Precis Writing Exercise No. 77/80
Checking Fee For This Exercise: $1
Total Marks: 100Time Allowed: 3:00 Hours
Q.1. Make a precis of the following passage in about one third of its length and suggest a suitable heading. (20)
It was not from want of perceiving the beauty of external nature but from the different way of perceiving it, that the early Greeks did not turn their genius to portray, either in colour or in poetry, the outlines, the hues, and contrasts of all fair valley, and hold cliffs, and golden moons, and rosy lawns which their beautiful country affords in lavish abundance.
Primitive people never so far as I know, enjoy when is called the picturesque in nature, wild forests, beetling cliffs, reaches of Alpine snow are with them great hindrances of human intercourse, and difficulties in the way of agriculture. They are furthermore the homes of the enemies of mankind, of the eagle, the wold, or the tiger, and are most dangerous in times of earthquake or tempest. Hence the grand and striking features of nature are at first looked upon with fear and dislike.
I do not suppose that Greeks different in the respect form other people, except that the frequent occurrence of mountains and forests made agriculture peculiarly difficult and intercourse scanty, thus increasing their dislike for the apparently reckless waste in nature. We have even in Homer a similar feeling as regards the sea, -- the sea that proved the source of all their wealth and the condition fo most of their greatness. Before they had learned all this, they called it "the unvintagable sea" and looked upon its shore as merely so much waste land. We can, therefore, easily understand, how in the first beginning of Greek art, the representation of wild landscape would find no place, whereas, fruitful fields did not suggest themselves as more than the ordinary background. Art is those days was struggling with material nature to which it felt a certain antagonism.
There was nothing in the social circumstances of the Greeks to produce any revolution in this attitude during their greatest days. The Greek republics were small towns where the pressure of the city life was not felt. But as soon as the days of the Greeks republics were over, the men began to congregate for imperial purposes into Antioch, or Alexandria, or lastly into Rome, than we seek the effect of noise and dust and smoke and turmoil breaking out into the natural longing for rural rest and retirement so that from Alexander's day -- We find all kinds of authors -- epic poets, lyricist, novelists and preachers -- agreeing in the precise of nature, its rich colours, and its varied sounds. (Mohaffy: Rambles in Greece)
Q.2. Make a precis of the the given passage, also give a suitable heading. (20)
'The official name of our species is homo sapiens; but there are many anthropologists who prefer to think of man as homo Fabcr-thc smith, the maker of tools. It would be possible, I think, to reconcile these two definitions in a third. If man is a knower and an efficient doer, it is only because he is also a talker. In order to be Faber and Sapiens, Homo must first be loquax, the loquacious one. Without language we should merely be hairless chimpanzees. Indeed we should be some thing much worse. Possessed of a high IQ but no language, we should be like the Yahoos of Gulliver's Travels. Creatures too clever to be guided by instinct, too self-centered to live in a state of animal grace, and therefore condemned forever, frustrated and malignant, between contented ape-hood and aspiring humanity. It was language that made possible the accumulation of knowledge and the broadcasting of information. It was language that permitted the expression of religious insight, the formulation of ethical ideals, the codification of laws. It was language, in a word, that turned us into human beings and gave birth to civilization.
Q.3. Make a precis of the given passage and give a suitable heading. (20)
If then a practical end must be assigned to a University course, I say it is that of training good members of a society. Its art is the art of social life, and its end is fitness for the world. It neither confines its views to particular professions on the one hand, nor creates heroes or inspires genius on the other. Works indeed of genius fall under not art; heroic minds come under no rule: a University is not a birthplace of poets or of immortal authors, of founders of schools, leaders of colonies, or conquerors of nations. It does not promise a generation of Aristotle or Newtons of Napoleons or Washingtons of Raphaels or Shakespeares through such miracles of nature it has before now contained within its precincts. Nor is it content on the other hand with forming the critic or the experimentalist, the economist or the engineer, trough such too it includes within its scope. But a University training is the great ordinary means to a great ordinary end; it aims at raising the intellectual tone of society, at cultivating the public mind, at purifying the national taste, at supplying true principles to poplar aspirations. It is the education which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them, it teaches him to select things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of though, to detect what is sophistical and to discard what is irrelevant. It prepares him to fill any post with credit, and to master any subject with facility. (John H. Nswman)
Q.4. Make a precis of the given passage and suggest a suitable heading. (20)
We're dealing with a very dramatic and very fundamental paradigm shift here, You may try to lubricate your social interactions with personality techniques and skills, but in the process, you may truncate the vital character base. You can't have the fruits without the roots. It's the principle of sequencing: Private victory precedes Public Victory. Self-mastery and self-discipline are the foundation of good relationship with others. Some people say that you have to like yourself before you can like others. I think that idea has merit but if you don't know yourself, if you don't control yourself, if you don't have mastery over yourself, it's very hard to like yourself, except in some short-term, psych-up, superficial way. Real self-respect comes form dominion over self from true independence. Independence is an achievement. Inter dependence is a choice only independent people can make. Unless we are willing to achieve real independence, it's foolish to try to develop human relations skills. We might try. We might even have some degree of success when the sun is shinning. But when the difficult times come - and they will - We won't have the foundation to keep things together. The most important ingredient we put into any relationship is not what we say or what we do, but what we are. And if our words and our actions come form superficial human relations techniques (the Personality Ethic) rather than from our own inner core (the Character Ethic), others will sense that duplicity. We simply won't be able to create and sustain the foundation necessary for effective interdependence. The techniques and skill that really make a difference in human interaction are the ones that almost naturally flow from a truly independent character. So the place to begin building any relationship is inside ourselves, inside our Circle of Influence, our own character. As we become independent - Proactive, centered in correct principles, value drive and able to organize and execute around the priorities in our life with integrity - we then can choose to become interdependent - capable of building rich, enduring, highly productive relationships with other people.
Q.5. Make a precis of the given passage and suggest a suitable heading. (20)
Basically, psychoses and neuroses represent man's inability to maintain a balanced or equated polarity in conducting his life. The ego becomes exclusively or decidedly one sided. In psychoses there is a complete collapse of the ego back into the inner recesses of the personal and collective unconsciouses. When he is repressed toward fulfilling some life goal and where he is further unable to sublimate himself toward another goal, man regresses into goal structures not actually acceptable to himself or to the society. Strong emotional sickness of the psychotic type is like having the shadow run wild. The entire psyche regresses to archaic, animal forms of behaviors. In less severe forms of emotional sickness there may be an accentuated and overpowering use of one of the four mental functions at the expense of the other three. Either taking, feeling, intuiting or seeing may assume such a superior role as to render the other three inoperative. The persona may become so dominant as to create a totally one-sided ego, as in some forms of neurotic behavior. All in all, whatever the type of severity of the emotional disorder, it can be taken as a failure of the psyche to maintain a proper balance between the polarities of life. Essentially, psychoses and neuroses are an alienation of the self from its true goal of self actualization. In this sense the culture is of no consequence. Emotional disorder is not a question being out of tune with one's culture so much as it is of being out of tune with one's self. Consequently, neurosis is more than bizarre behavior, especially as it may be interpreted by contemporaries in the culture. This interpretation avoids the sociological question of what is a mental disorder, since form of behavior which is acceptable on one culture may be considered neurotic in other culture. To Jung, the deviation from cultural norms is not the point. The inability to balance out personal polarities is.
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