Day 31

Passage 31

The Development of Humanism

①The term humanism is, most often, used to describe the predominant social philosophy and intellectual and literary currents of the period from 1400 to 1650. The leading intellectual trait of the era was the revival of Greek and Roman studies, basing every branch of learning on the literature and culture of classical antiquity. Apart from this, individualism, a trend that had been suppressed by the rise of a caste system in the later Roman Empire, by the Church as well as by feudalism in the Middle Ages was also redeveloped by Greece and Rome to a remarkable degree. The Church asserted that rampant individualism was identical with arrogance, rebellion, and sin. Medieval Christianity restricted individual expression, fostered selfabnegation and self-annihilation, and demanded implicit faith and unquestioning obedience. Furthermore, the Church officially ignored man and nature.

② Historians pretty much agreed on the fundamental point that the humanist mentality stood at a point midway between medieval supernaturalism and the modern scientific and critical attitude. The man of the Renaissance lived, as it were, between two worlds. The world of the medieval Christian matrix, in which the significance of every phenomenon was ultimately determined through uniform points of view, no longer existed for him. On the other hand, he had not yet found the stability and security of a system of scientific concepts and social principles for his life. In other words, Renaissance man may indeed have found himself suspended between faith and reason.

③ As the grip of medieval supernaturalism began to diminish, secular and human interests became more prominent. Individual experience in the here and now became more interesting than the shadowy afterlife. Reliance upon faith and God weakened. Indeed, as the age of Renaissance humanism wore on, the distinction between this world (the City of Man) and the next (the City of God) tended to disappear. Human experience, man himself, tended to become the practical measure of all things. The ideal life was no longer a monastic escape from society, but a full participation in it, with rich and varied human relationships.

④ As the dominating element in the finest classical culture was aesthetic rather than supernatural or scientific, in the later Middle Ages, therefore, urban intellectuals were well on the road to the recovery of an aesthetic and secular view of life, even before the full tide of the classical revival was felt. It was only natural that pagan literature, with its emotional and intellectual affinity to the new world view, should accelerate the existing drifttoward secularism and stimulate the cult of humanity, the worship of beauty, and especially the aristocratic attitude.

⑤Almost everywhere, humanism began as a rather pious, timid, and conservative drift away from medieval Christianity and ended in bold independence of medieval tradition. The intellectuals of antiquity, in contrast to the Christians, were relatively unconcerned about the supernatural world and the eternal destiny of the soul. They were primarily interested in a happy, adequate, and efficient life here on earth. Humanism was incited by and in turn revived this pagan scale of virtues. As a result, the humanist movement started in Italy, where the late medieval Italian writers Dante, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Francesco Petrarch contributed greatly to the discovery and preservation of classical works. Believing that a classical training alone could form a perfect man, the Humanists so called themselves in opposition to the Scholastics, and adopted the term humaniora(the humanities)as signifying the scholarship of the ancients. The collection and translation of classical manuscripts became widespread, especially among the higher clergy and nobility. The invention of printing with movable type, around the mid15th century, gave a further impetus to humanism through the dissemination of editions of the classics. Although in Italy humanism developed principally in the fields of literature and art, in central Europe, where it was introduced chiefly by the German scholars Johann Reuchlin and Melanchthon, the movement extended into the fields of theology and education, and was a major underlying cause of the Reformation.

——2012年11月3日北美考试机经

Directions: An introductory sentence for a brief summary of the passage is provided below. Complete the summary by selecting the THREE answer choices that express the most important ideas in the passage. Some sentences do not belong in the summary because they express ideas that are not presented in the passage or are minor ideas in the passage.

The author has discussed the factors that contribute to the development of Humanism.

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Answer Choices

1. The Christian church suppressed men and individual expression for a very long time.

2. People in the Renaissance period began to lose faith in medieval Christianity, yet had not fully adopted modern scientific concepts.

3. The dominating element in the classical culture was aesthetic rather than supernatural or scientific.

4. People became interested in living a happy life here on earth rather than in obeying the selfannihilation attitude of living demanded by Christianity.

5. Many writers and scholars revived their interest in classical works and contributed to the spreading of ancient antiquity.

