单选题
It is a natural marvel. All of the life of the earth dies, all the time, in the same volume as the new life that dazzles us each morning, each spring.
In our way, we human beings conform as best we can to the rest of nature. The obituary pages tell us of the news that we are dying away, while the birth announcements inform us of our replacement , but we get no grasp from this of the enormity of scale. There are 3 billion of us on the earth, and all 3 billion must be dead, on a schedule, within this lifetime. The vast mortality, involving something over 50 million of us each year, takes place in relative secrecy. We can only really know of the deaths in our households, or among our friends. These, detached in our minds from all the rest, we take to be unnatural events, anomalies, outrages. We streak of our own dead in low voices; struck down, we say, as though visible death can only occur for cause, by disease or violence , avoidably. We send off for flowers, grieve, make ceremonies, scatter bones, unaware of the rest of the 3 billion on the same schedule. All of that immense mass of flesh and bone and consciousness will disappear by absorption into the earth, without recognition by the
transient survivors
.
Less than a half century from now, our replacements will have more than doubled the numbers. It is hard to see how we can continue to keep the secret, with such multitudes doing the dying. We will have to give up the notion that death is catastrophe, or detestable, or avoidable, or e-ven strange. We will need to learn more about the cycling of life in the rest of the system, and about our connection to the process. Everything that comes alive seems to be in trade for something that dies, cell for cell. There might be some comfort in the recognition of synchrony, in the information that we all go down together, in the best of company.
单选题
"Transient survivors" in Paragraph 2 refers to______.
单选题
How do we human beings conform to the rest of nature?
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】解析：文章开头讲到自然界中所有的生命都要死去，同时每一刻都又有新生命降生。第二段指出we human beings以自己的方式conform as best we can to the rest of nature。通过后文可知这种方式就是我们也是在死亡的同时还存在着新生。
单选题
Which of the following does the author think makes us unaware of the enormity of the scale of death?
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】解析：这个问题的答案在第二段。A，B，C三个选项的内容在第二段中均有涉及。
单选题
The author advises us to learn about the cycling of life in the rest of the system to______.
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】解析：末段第三句讲到人们要学习更多关于the cycling of life in the rest of the system的知识并弄清our connection to the process。这就是说人们要接受死亡是很正常的事，而并非catastrophe，or detestable，or avoidable，or even strange。