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  3. By education, I mean the influence of the environment upon the individual to produce a permanent change in the habits of behavio

By education, I mean the influence of the environment upon the individual to produce a permanent change in the habits of behavio

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问题     By education, I mean the influence of the environment upon the individual to produce a permanent change in the habits of behavior, of thought and of attitude. It is in being thus susceptible to the environment that man differs from the animals, and the higher animals from the lower. The lower animals are influenced by the environment but not in the direction of changing their habits. Their instinctive responses are few and fixed by heredity.
    When transferred to an unnatural situation, such an animal is led astray by its instincts. Thus the ant-lion whose instinct implies it to bore into loose sand by pushing backwards with abdomen, goes backwards on a plate of glass as soon as danger threatens, and endeavors, with the utmost exertions to bore into it. It knows no other mode of flight or "if such a lonely animal is engaged upon a chain of actions and is interrupted, it either goes on vainly with the remaining actions (as useless as cultivating an unsown field) or dies in helpless inactivity". Thus a net-making spider which digs a burrow and rims it with a bastion of gravel and bits of wood, when removed from a half finished home, will not begin again, though it will continue another burrow, even one made with a pencil.
    Advance in the scale of evolution along such lines as these could only be made by the emergence of creatures with more and more complicated instincts. Such beings we know in the ants and spiders. But another line of advance was destined to open out a much more far-reaching possibility of which we do not see the end perhaps even in man. Habits, instead of being born ready-made (When they are called instincts and not habits at all), were left more and more to the formative influence of the environment, of which the most important factor was the parent who now cared for the young animal during a period of infancy in which vaguer instincts than those of the insects were molded to suit surroundings which might be considerably changed without harm.
    This means, one might at first imagine, that gradually heredity becomes less and environment more important. But this is hardly the truth and certainly not the whole truth. For although fixed automatic responses like those of the insect-like creatures are no longer inherited, although selection for purification of that sort is no longer going on, yet selection for educability is very definitely still of importance. The ability to acquire habits can be conceivably inherited just as much as can definite responses to narrow situations. Besides, since a mechanism is now, for the first time, created by which the individual (in contradiction to the species) can be fitted to the environment, the latter becomes, in another sense, less important.
    Finally, higher animals pass the power of changing their environment by engineering feats and the like, a power possessed to some extent even by the beaver, and preeminently by man. Environment and heredity are in no case exclusive but always supplementary factors.
Which information is true from the example of the ant-lion in the second paragraph?
选项 A、When it finds something dangerous, it will bore into loose sand.
B、Instincts of animals can lead to reasonable reactions in strange situations.
C、Environment and heredity are two contradictory factors in the evolution of insects.
D、Ant-lions would like to live alone.
答案A
解析 本题关键词是ant- lion，问的是有关蚁狮的信息哪个选项是正确的。定位第二段。根据第二段第二句，蚁狮的本能告诉它要将腹部向后移动(pushing backwards with abdomen)以便钻进松散的沙土里(bore into loose sand)。因此，选项A与原文内容完全一致，为正确选项。第二段第一句指出，当被转移到人工环境中，这种动物的本能会把它带入歧途(led astray by its instincts)，因此选项B“动物的本能会引导它们在陌生环境下做出合理反应(reasonable reactions)”，恰好与原文内容相反，属于正反混淆。文章最后一句话指出，环境和遗传因素并非互相排斥，而是互相补充(in no case exclusive but always supplementary)，选项C“环境和遗传是两个相互矛盾的因素(contradictory factors)”，恰好与此相反，属于正反混淆。第二段第三句提到这种孤独的动物(such a lonely animal)，但这不能说明它们就是独居动物(live alone)，因此选项D“蚁狮喜欢独居”属于主观推导。
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