单选题
Now Custom has not been commonly regarded as a
subject of any great importance. The inner workings of our own brains we feel to
be uniquely worthy of investigation, but custom, we have a way of thinking, is
behavior at its most common place. As a matter of fact, it is the other way
around. Traditional custom, taken the world over, is a mass of detailed behavior
more astonishing than what any one person can ever evolve in individual actions.
Yet that is a rather trivial aspect of the matter. The fact of first-rate
importance is the pre- dominant role that custom plays in experience and in
belief and the very great varieties it may manifest. No man
ever looks at the world with pristine (未受外界影响的)eyes. He sees it edited by a
definite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking. Even in his
philosophical probings he cannot go behind these stereotypes(固定的模式); his very
concepts of the true and the false will still have reference to his particular
traditional customs. John Dewey has said in all seriousness that the part played
by custom in shaping the behavior of the individual as over against any way in
which he can affect traditional custom, is as the proportion of the total
vocabulary of his mother tongue over against those words of his own baby talk
that are taken up into the language of his family. When one seriously studies
social orders that have had the opportunity to develop independently, the
figure(这种比喻) becomes no more than an exact and matter-of-fact observation. The
life history of the individual is first and foremost an adjustment to the
patterns and standards, traditionally handed down in his community. From the
moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and
behavior. By the time he can talk, he is the little creature of his culture, and
by the time he is grown and able to take part in its activities, its habits are
his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his
impossibilities.
单选题
The author thinks the reason why custom has been ignored in the
academic world is that______.
A. custom reveals only the superficial nature of human behavior
B. the study of social orders can replace the study of custom
C. people are still not aware of the important role that custom plays in
forming our world outlook
D. custom has little to do with our Ways of thinking
【正确答案】
C
【答案解析】依据文章第一段：风俗并没有被广泛地认为是具有重要性的一个研究课题。人们有一种想法，认为我们脑子里的内部活动是特别值得研究的，而风俗只是一种很普遍的行为而已 (不值得研究)。人们过去对风俗的认识是微不足道的(rather trivial)，而“最重要的事实是，风俗对人的经历和信仰起着主导性的影响，风俗的内容也包罗万象”(the fact of first -rate importance is the predominant role that custom plays in experience and in belief and the very great varieties it may manifest)。由此可见，因为人们对风俗的重要性认识不足，所以一直未认真地对其加以研究。选择项[C]符合文章内容。
单选题
Which of the following is true according to John Dewey?
A. An individual can exercise very little influence on the cultural
tradition into which he is born.
B. Custom in the direct result of the philosophical probings of a group of
people.
C. An individual is strongly influenced by the cultural tradition even
before he is born.
D. Custom represents the collective wisdom which benefits the
individual.