Directions : In this section you have two short passages. After each passage, you will find some items based on the passage. Read the passage and answer the items based on it.
Passage – I
As to happiness, I am not so sure. Birds, it is true, die of hunger in large numbers during the winter, if they are not birds of passage. But during the summer they do not foresee this catastrophe, or remember how nearly it befell them in the previous winter. With human beings the matter is otherwise. I doubt whether the percentage of birds that will have died of hunger during the present winter (1946-47) is as great as the percentage of human beings that will have died from this cause in India and central Europe during the same period. But every human death by starvation is preceded by a long period of anxiety, and surrounded by the corresponding anxiety of neighbours. We suffer not only the evils that actually befall us, but all those that our intelligence tells us we have reason to fear. The curbing of impulses to which we are led by forethought averts physical disaster at the cost of worry, and general lack of joy. I do not think that the learned men of my acquaintance, even when they enjoy a secure income, are as happy as the mice that eat the crumbs from their tables while the erudite gentlemen snooze. In this respect, therefore, I am not convinced that there has been any progress at all.
Which one of the following is the central theme of the passage ?
- ALife of the birds and the mice
- BStarvation in India and central Europe
- CProgress of mankind
- DDisasters in 1946-47
Explanation
The passage's concrete subject throughout is the winter of 1946-47: the birds dying 'during the present winter (1946-47)' and the humans dying of starvation 'in India and central Europe during the same period'. The reflections on happiness, worry and progress are framed entirely by these disasters. B covers only one clause of the passage, C appears only in the closing sentence, and A is merely illustrative.