In this section, you have short passages. After each passage, you will find some items based on the passage. Read the passage carefully and answer the items based on it. You are required to select your answers based solely on the contents of the passage and the opinion of the author.
Passage:
We live in a curious age. We are offered glimpses of a world civilization slowly emerging, for example, the U.N. special agencies dedicated to health and education. But along with these are sights and sounds that suggest that the whole civilization is rapidly being destroyed. Two official policies clash, and instantly embassies are attacked by howling mobs of students, at once defying law, custom and usage. And that this may not be merely so many hot-headed lads escaping all control, and may itself be part of the policy of the political parties, that is, mob antics as additional propaganda to deceive world opinion, makes the situation even worse. Parties have always been dishonest, but now it seems as if power-mania is ready to destroy those civilities that make international relations possible. There is something even worse. What inspires these students to bum cars and books is not their political enthusiasm but a frenzied delight in destruction, an urge towards violent demolition.
The author calls our age curious because
- Ait is an age of science and scientists are curious by nature
- Bit is witnessing the emergence of a world civilization
- Cit is witnessing incidents that threaten to shake the very foundations of civilization
- Dit is an age of contradictions consisting of constructive and destructive activities
Explanation
The author opens with ‘We live in a curious age’: alongside the constructive promise of a world civilization (UN agencies for health and education), there is rapid destruction (mob attacks on embassies). The ‘curious’ quality is precisely this clash of constructive and destructive tendencies. Neither science alone nor either tendency alone explains the remark. Hence option (d) is correct.