专八阅读理解精读训练附答案和解析 第9篇:Holmes'Knowledge
Holmes'Knowledge
His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politicshe appeared to know next to nothing. Upon myquoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivestway who he might be what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I foundincidentally that he ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solarsystem.
"You appear to be astonished,"Holmes said, smiling at my expression. "Now that I do know it Ishall do my best to forget it. You see, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a littleempty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose: A fool takes in all thelumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful tohim gets crowded out, or at best jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has difficultyin laying his hand upon it. It is a mistake to think that the little room has elastic walls and candistend to any extent. Depend upon it, there comes a time when for every addition ofknowledge you forget something that you know before. It is of the highest importance,therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."
"But the Solar System!"I protested.
"What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently.
One morning, I picked up a magazine from the table and attempted to while away the time withit, while my companion munched silently at his toast. One of the articles had a pencil mark atthe heading, and I naturally began to run my eye through it.
Its somewhat ambitious title was "The Book of Life,"and it attempted to show how much anobservant man might learn by an accurate and systematic examination of all that came in hisway. It struck me as being a remarkable mixture of shrewdness and of absurdity. Thereasoning was close and intense, but the deduction appeared to me to be far-fetched andexaggerated. The writer claimed by a momentary expression, a twitch of a muscle or a glanceof an eye, to fathom a man' s inmost thought.
Deceit, according to him, was impossibility in the case of one trained to observation andanalysis. His conclusions were as infallible as so many propositions of Euclid. So startlingwould his results appear to the uninitiated that until they learned the processes by which hehad arrived at them they might well consider him as a necromancer.
"From a drop of water,"said the writer, "a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic. So alllife is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a single link of it. Likeall other arts, the science of Deduction and Analysis is one which can be acquired by long andpatient study, nor is life long enough to allow any mortal to attain the highest possibleperfection in it."
This smartly written piece of theory I could not accept until a succession of evidences justifiedit.
【阅读练习题】
1.What is the author' s attitude toward Holmes?
[A]Praising.
[B]Critical.
[C]Ironical.
[D}Distaste.
2.What way did the author take to stick out Holmes'uniqueness?
[A]By deduction.
[B]By explanation.
[C]By contrast.
[D]By analysis.
3.What was the Holmes'idea about knowledge-learning?
[A]Learning what every body learned.
[B]Learning what was useful to you.
[C]Learning whatever you came across.
[D]Learning what was different to you.
4.What did the article mentioned in the passage talk about?
[A]One may master the way of reasoning through observation.
[B]One may become rather critical through observation and analysis.
[C]One may become rather sharp through observation and analysis.
[D]One may become practical through observation and analysis.
【答案详解】
1.A赞扬。作者以无知烘托人物之有知，以他本人的反对批评观点来证明人物的正确。否定及所谓机刺旨在铺垫。正反对比赞扬福之精明强悍，才智超人，洞察力强。
2.C作者采用对比手法。
3.B学习对你有用之物。第二段福之表白，他把头脑比作一个小小的空屋，不能随意选择家具(知识)塞满空问，应选择“有用之才”，免得填满了废物，把有用之才挤出去。
4.C通过观察和分析人会变得很敏锐。最后二段都是讲福所写文章的内容。善于观察和分析的人可以一眼看透人之本质，一点水能知大西洋。这种一叶知秋的本领是通过长期观察、分析研究而得。也就是说，通过观察分析，人可以变得敏感聪慧，因为万物都有联系。
