English Grammar - Reading Comprehension
What have machines saved for us ?
Direction (Q. No. 51 to 60) : Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow — The third great defect of our civilization is that it does not know what to do with its knowledge. Science has given us powers fit for the gods, yet we use them like small children. For example, we do not know how to manage our machines. Machines were made to be man's servants; yet he has grown so dependent on them that they are in a fair way to become his masters. Already most men spend most of their lives looking after and waiting upon machines. And the machines are very stern masters. They must be fed with coal, and given petrol to drink, and oil to wash with, and they must be kept at the right temperature. And if they do not get their meals when they expect them, they grow sulky and refuse to work, or burst with rage, and blow up, and spread ruin and destruction all round them. So we have to wait upon them very attentively and do all that we can to keep them in a good temper. Already we find it difficult either to work or play without the machines, and a time may come when they will rule us altogether, just as we rule the animals. And this brings me to the point at which I asked, "What do we do with all the time and energy that the machines have saved for us?" The answer, I think, is that we should try to become more civilized. For the machines themselves, and the power which the machines have given us, are not civilization but aids to civilization. But you will remember that we agreed at the beginning that being civilized meant making and liking beautiful things, thinking freely, and living rightly and maintaining justice equally between man and man. Man has a better chance today to do these things than he ever had before; he has more time, more energy, less to fear and less to fight against.
Options:
- time and energy
- petrol and coal
- science and knowledge
- riches and poverty
Right Answer: time and energy
Towards the close of the passage the author poses his own question: what do we do with all the time and energy that the machines have saved for us? Machines perform work far more quickly than human hands, so the labour and hours they replace are returned to man as leisure. Petrol and coal are consumed by machines rather than saved, while science and knowledge are the source of machines, not their product. The whole argument of the passage rests on the proper use of this saved leisure. Hence option (1) is correct.This question is part of English Grammar - Reading Comprehension, which has 5 practice questions with answers.
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