5- ] Model SAT Tests - Test Five

5 - ] Model SAT Tests

 

Test 5

1 . Read each of the passages below , and then answer the questions that follow the passage , the correct response may be stated outright or merely suggested in the passage .

            Thomas Hobbes , who lived during the English Civil War ( 1642 - 1646 ) believed that a world without government would inevitably be a war of every man against every man . His view of human nature was so bleak that he could not imagine people living in peace without an all-powerful government to constrain their actions . John Locke , writing nearly forty years later , had a more optimistic impression of human nature . While he , like Hobbes , envisioned that a world without government would suffer disorder , he described this disorder as merely an “inconvenience” .

1 . The first two sentences of the passage serve primarily to

(A) illustrate the physical damage done to Thomas Hobbes by the English Civil War

(B) demonstrate the need for government to function as a restraining influence

(C)  present the thinking of a political theorist

(D) argue in favor of the world view held by John Locke

(E) emphasize the author’s pacifist beliefs

2 . The author does all of the following EXCEPT

(A) establish a time frame

(B) contrast two differing viewpoints

(C) make an assertion

(D) refute an argument

(E) quote a source

3 . The passage would most likely be of interest primarily to a student of

(A) anthropology  (B) behavioral psychology  (C) economic theory  (D) military history

(E) political philosophy

The questions that follow the next two passages relate to the content of both , and to their relationship . The correct response may be stated outright in the passage or merely suggested .

 The following passages are excerpted from recent works that discuss the survival of the city in our time . Passage I was written by a literary critic and scholar : Passage 2 , by an urban planner and sociologist .

Passage 1

            When musing on cities over time and in our time , from the first ( whenever it was ) to today , we must always remember that cities are artifacts . Forests , jungles , deserts , plains ,oceans - the organic environment is born and dies and is reborn endlessly , beautifully , and completely without moral constraint or ethical control . But cities - despite the metaphors that we apply to them from biology or nature ( “The city dies when industry flees” : “The neighborhoods are the vital cells of the urban organism” ) , despite the sentimental or anthropomorphic devices we use to describe cities - are artificial . Nature has never made a city , and what Nature makes that may seem like a city - an anthill , for instance - only seems like one . It is not a city .

            Human beings made and make cities , and only human beings kill cities , or let them die . And human beings do both - make cities and unmake them - by the same means : by acts of choice . We enjoy deluding ourselves in this as in other things . We enjoy believing that there are forces out there completely determining our fate , natural forces or forces so strong and overwhelming as to be like natural forces - that send cities through organic or biological phases of birth , growth , and decay . We avoid the knowledge that cities are at best works of art , and at worst ungainly artifacts - but never flowers or even weeds - and that we , not some mysterious force or cosmic biological system , control the creation and life of a city .

            We control the creation and life of a city by the choices and agreements we make - the basic choice being , for instance , not to live alone , the basic agreement being to live together .When people choose to settle ,like the stars , not wander like the moon , they create cities as sites and symbols of their choice to stop and their agreement not to separate . Now stasis and proximity , not movement and distance , define human relationships . Mutual defense , control of a river or harbor , shelter from natural forces - all these and other reasons may lead people to aggregate , but once congregated , they then live differently and become different .

            A city is not an extended family . That is a tribe or clan . A city is a collection of disparate families who agree to a fiction . They agree to live as if they were as close in blood or ties of kinship as in fact they are in physical proximity . Choosing life in an artifact , people agree to live in a state of similitude . A city is a place where ties of proximity , activity ,and self-interest assume the role of family ties .It is a considerable pact , a city . If a family is an expression of continuity through biology , a city is an expression of continuity through will and imagination - through mental choices making artifice , not through physical reproduction .  

Passage 2

          It is because of this centrality [ of the city ] that of financial markets have stayed put . It had been widely forecast that they would move out en masse , financial work being among the most quantitative and computerized of functions .A lot of the back-office work has been relocated . The main business , however , is not record keeping and support services ; it is people sizing up other people , and the center is the place for that .

           The problems ,of course , are immense . To be an optimist about the city , one must believe that it will lurch from crisis to crisis but somehow survive . Utopia is nowhere in sight and probably never will be . The city is too mixed up for that . Its strengths and its ills are inextricably bound together . The same concentration that makes the center efficient is the cause of its crowding and the destruction of its sun and its light and its scale . Many of the city’s problems , furthermore , are external in origin - for example , the cruel demographics of peripheral growth , which are difficult enough to forecast ,let alone do anything about .

