Question

Holmes’ Knowledge

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest（天真的；幼稚的）way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar system.

  “You appear to be astonished, ” Holmes said, smiling at my expression. “Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it. You see, I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose: A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has difficulty in laying his hand upon it. It is a mistake to think that the little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it, there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you know before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”

  “But the Solar System! ” I protested.

  “What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently.

  One morning, I picked up a magazine from the table and attempted to while away the time with it, while my companion munched silently at his toast. One of the articles had a pencil mark at the heading, and I naturally began to run my eye through it.

  Its somewhat ambitious title was “The Book of Life, ” and it attempted to show how much an observant man might learn by an accurate and systematic examination of all that came in his way. It struck me as being a remarkable mixture of shrewdness and of absurdity. The reasoning was close and intense, but the deduction appeared to me to be far-fetched and exaggerated. The writer claimed by a momentary expression, a twitch of a muscle or a glance of an eye, to fathom a man’s inmost thought. Deceit, according to him, was impossibility in the case of one trained to observation and analysis. His conclusions were as infallible as so many propositions of Euclid. So startling would his results appear to the uninitiated that until they learned the processes by which he had arrived at them they might well consider him as a necromancer.

  “From a drop of water, ”said the writer, “a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic. So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a single link of it. Like all other arts, the science of Deduction and Analysis is one which can be acquired by long and patient study, nor is life long enough to allow any mortal to attain the highest possible perfection in it. ”

  This smartly written piece of theory I could not accept until a succession of evidences justified it.

What is the author’s attitude toward Holmes?

A  Praising.    B Critical.         C Ironical.     D Distaste.

What way did the author take to stick out Holmes’ uniqueness?

A  By deduction.  B By explanation.    C By contrast.     D By analysis.

What was the Holmes’ idea about knowledge-learning?

A Learning what every body learned.  B Learning what was useful to you.

C Learning whatever you came across. D Learning what was different to you.

What did the article mentioned in the passage talk about?

A One may master the way of reasoning through observation.

B One may become rather critical through observation and analysis.

C One may become rather sharp through observation and analysis.

D One may become practical through observation and analysis.

Answer 1

【小題1】A

【小題2】C

【小題3】B

【小題4】C

解析:

這是一篇“傳記”，作者采用以反襯正的對(duì)比手法寫出了福爾摩斯之驚人才華。第一句話開(kāi)明宗旨“他的無(wú)知和他的有知一樣卓越驚人”，接著就是種種無(wú)知，達(dá)到突出其有知的成就。兩方面表達(dá)，一是福爾摩斯對(duì)無(wú)知的解釋：不能照單全收；二是作者的反對(duì)見(jiàn)解襯托福之才華超人，能一滴水見(jiàn)大海。

答案詳解

【小題1】作者以無(wú)知烘托人物之有知，以他本人的反對(duì)批評(píng)觀點(diǎn)來(lái)證明人物的正確。否定及所謂機(jī)刺旨在鋪墊。正反對(duì)比贊揚(yáng)福之精明強(qiáng)悍，才智超人，洞察力強(qiáng)。

【小題2】作者采用對(duì)比手法。

【小題3】學(xué)習(xí)對(duì)你有用之物。第二段福之表白，他把頭腦比作一個(gè)小小的空屋，不能隨意選擇家具（知識(shí)）塞滿空間，應(yīng)選擇“有用之才”，免得填滿了廢物，把有用之才擠出去。

【小題4】 通過(guò)觀察和分析人會(huì)變得很敏銳。最后二段都是講福所寫文章的內(nèi)容。善于觀察和分析的人可以一眼看透人之本質(zhì)，一點(diǎn)水能知大西洋。這種一葉知秋的本領(lǐng)是通過(guò)長(zhǎng)期觀察、分析研究而得。也就是說(shuō)，通過(guò)觀察分析，人可以變得敏感聰慧，因?yàn)槿f(wàn)物都有聯(lián)系。