Question

Read the passage and answer the question that follows.

The world dismisses curiosity by calling it idle, or mere idle curiosity, even though curious persons are seldom idle. Parents do their best to extinguish curiosity in their children because it makes life difficult to be faced every day with a string of answerable questions about what makes fire hot or why grass grows. Children whose curiosity survives parental discipline are invited to join our university. Within the university, they go on asking their questions and trying to find the answers. In the eyes of a scholar, that is mainly what a university is for. Some of the questions that scholars ask seem to the world to be scarcely worth asking, let alone answering. They ask questions too minute and specialized for you and me to understand without years of explanation. If the world inquires of one of them why he wants to know the answer to a particular question, he may say, especially if he is a scientist, that the answer will in some obscure way make possible a new machine or weapon or gadget. He talks that way because he knows that the world understands and respects utility. But to you, who are now part of the university, he will say that he wants to know the answer simply because he does not know it, the way a mountain climber wants to climb a mountain simply because it is there. Similarly, a historian, when asked by outsiders why he studies history, may come out with an argument that he has learnt to repeat on such occasions, something about knowledge of the past making it possible to understand the present and mould the future. But if you really want to know why a historian studies the past, the answer is much simpler: something happened, and he would like to know what. All this does not mean that the answers which scholars find to their questions have no consequences. They may have enormous consequences, but these seldom form the reason for asking the question or pursuing the answers. It is true that scholars can be put to work answering questions for the sake of the consequences, as thousands are working now, for example, in search of a cure for cancer. But this is not the primary function of the scholar, for the consequences are usually subordinate to the satisfaction of curiosity.

Q. The writer compares the scientist to

• A. a historian and a mountain climber
• B. a historian
• C. a mountain climber
• D. a scholar

Hint:

The passage draws two comparisons in a row, one right after the other, linked by the word "similarly".

Answer 1

The Correct Option is A

Step 1: Understanding the Question:
We need to find every figure the author uses to describe the scientist's motive for wanting to know an answer.

Step 2: Key Approach:
Scan the passage for direct comparisons, usually signalled by phrases like "the way" or "similarly", right after the scientist is discussed.

Step 3: Detailed Explanation:
The passage says the scientist wants to know the answer "simply because he does not know it, the way a mountain climber wants to climb a mountain simply because it is there." That is the first comparison, to a mountain climber.
The very next sentence begins, "Similarly a historian when asked by outsiders why he studies history...", explicitly using the word "similarly" to extend the same comparison to a historian.
So the passage gives two separate figures for the same idea, the mountain climber and the historian, both of whom act out of pure curiosity rather than for practical results.
Option 2 alone and option 3 alone are each only half of the full comparison, so they are incomplete.
Option 4, "a scholar", is too general; the passage uses "scholar" as the larger category that includes scientists and historians, not as a separate comparison.

Step 4: Final Answer:
The writer compares the scientist to both a mountain climber and a historian.
\[ \boxed{\text{A historian and a mountain climber}} \]