Part ADirections: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by c
Part A
Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. (40 points)
When, in the age of automation, man searches for a worker to do the tedious, unpleasant jobs that are more or less impossible to mechanize, he may very profitably consider the ape.
If we tackled the problem of breeding for brains with as much enthusiasm as we devote to breeding dogs of surrealistic shapes, we could eventually produce assorted models of useful primates, ranging in size from the gorilla down to the baboon, each adapted to a special kind of work. It is not putting too much strain on the imagination to assume that geneticists could produce a super-ape, which is able to understand some scores of words and capable of being trained for such jobs as picking fruit, cleaning up the litter in parks, shining shoes, collecting garbage, doing household chores and even baby-sitting, although I have known some babies I would not care to trust with a valuable ape.
Apes could do many jobs, such as cleaning streets and the more repetitive types of agricultural work, without supervision, though they might need protection from those egregious specimens of Home sapiens who think it amusing to tease or bully anything they consider lower on the evolutionary ladder. For other tasks, such as delivering papers and laboring on the docks, our man-ape would have to work under human overseers; and, incidentally, I would love to see the finale of the twenty-first century version of On the Waterfront in which the honest but hairy hero will drum on his chest after—literally—taking the wicked labor leader apart.
Once a supply of nonhuman workers becomes available, a whole range of low IQ jobs could be thankfully given up by mankind, to its great mental and physical advantage. What is more, one of the problems which has annoyed so many fictional Utopias would be avoided: There would be none of the degradingly subhuman Epsilons of Huxley's Brave New World to act as a permanent reproach to society, for there is a profound moral difference between breeding sub-men and super-apes, though the end products are much the same. The first would introduce a form. of slavery, but the second would be a biological triumph which could benefit both men and animals.
Notes:
surrealistic超现实的
primate灵长类动物
gorilla大猩猩
baboon狒狒
chore杂活
care to do sth. (常用于否定句)(=willing to do or agree to do sth.)愿意做某事
trust A with B把B托付给A
egregious (通常指坏人或坏事)异乎寻常的,突出的
Home sapiens人类
finale n.结局
Epsilons 奴隶人名
assorted各色各样的
Utopia乌托邦,理想主义
According to the text, the ape should be considered for certain jobs
A.only if it is able to understand scores of words.
B.which do not require any intelligence at all.
C.that are not suitable for human hands to tackle.
D.which are boring and cannot be tackled with machines.