Direction: Read the passage and answer the question. There is something to be said for the man who would prefer to be a savage rather than a member of a civilized race. What exactly has civilization…

Direction: Read the passage and answer the question.

There is something to be said for the man who would prefer to be a savage rather than a member of a civilized race. What exactly has civilization done for us? For one thing, it has deprived us of the ability to be “self sufficing men of our hands”. The labourer, nowadays, understands one thing only-perhaps how to punch out biscuits from a slab of pulp without making the circles intersect. It has made us mentally lazy. Actual reading in early times, even in the seventeenth century, demanded real mental exercise on the part of the reader. Modern prose, even the most ephemeral, is generally clear, both in expression and in print. In consequence, reading is now purely receptive-it is not work at all a mild anodyne, or a stimulus to day-dreaming. Newspaper-reading seems to be largely the result of interest in various athletics and betting topics which make no demand on the intellect whatever. There is a wide desire for general knowledge, it is true, but only the results are of interest, not the method by which they are arrived at. Science must be presented, in a tabloid form and this in a ‘scientific’ age! People even prefer less mental effort to absorb. Even education is mainly spoon-feeding. Fifty years ago the student had to puzzle out difficulties by himself, but today sits luxuriously before a crib, two commentaries and a book of lecture notes. He need not use his brains at all.

The word ‘ephemeral’ means