           What had been taking place is a broad simplification > The city has been losing those fractions for which it is no longer competitive . Manufacturing has moved toward the periphery : the back offices are on the way . The computers are already there . But as the city has been losing functions it has been reasserting its most ancient one : a place where people come together , face-to-face .

           More than ever , the center is the place for news and gossip , for the creation of ideas , for marketing them and swiping them , for hatching deals , for starting parades . This is the stuff of the public life of the city - by no means wholly admirable , often abrasive , noisy , contentious , without apparent purpose .

           But this human congress it the genius of the place ,its reason for being , its great marginal edge . This is the engine , the city’s true export . Whatever makes this congress easier , more spontaneous , more enjoyable is not at all a frill It is the heart of the center of the city .   

4 . The author’s purpose in Passage I is primarily to      

(A) identify the sources of popular discontent with cities

(B) define the city as growing out of a social contract

(C) illustrate the difference between cities and villages

(D) compare cities with blood families

(E) persuade the reader to change his or her behavior

5 . The author cites the underlined  sentence “The neighborhoods are the vital cells of the urban organism” as 

(A) an instance of prevarication

(B) a simple statement of scientific fact

(C) a momentary digression from his central thesis

(D) an example of one type of figurative language  

(E) a paradox with ironic implications

6 . The author’s attitude toward the statements quoted in ( lines 5 - 6 ) is   

(A) respectful  (B) ambivalent  (C) pragmatic  (D) skeptical (E) approving

7 . According to the author of Passage 1 , why is an anthill by definition unlike a city ? 

(A) It can be casually destroyed by human beings .

(B) Its inhabitants outnumber the inhabitants of even the largest city

(C) It is the figurative equivalent of a municipality

(D) It is a work of instinct rather than of imagination .

(E) It exists on a far smaller scale than any city does .

8 . Mutual defense , control of waterways , and shelter from forces of nature ( paragraph three ) are presented primarily as examples of motives for people to    

(A) move away from their enemies

(B) build up their supplies of armament

(C) gather together in settlements

(D) welcome help from their kinfolk

(E) redefine their family relationships

9 . We can infer from paragraph three - lines 2 - 4 that moving tribes differ from city dwellers in that these nomads    

(A) have not chosen to settle in one spot

(B) lack ties of activity and self-interest

(C) are willing to let the cities die

(D) have no need for mutual defense

(E)define their relationships by proximity

10 . By saying a city “is a considerable pact “ in paragraph four” the author stresses primarily   

(A) a city ‘s essential significance

(B) a city’s speculative nature

(C) a city’s inevitable agreement

(D) a city’s moral constraints

(E) a city’s surprising growth

11 . To the author of Passage 1 , to live in a city is  

(A) an unexpected outcome

(B) an opportunity for profit

(C) an act of volition

(D) a pragmatic solution

(E) an inevitable fate

12. In passage 2 , underlying the forecast mentioned in the first paragraph is the assumption that  

(A) the financial markets are similar to the city in their need for quantitative data

(B) computerized tasks such as record keeping can easily be performed at remote sites

(C) computerized functions are not the main activity of financial markets

(D) the urban environment is inappropriate for the proper performance of financial calculations

(E) either the markets would all move or none of them would relocate

13 . The underlined word “scale” in Passage 2  paragraph two means

(A) series of musical tones

(B) measuring instrument  

(C) relative dimensions

(D) thin outer layer

(E) means of ascent

14 . The “congress” referred to in Passage 2 , the last paragraph is

(A) a city council

(B) the supreme legislative body

(C) a gathering of individuals

(D) an enjoyable luxury

(E) an intellectual giant

15 . the author of Passage 2 differs from the author of Passage 1 in that he  

(A) argues in favor of choosing to live alone

(B) disapproves of relocating support services to the outskirts of the city

(C) has no patience with the harshness inherent in public life

(D) believes that in the long run the city as we know it will not survive

(E) is more outspoken about the city’s difficulties

16 . Compared to Passage 1 , Passage 2 is

(A) more lyrical and less pragmatic

(B) more impersonal and less colloquial

(C) more sentimental and less definitive

(D) more practical and less detached

(E) more objective and less philosophical