the true sense, is the understanding of oneself, for it is within each one of us that the whole of existence is gathered. What we now call education is a matter of accumulating information and knowledge from books, which anyone can do who can read. Such education offers a subtle form of escape from ourselves and, like all escapes, it inevitably creates increasing misery. Conflict and confusion result from our own wrong relationship with people, things and ideas, and until we understand that relationship and alter it, mere learning, the gathering of facts and the acquiring of various skills, can only lead us to engulfing chaos and destruction. As society is now organized, we send our children to school to learn some technique by which they can eventually earn a livelihood. We want to make the child first and foremost a specialist, hoping thus to give him a secure economic position. But does the cultivation of a technique enable us to understand ourselves? While it is obviously necessary to know how to read and write, and to learn engineering or some other profession, will technique give us the capacity to understand life? Surely, technique is secondary; and if technique is the only thing we are striving for, we are obviously denying what is by far the greater part of life. Life is pain, joy, beauty, ugliness, love, and when we understand it as a whole, at every level, that understanding creates its own technique. But the contrary is not true: technique can never bring about creative understanding. Present-day education is a complete failure because it has overemphasized technique. In overemphasizing technique we destroy man. To cultivate capacity and efficiency without understanding life, without having a comprehensive perception of the ways of thought and desire, will only make us increasingly ruthless, which is to engender wars and jeopardize our physical security. The exclusive cultivation of technique has produced scientists, mathematicians, bridge Iwiracrarspace conquerors; but do they understand the total process of life? Can any specialist experience life as a whole? Only when he ceases to be a specialist. Technological progress does solve certain kinds of problems for some people at one level, but it introduces wider and deeper issues too. To live at one level, disregarding the total process of life, is to invite misery and destruction. The greatest need and most pressing problem for even individual is to have an integrated comprehension of life, which will enable him to meet its ever-increasing complexities. Technical knowledge, however necessary, will in no way resolve our inner, psychological pressures and conflict; and it is because we have acquired technical knowledge without understanding the total process of life that technology has become a means of destroying ourselves. The man who knows how to split the atom but has no love in his heart becomes a monster. We choose a vocation according to our capacities; but will the following of a vocation lead us out of conflict and confusion? Some form of technical training seems necessary; but when we have become engineers, physicians, accountants- then what? Is the practice of a profession the fulfilment of life? Apparently with most of us it is. Our various professions may keep us busy for the greater part of our existence; but the very things that we produce and are so entranced with are causing destruction and misery. Our attitudes and values make of things and occupations the instruments of envy, bitterness and hate.



Which statement would most likely follow the truncated passage above?

• A. Throughout the world, engineers are frantically designing machines which do not need men to operate them.
• B. Another factor in the cultivation of technique is that it gives us a sense of security, not only economic, but psychological as well.
• C. The right kind of education, while encouraging the learning of a technique, should accomplish something which is of far greater importance: it should help man to experience the integrated process of life.
• D. Without understanding ourselves, mere occupation leads to frustration, with its inevitable escapes through all kinds of mischievous activities.

Hint:

Read only the last two sentences of the passage carefully. Continuity questions hinge on the immediate preceding idea, not the passage's overall theme.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is D

A "what comes next" question is decided by the last one or two sentences of the passage, since the new sentence has to continue that exact thought, not just the passage's broad theme.

The passage ends: "...the very things that we produce and are so entranced with are causing destruction and misery. Our attitudes and values make of things and occupations the instruments of envy, bitterness and hate."

1. engineers designing machines which do not need men.: This introduces an entirely new idea, automation, that the passage never raises. It does not connect to the closing lines about occupations and misery.
2. cultivation of technique gives a sense of security.: This would fit better earlier in the passage, near the discussion of technique giving "a secure economic position." It does not follow the closing lines about occupations turning into instruments of envy and hate.
3. the right kind of education should help man experience the integrated process of life.: This is a good summary of the passage as a whole, but it restarts the topic of education rather than continuing the immediate point about occupations and misery that the passage just made.
4. without understanding ourselves, mere occupation leads to frustration, with escapes through mischievous activities.: This directly continues the closing idea. The passage has just said occupations become "instruments of envy, bitterness and hate" because of wrong attitudes; this option explains why, tying it back to the passage's opening point that lack of self-understanding creates "a subtle form of escape from ourselves."

Option 4 is the only one that picks up the exact thread the passage was on when it stopped, so it is the most natural continuation.

Let's summarize:

• Continuity questions are decided by the last sentence, not the whole passage.
• Look for the option that repeats or explains the specific idea just stated, here "occupation" and "escape."

So the correct choice is option 4.