English — Set 21

Context: 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 everyday with a string of unanswerable questions about what makes fire hot or why grass grows. Children whose curiosity survives parental discipline are invited to join our university. With the university, they go on asking their questions and trying to find the answers. In the eyes of a scholar, that is what a university for. some of the questions which the scholars ask seem to the world to be scarcely worth asking, let alone answering. they asked questions too minute and specialised 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 the mountain climber wants to climb a mountain, simply because it is there. Similarly a historian asked by an outsider why he studies history may come out with the argument that he has learnt to respect to report 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 to find to their 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 sake of the consequences as thousands are working now, for example, in search of a cure for cancer. But this is not the primary scholars. For the consequences are usually subordinate to the satisfaction of curiosity.

Context: Piccadilly Circus was full of loneliness. It seethes and echoes with it. To live near it. Looking down on it is a discomforting exercise. You can't feel the pulse of London here, though people expect to. To Londoners it is a maddening obstruction between one place and another, and few voluntarily linger there. The only locals are those who live off the lingerers; the lingerers are primarily sightseers, with a fair sprinkling of people hoping to draw attention to themselves - both typically from the provinces. They have come to see the heart of London and expect to see spectacle, glamour and vice.

Context: Nehru was a many sided personality. He enjoyed reading and writing books as much as he enjoyed fighting political and social evils or residing tyranny. In him, the scientist and the humanist were held in perfect balance. While he kept looking at special problems from a scientific standpoint. He never forgot that we should nourish the total man. As a scientist, he refused to believe in a benevolent power interested in men's affairs. but, as a self proclaimed non-believer, he loved affirming his faith in life and the beauty of nature. Children he adored. Unlike Wordsworth, he did not see him trailing clouds of glory from the recent sojourn in heaven. He saw them as a blossoms of promise and renewal, the only hope for mankind.

Context: In questions given below out of four alternatives, choose the one which can be substituted for the given sentence.

Context: In the following questions four alternatives are given for the idiom italicised and underlined in the sentence. Choose the alternative which best expresses the meaning of idiom.