首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
The process of transforming all direct experience into imaginary or into that supreme mode of symbolic expression, language, has
The process of transforming all direct experience into imaginary or into that supreme mode of symbolic expression, language, has
admin
2015-06-14
68
问题
The process of transforming all direct experience into imaginary or into that supreme mode of symbolic expression, language, has so completely taken possession of the human mind that it is not only a special talent but a dominant, organic need. All our sense impressions leave their traces in our memory not only as signs disposing our practical reaction in the future but also as symbols, images representing our idea of things: and the tendency to manipulate ideas, to combine and abstract, mix and extend them by playing with symbols, is man’s outstanding characteristic. It seems to be what his brain most naturally and spontaneously does. Therefore his primitive mental function is not judging reality, but dreaming his desires.
Dreaming is apparently a basic function of human brains, for it is free and unexhausting like our metabolism, heartbeat, and breath. It is easier to dream than not to dream, as it is easier to breathe than to refrain from breathing .The symbolic character of dreams is fairly well established. Symbol mongering, on this ineffectual, uncritical level, seems to be instinctive, the fulfillment of an elementary need rather than the purposeful exercise of a high and difficult talent.
The special power of man’s mind rests on the evolution of this special activity, not on any transcendently high development of animal intelligence. We are not immeasurably higher than other animals: we are different. We have a biological need and with it a biological gift that they do not share.
Because man has not only the ability but the constant need of conceiving what has happened to him, what surrounds him, what is demanded of him in short, of symbolizing nature, himself, and his hopes and fears he has a constant and crying need of expression. What he cannot express, he cannot conceive: what he cannot conceive is chaos, and fills him with terror.
If we bear in mind this all-important craving for expression we get a new picture of man’s behavior: for from this trait spring his powers and his weaknesses. The process of symbolic transformation that all our experiences undergo is nothing more or less than the process of conception, underlying the human faculties of abstraction and imagination.
When we are faced with a strange or difficult situation, we cannot react directly, as other creatures do, with flight, aggression, or any such simple instinctive pattern. Our whole reaction depends on how we manage to conceive the situation whether we cast it in a definite dramatic form, whether we see it as a disaster, a fulfillment of doom, or a fiat of the Devine Will. In words or dreamlike images, in artistic or religious or even in cynical form, we must construe the events of life. There is great virtue in the figure of speech. "I can make nothing of it," to express a failure to understand something. Thought and memory are processes of making the thought content and memory image: the pattern of our ideas is given by the symbols through which we express them. And in the course of manipulating those symbols we inevitably distort the original experience, as we abstract certain features of it, embroider and reinforce those features with other ideas, until the conception we project on the screen of memory is quite different from anything in our real history.
Conception is a necessary and elementary process: what we do with our conceptions is another story. That is the entire history of human culture—of intelligence and morality, folly and superstition, ritual, language, and the arts—all the phenomena that set man apart from, and above, the rest of animal kingdom. As the religious mind has to make all human history a drama of sins and salvation in order to define its own moral attitudes, so a scientist wrestles with the mere presentation of "the facts" before he can reason about them. The process of envisaging facts, values, hopes, and fears underlies our whole behavior pattern: and this process is reflected in the evolution of an extraordinary phenomenon found always, and only, in human societies the phenomenon of language.
What can serve as the title of this passage?
选项
A、Images and Human Brain.
B、Language and Human Brain.
C、Dreams and Human Brain.
D、Conceptions and Human Brain.
答案
B
解析
主旨题。分析全文可知,文章通过对大脑的主要功能以及对人类表达需求的阐述,从而揭示了大脑和语言的关系,故选[B]。
转载请注明原文地址:https://www.kaotiyun.com/show/A8OO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
WhichwordisnotusedbyNorberg-HodgetodescribetheLadakhipeople?
Cultureshockisapainfulexperiencewegothroughwhenweencountermanynewthingsinanothercountryandwe【1】______insom
Ourtheoriesabouthumandiseasearetheproductofcurrentfashion【M1】______thanwewouldliketoadmit.Butjustasthe
Accordingtothenewsitem,whatisexpectedfromObama’sannouncement?
TheCatcherintheRyeiswrittenby
WhichofthefollowingisNOTwrittenbyWilliamShakespeare?
TheFleawaswrittenby
TheConstitutionof1787metwithstrongoppositionfromthebourgeoisdemocraticpersonages,headedbyThomasJefferson,whowe
Bahrainioppositionactivistssayateenageboy
随机试题
引起药物性龈炎的药物是
汗证表虚不固证的汗出部位主要是
20世纪50年代的发展观认为,发展中国家的发展问题主要是经济增长问题,而()化是实现经济增长的主要途径,这是发达国家走过的成功道路。
资产减值准则所指的资产,除了特别说明外,只包括单项资产,不包括资产组。()
根据《公安机关人民警察辞退办法》第3条规定,下列情况中属于应当予以辞退的情是()。
清政府的中央警察机关是()。
某小学要订购一批课外拓展图书,恰逢书店十周年庆,已知:(1)一次性订购同种类指定书籍不少于6000本,打5折;不少于2500本,打6折;不少于1500本,打7折;不少于1000本,打8折;少于1000本,打9折。(2)指定书籍种类包括:
甲与乙想盗窃某厂仓库的钢材,乙的一个亲戚恰好在该厂工作,甲让乙设法配一把钥匙,乙将钥匙配好交给甲。某日晚,二人约好在仓库门口会合,但乙思前想后,觉得事情早晚会败露,最后没有如约前往。甲久等乙不来,只好自己用钥匙打开仓库大门,盗走钢材。几日后,甲将钢材卖出,
Aroundtheworldmoreandmorepeoplearetakingpartindangeroussportsandactivities.Ofcourse,therehavealwaysbeenpeop
LadiesandGentlemen,WelcometoBiburySystem.We’reveryhonoredtohavetheopportunityofmakingthispresentationmy
最新回复
(
0
)