In this section you have TWO short passages. After each passage, you will find some items based on the passage. First, read a passage and answer the items based on it. You are required to select your answers based on the contents of the passage and the opinion of the author only.
Passage-I
What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be, that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting free-will in thinking, as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits, which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them, as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labour, which men take in finding out of truth, nor again, that when it is found, it imposeth upon man’s thoughts, that doth bring lies in favour; but a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself. One of the later school of the Grecians, examineth matter, and is at a stand to think what should be in it, that men should love lies; where neither they make for pleasure as with poets, nor for advantage, as with the merchants; but for the lie’s sake. But I cannot tell; this same truth, is a naked, and open day-light, that doth not show the masks, and mummeries, and triumphs, of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond, or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men’s minds, vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds, of a number of men, poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?
What is the writers’ idea of ‘truth’ in the paragraph?
- ATruth and divinity go hand-in-hand
- BTruth can be told and avoided conveniently
- CTruth is a compulsion sometimes
- DTruth may be a choice of ancient Grecians
Explanation
The question asks for the writer's idea of 'truth'. The passage discusses how people find it difficult to establish beliefs and truths, and have a 'natural though corrupt love of the lie itself'. The phrase 'it imposeth upon man's thoughts' suggests truth can be burdensome or compelling. Option (c) 'Truth is a compulsion sometimes' captures this: truth imposes on thoughts, making it feel like an obligation. Option (a) about divinity is not in the passage, (b) about convenient avoidance misreads Pilate's jest, and (d) about Grecians is too narrow. The writer presents truth as something that can compel or burden. Hence option C is correct. Cross-checked with Oswaal CDS Yearwise Solved Papers, whose explanation states truth 'can be seen as a compulsion or an obligation in certain situations'.