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Read the following paragraph and answer the question. All great thinkers live and move on a high plane of thought. It is only there they can breathe freely. It is only in contact with spirits like…

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Read the following paragraph and answer the question.

All great thinkers live and move on a high plane of thought. It is only there they can breathe freely. It is only in contact with spirits like themselves they can live harmoniously and attain that serenity which comes from ideal companionship. I have always thought that the strongest argument in favour of the Baconian theory was, that no man, however indubitable his genius, could have written the plays and sonnets that have come down to us under Shakespeare's name who had not the liberal education of Bacon. How this habit of intercourse with the gods makes one impatient of mere men. The magnificent ideals that have ever haunted the human mind, and given us our highest proofs of a future immortality by reason of the impossibility of their fulfillment here, are splintered into atoms by contact with life's realities. Hence comes our sublime discontent. It may be spiritual or intellectual pride that is engendered on the high plane of intellectual life. But whatever it is, it becomes inevitable. A habitual meditation on the vast problems that underline human life, and are knit into human destinies. It is easy to understand, therefore, why such thinkers fly to the solitude of their own thoughts, or the silent companionship of the immortals; and if they care to present their views in prose or verse to the world, that these views take a sombre and melancholy setting from "the pale cast of thought"in which they were engendered.



Consider the following two statements. One is labelled as Assertion (A) and the other is labelled as Reason (R).

Assertion (A) : The passage presents a rationale behind the great writers' flight to the solitude of their thoughts and silent companionship of immortals.

Reason (R) : They do so because they are melancholic and naturally averse to ordinary humanity and disgust of unregenerated masses.
  1. Both Assertion (A) and Reason (R) are correct and Reason (R) is the correct explanation of Assertion (A)
  2. Both Assertion (A) and Reason (R) are correct but Reason (R) is NOT the correct explanation of Assertion (A)
  3. (A) is correct but (R) is not correct
  4. (A) is not correct but (R) is correct

Answer and explanation

Correct answer: C - (A) is correct but (R) is not correct
A is correct: the passage explains why thinkers fly to solitude (the high plane of thought, impatience with mere men, sublime discontent). R is not correct: the passage never says they are naturally melancholic or disgusted with the masses. Their melancholy comes from their thought, not their nature.

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