5) With her eagerness to learn she is (paragraph 4) to study at university than her brother, who thinks he knows everything already .
6) Are you speaking for yourself alone or ( paragraph 6) your friends as well ?
7) I thought he was experienced.It was only after I saw his work that I realized I (paragraph 6) .
Text B
Individuals and Masses
A man or woman makes direct contact with society in two ways: as amember of some familial, professional or religious group, or as a member of acrowd.Groups are capable of being as moral and intelligent as the individualswho form them; a crowd is chaotic, has no purpose of its own and is capable ofanything except intelligent action and realistic thinking.Assembled in a crowd,people use their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice.
Their suggestibility is increased to the point where they cease to have anyjudgement or will of their own .
They become very excitable, they lose allsense of individual or collective responsibility, they are subject to suddenexcesses of rage, enthusiasm and panic .In a word, a man in a crowd behaves asthough he had swallowed a large dose of some powerful intoxicant.He is avictim of what I have called“herdpoisoning”. Like alcohol, herd-poison is anactive, extravagant drug.The crowd-intoxicated individual escapes fromresponsibility, intelligence and morality into a kind of frantic animal mindlessness .
Reading is a private, not a collective activity.The writer speaks only toindividuals, sitting by themselves in a state of normal sobriety .
The oratorspeaks to masses of individuals, already well-primed with herd-poison.They areat his mercy and , if he knows his business, he can do what he likes with them .
Unlike the masses, intellectualshave a taste for rationality and aninterest in facts.Their critical habit of mindmakes them resistant to the kindof propaganda that works so well on the majority.Intellectuals are the kind ofpeople who demand evidence and are shocked by logical inconsistencies andfallacies.They regard over-simplification as a original sin of the mind and haveno use for the slogans, the unqualified assertions and sweeping generalizationswhich are the propagandist s stock-in-trade .
Philosophy teaches us to feel uncertain about the things that seem to us self-evident.Propaganda, on the other hand, teaches us to accept as self-evidentmatters about which it would be reasonable to suspend our judgement or to feeldoubtful.The propagandist must therefore be consistently dogmatic.All hisstatements are made without qualification.There are no greys in his picture ofthe world; everything is either diabolically black or celestially white. Hemust never admit that he might be wrong or that people with a different pointof view might be even partially right.Opponents should not be argued with ;they should be attacked, shouted down, or if they become too much of anuisance, liquidated .
Virtue and intelligence belong to human beings as individuals freelyassociating with other individuals in small groups.So do sins and stupidity.Butthe sub-human mindlessness to which the demagogue makes his appeal, themoral imbecility on which he relies when he goads his victims into action, arecharacteristic not of men and women as individuals, but of men and women inmasses .
Mindlessness and moral idiocy are not characteristically humanattributes; they are symptoms of herd-poisoning.In all the world s higherreligions, salvation and enlightenment are for individuals .
The kingdom ofheaven is within the mind of a person , not within the collective mindlessness ofa crowd .
In an age of accelerating over-population, of accelerating over-organizationand ever more efficient means of mass communication, how can we preserve the integrity and reassert the value of the human individual?This is a question thatcan still be asked and perhaps effectively answered.A generation from now itmay be too late to find an answer and perhaps impossible, in the stiflingcollective climate of that future time, even to ask the question.
Ⅰ.Words and Expressions
intoxicant n.something that bring out strong feelings of wild excitement.
sobriety n.清醒;稳重。
well-primed fully-equipped.
intellectuals n.( pl .) people who develop their powers of reasoning.
propaganda n.宣传。
fallacy n.a false idea or belief.
original sin n.congenital tendency to do the wrong thing.
stock-in-trade n.all the goods a shop-keeper has for sale, i .e.all a person has to offer.
dogmatic a.holding one s beliefs very strongly and expecting others to accept them without question.
diabolical a.very cruel or evil 凶残的。
celestial a.of the sky or heaven 天上的; 天堂的。
liquidate v.to destroy or kill.
demagogue n.煽动者;蛊惑人心的政客。
imbecility n.弱智;愚蠢行为。
idiocy n.imbecility.
attribute n.特性;品性。
stifling a.令人感到窒息的。
Ⅱ.Notes to the Text
1.The title of this essay suggests a contrast between individuals and masses;but what we find in the first paragraph is a contrast between groups andcrowds.It is the same contrast: groups have the same characteristics as individuals, and crowds are masses.The following items, under two heads,are characteristic of individuals or groups and crowds or masses .
individuals or groups:
(1) having doubts about things that seem to be obviously right.
(2) thinking things out logically, on the basis of evidence.
(3) virtue and intelligence.
(4) sin and stupidity.
(5) being unable to decide whether certain things are good or bad.
(6) reading books.
crowds or masses: