46 - ] Model SAT Tests - Test Forty Six

46- ] Model SAT Tests

Test Forty Six   

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 .

Questions 1 - 13 are based on the following passages .

The following gpassages deal with the importance of money to Americans . The first is taken from a commencement address made by American philosopher George Santayana in 1904 . The second is taken from an essay written by British poet W . H . Auden in 1963 .

Passage 1

            American life , everyone has heard , has extraordinary intensity ; it goes at a great rate . This is not due , I should say , to any particular urgency in the object pursued . Other nations have more pressing motives to bestir themselves than America has : and it is observable that not all the new nations , in either hemisphere , are energetic . This energy can hardly spring either from unusually intolerable conditions which people wish to overcome , nor from unusually important objects which they wish to attain . In springs , I should venture tto say , from the harmony which subsists between the task and the spirit , between the mind’s vitality and the forms which , in America , political and industrial tradition has taken on . It is sometimes said that the ruling passion in America is the love of money . This seems to me a complete mistake . The ruling passion is the love of business , which is something quite different . The lover of money would be jealous of it ;he would spend it carefully ; he would study to get out of it the most he could . But the lover of business , when he is successful , does not think out what further advantages he can get out of his success . His joy is in that business itself and in its further operation , in making it greater and better organized and a mightier engine in the general life . The adventitious personal profit in it is the last thing he thinks of , the last thing he is skillful in bringing about ; and the same zeal and intensity is applied in managing a college ,or a public office , or a naval establishment , as is lavished on private business , for it is nt a motive of personal gain that stimulates to such exertions . It is the absorbing , satisfying character of the activities themselves ; it is the art , the happiness , the greatness of them . So that in beginning life in such a society ,which has developed a native and vital tradition out of its practice , you have good reason to feel that your spirit will be freed , that you will begin to realize a part of what you are living for .

Passage 2  

            Political and technological developments are rapidly obliterating all cultural differences and it is possible that , in a not remote future , it will be impossible to distinguish human beings living on one area of the earth’s surface from those living on any other , but our different pasts have not yet been completely erased and cultural differences are still perceptible . The most striking difference between an American and a European is the difference in their attitudes towards money . Every European knows , as a matter of historical fact , that , in Europe , wealth could only be acquired at the expense of other human beings , either by conquering them or by exploiting their labor in factories . Further , even after the Industrial Revolution began , the number of persons who could rise from poverty to wealth was small ; the vast majority took it for granted that they would not be much richer nor poorer than their fathers . In consequence , no European associates wealth with personal merit or poverty with personal failure .

            To a European , money means power , the freedom to do as he likes , which also means that , consciously or unconsciously , he says : “I want to have as much money as possible myself and others to have as little money as possible .”

            In the United States , wealth was also acquired by stealing , but the real exploited victim was not a human being but poor Mother Earth and her creatures who were ruthlessly plundered . It is true that the Indians were expropriated or exterminated , but this was not , as it had always been in Europe , a matter of the conqueror seizing the wealth of the conquered  , for the Indian had never realized the potential riches of his country . It is also true that ,in the Southern states , men lived on the labor of slaves , but slave labor did not make them fortunes ;what made slavery in the South all the ,ore inexcusable was that , in addition to being morally wicked , it didn’t even pay off handsomely .

            Thanks to the natural resources of the country , every American , until quite recently , could reasonably look forward to making more money than his father , so that , if he made less , the fault must be his ;he was either lazy or inefficient . What can American values , therefore ,is not the possession of money as such , but his power to make it as a proof of his manhood ; once he has proved himself by making it , it has served its function and can be lost or given away . In no society in history have rich men given away so large a part of their fortunes . A poor American feels guilty at being poor , but less guilt than an American rentier* ( * A rentier lives on a fixed income from rents and investments . ) who has inherited wealth but is doing nothing to increase it ; what can the latter do but take to drink and psychoanalysis ?    

1 . In Passage 1 , the underlined word “spring” means

(A) leap (B) arise (C) extend (D) break (E) blossom

2 . The lover of business in the lines beginning ‘But the lover of business, /to ….the greatness of them’ can be described as all of the following EXCEPT

(A) enthusiastic (B) engrossed (C) enterprising (D) industrious (E) mercenary

3 . The author of Passage 1 maintains that Americans find the prospect of improvising business organizations

(A) pleasurable (B) problematic (C) implausible (D) wearing (E) unanticipated

4 . The underlined word “engine” most nearly means

(A) artifice (B) locomotive (C) mechanical contrivance (D) financial windfall (E) driving force

5 . The author of Passage I contends that those who grow up in American society will be influenced by its native traditions to  

(A) fight the intolerable conditions afflicting their country

(B) achieve spiritual harmony through meditation

(C) find self-fulfillment through their business activities

(D) acknowledge the importance of financial accountability

(E) conserve the country’s natural resources .

6 . In Passage 2 , in the first sentence at the beginning of paragraph one the author asserts that technological advances

(A) are likely to promote greater divisions between the rich and the poor

(B) many eventually lead to worldwide cultural uniformity

(C) can enable us to tolerate any cultural differences between us

(D) may make the distinctions between people increasingly easy to discern

(E) destroy the cultural differences they are intended to foster

7 . The underlined word “striking” in Passage 2 means

(A) attractive (B) marked (C) shocking (D) protesting (E) commanding

8 . In taking it for granted that they will not be much richer or poorer than their fathers , Europeans do which of the following ?

(A) They express a preference .

(B) They refute an argument .

(C) They qualify an assertion .

(D) They correct a misapprehension

(E)  They make an assumption .

9. Until quite recently , according to the first sentence at the beginning of paragraph two Passage 2 , to Americans the failure to surpass one’s father in income indicated

(A) a dislike of inherited wealth

(B) a lack of proper application on one’s part

(C) a fear of the burdens inherent in success

(D) the height of fiscal irresponsibility

(E) the effects of a guilty conscience

10 . The author’s description of the likely fate of the American rentier living on inherited wealth is

(A) astonished (B) indulgent (C) sorrowful (D) sympathetic (E) ironic

11 . In Passage 2 the author does all of the following EXCEPT

(A) make a categorical statement

(B) correct a misapprehension

(C) draw a contrast

(D) pose a question

(E) cite an authority

12 . The authors of both passages most likely would agree that Americans engage in business

(A) on wholly altruistic grounds

(B) as a test of their earning capacity

(C) only out of economic necessity

(D) regardless of the example set by their parents

(E) for psychological rather than financial reasons

13 . Compared to the attitude toward Americans expressed in Passage 1 , the attitude toward them expressed in Passage 2 is

(A) more admiring

(B) less disapproving

(C) more cynical

(D) less patronizing

(E) more chauvinistic