Read the passage and answer the question. It is said with truth that the…
2021
Read the passage and answer the question.
It is said with truth that the function of a university is to prepare the young to take their place in human society. It must provide its members with the knowledge and skill necessary to make them efficient citizens. But is the whole duty of man exhausted by the acquisition of knowledge and professional training? Is a university only an institution for higher learning, a factory which churns out clerks and technicians able to run the machinery of the State?
Mere knowledge which gratifies curiosity is different from culture which refines personality. Culture is not remembering a mass of serious details about dates, names, or scattered facts. A well-known institution of this country has for its motto sa vidya ya vimuchyate: knowledge designed for salvation, for the development of the soul, is the best.
Such an idea is not merely an Indian idiosyncrasy. Plato said long ago that the culture of soul is the first and fairest thing that the best of men can ever have. According to Goethe, the object of education is to form taste and not simply to communicate knowledge. A man's culture is judged by the quality of mind which he brings to bear on the facts of life.
Education is not cramming the mind with technical details. The eye of the soul is never blind; its gaze may be turned to the false and the fleeting. Too often the vision is dragged downwards by the leaden weights of pride and prejudice, of passion and desire. The function of the teacher is not to add to these leaden weights but to remove them and liberate the soul so that it may follow its native impulse to soar upwards.
What is meant by "leaden weights"?
Answer: C. Hindering factors, of pride and prejudice, passion and desire, in the liberation of the soul — Concept. A figurative epithet lends an abstract subject a physical property that belongs, literally, to something else. To read one, take the literal property…
- A.
Weights made of lead
- B.
Cold scientific knowledge
- C.
Hindering factors, of pride and prejudice, passion and desire, in the liberation of the soul
- D.
Social and family responsibilities
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: C
Concept. A figurative epithet lends an abstract subject a physical property that belongs, literally, to something else. To read one, take the literal property the adjective names, then let the sentence fix the reference: the noun phrase introduced by "of" after the epithet usually names the very thing the epithet stands for, and the sentence that follows usually names its effect. A gloss is settled by that grammar and by what the writer goes on to do with the phrase, not by the dictionary sense of the adjective on its own.
Applying it here. Lead is proverbially dense, the standard byword for dead weight, so "leaden" carries the literal property of a heaviness that drags downward. The passage then supplies both halves of the grammar:
The naming clause: "the vision is dragged downwards by the leaden weights of pride and prejudice, of passion and desire". The "of" here is appositional, the same "of" as in "the city of Delhi": the weights are not produced by those four states, they are those four states.
The effect clause: "The function of the teacher is not to add to these leaden weights but to remove them and liberate the soul so that it may follow its native impulse to soar upwards". Removing them is what liberates the soul, so what they do while they remain is hold the soul back.
Put the two together: the phrase names pride, prejudice, passion and desire precisely in their role as impediments to the liberation of the soul.
Weighing the other readings. Each rival gloss can be tested against the same two clauses:
"Weights made of lead" takes the metal literally. But the thing being weighed down in the passage is "the eye of the soul" and its gaze, and the writer asks the teacher to remove the weights, which is a moral act, not the lifting of an object.
"Cold scientific knowledge" picks up a real thread of the passage, which does set "mere knowledge which gratifies curiosity" and "cramming the mind with technical details" against culture. That thread is about the poverty of a kind of learning, and it is not what the "of" phrase after the epithet names.
"Social and family responsibilities" names duties owed outward, to community and household. The four items the passage actually lists are conditions inside the person, and the passage nowhere treats a citizen’s duties as something the teacher should strip away, since it opens by praising the making of efficient citizens.
Answer. "Leaden weights" means the hindering factors, pride and prejudice, passion and desire, that stand in the way of the liberation of the soul.