6. Humanism was developed in various areas, including literature, art, theology and education.

核心词汇：

词汇练习：

阅读下列句子，用所给单词（或词组）的正确形式填空：

predominant destiny antiquity suppress current afterlife bold diminish prominent matrix accelerate signifying impetus theology suspend aesthetic secular affinity obedience implicit preservation

1. The archaeological evidence clearly indicates, though, that Teotihuacán was the center that did arise as the____ force in the area by the first century A.D.(TPO-8:The Rise of Teotihuacán)

2. Plants with large, buoyant seeds—like coconuts—drift on ocean____ and are washed up on the shores.(TPO-9:The Arrival of Plant Life of Hawaii)

3. Although the remarkable____ of Australia's rock art is now established, the sequences and meanings of its images have been widely debated.(TPO-23:The Rock Art of Australia Aborigines)

4. If the theory was correct, breathing air with extra carbon dioxide should have triggered yawning, while breathing pure oxygen should have____ yawning.(TPO-18:The Mystery of Yawning)

5. Many older theories____ deprecated the navigational abilities and overall cultural creativity of the Pacific islanders.(TPO-5:The Origin of the Pacific Island People)

6. The factory clock became the symbol of the new work rules. One mill worker who finally quitted complained revealingly about “____ to the ding-dong of the bell—just as though we are so many living machines.”(OG:Artisans and Industrialization)

7. At one time it was thought that these____ grains might be pristine nebular dust, the sort of stuff from which chondrules and inclusions were made.(TPO-22:The Allende Meteorite)

8. Aeroponics, a technique in which plants are____ and the roots misted with a nutrient solution,is another method for growing plants without soil.(TPO-5:Minerals and Plants)

9. Beyond that, the triumph of recorded sound has overshadowed the rich diversity of technological and____ experiments with the visual image that were going forward simultaneously in the 1920s.(TPO-12:Transition to Sound in Film)

10. It used to be believed that before 3000 B.C.E. the political and economic life of the cities was centered on their temples, but it now seems probable that the cities had____ rulers from earliesttimes.(TPO-26:Sumer and the First Cities of the Ancient Near East)

11. Their streamlined bodies, the absence of hind legs, and the presence of a fluke and blowhole cannot disguise their____ with land-dwelling mammals. (OG: The Origins of Cetaceans)

12. Desertification is accomplished primarily through the loss of stabilizing natural vegetation and the subsequent____ erosion of the soil by wind and water. (OG: Desert Formation)

13. The gradual drying of the soil caused by its____ ability to absorb water results in the further loss of vegetation, so that a cycle of progressive surface deterioration is established.(OG:Desert Formation)

14. Another____ feature of Mars's surface is cratering.(TPO-25:The surface of Mars)

15. Many are made to be put in the tombs of the elite in order to serve the tomb owners in the____ .(TPO-11:Ancient Egyptian Sculpture)

16. Mendeleyev was____ than Meyer and even assumed that if a measured atomic mass put an element in the wrong place in the table, the atomic mass was wrong. (TPO-16:Development of the Periodic Table)

17. Because the medium was so prolific, in the sense that it was possible to produce a multitude of images very cheaply, it was soon treated as the poor relation of fine art, rather than its____ successor.(TPO-22:The Birth of Photography)

18. Attacks by scavengers and bacteria, chemical decay, and destruction by erosion and other geologic agencies make the odds against____ very high.(TPO-20:Fossil Preservation)

19. Intense contraction of facial muscles, such as those used in____ fear, heightens arousal.(OG:The Expression of Emotions)

20. Because of the barrier of ice to the east, the Pacific Ocean to the west, and populated areas to the north, there may have been a greater____ for people to move in a southerly direction.(TPO-9:Colonizing the Americas via the Northwest Coast)

21. Texts dealing with economic matters predominated, as they always had done; but at this point works of____ ,literature,history,and law also appeared.(TPO-26:Sumer and the First Cities of the Ancient Near East)

参考答案：

1. predominant 2. currents 3. antiquity 4. suppressed 5. implicitly 6. obedience 7. matrix 8. suspended 9. aesthetic 10. secular 11. affinities 12. accelerated 13. diminished 14. prominent 15. afterlife 16. bolder 17. destined 18. preservation 19. signifying 20. impetus 21. theology