Anyone who forms his own opinions and beliefs will feel that he owes no responsibility to the majority for his conclusions. If he is a genuine lover of truth, if he is inspired by a passion for seeing things as they are and a detestation of holding ideas which do not conform to facts, he will be wholly independent of the acquiesce of those around him. When he proceeds to apply his beliefs in the practical conduct of life, the position is different. There are then good reasons why his attitude should be less rigid. The society in which he is placed is an ancient and composite growth. The people from whom he dissents have not come by their opinions and institutions by a process of mere haphazard. These opinions and customs all had their origin in a certain real or supposed fitness. They have a certain depth of root in the lives of a proportion of the existing generation. Their fitness for satisfying needs may have misplaced, and their congruity with one another may have come to an end. That is only one side of the truth. The most passionate propagandist cannot penetrate to them.
In common language we speak of a generation as something possessed of a kind of exact unity with all its part-s and members homogeneous. Yet plainly it is not this. It is a whole but a whole in a state of constant flux, its factors and elements are eternally shifting. It is not one, but many generations. Each of the seven ages of man is neighbour to all the rest. The column of the veterans is already sinking into the last abyss, while the column of the newest recruits is forming. To its tradition, the tendency and its possibilities, only a proportion of each can have nerve enough to grasp the banner of a new truth and endurance to bear it along rugged and un trodden ways.
Then we must remember the substance of which life is made. We must consider what an overwhelming preponderance of the most persistent energies and most concentrated interests of a society must be absorbed between material cares and the solitude of the affections. It is obviously unreasonable to lose patience and quarrel with one’s time because it is tardy in throwing off its institutions and beliefs and slow to achieve the transformation which is the problem in front of it. Men and women have to live. The task for most of us is hard enough to make us well pleased with even such imperfect shelter as we find in daily use and customs. To insist on a whole community being made at once to submit to the supremacy of new practices and ideas that have just begun to acclaim themselves to the most advanced speculative intelligence of life time. This, even If it were a possible process, would do much to make life impracticable and to hurry on social dissolution.
QUESTIONS:
1. The overnight changes in social settings are not desirable because it will-
(A) retard the progress
(B) lead to social disintegration
(C) give vitality to social life
(D) make a society too narrow to survive
(E) None of these
2. The hard task according to author is to-
(A) change the society
(B) earn a living
(C) change according to times
(A) Only A and C
(B) Only B and C
(C) Only A and B
(D) Only A
(E) Only C
3. The problems which is discussed in the passage reflects-
(A) realist attitude of the author
(B) the pessimistic views expressed by a group of people
(C) a doctrinaire that explains the role of culture
(D) making good use of genuine lover of truth
(E) None of these
4. Which of the following best describes the phrase apply his beliefs in the practical conduct of life as used in the passage?
(A) To indoctrinate what he believes
(B) To denounce what he believes
(C) To preach what is practiced
(D) To practice what is preached
(E) None of these
5. According to author a generation which is heterogeneous, should be perceive as
(A) sum total of the parts of that subsystem
(B) a whole which is not a total of the parts
(C) fragmented group of people
(D) individual inter linkages connected through synergy
(E) None of these
6. According to the passage which of the following is true?
(A) Impatience of intellectuals with practical problems is the source of progress
(B) Day to day concerns dominates the life of most people
(C) Intellectuals are the leaders of social transformation
(D) Social change will be slow in the absence of effective leaders
(E) None of these
7. According to passage from which of the following do the customs and traditions originate?
(A) Ignorance of events happening around
(B) Leadership prevailing in the contemporary society
(C) Social utility of the societal set up
(D) Conflicts of individuals living in society
(E) None of these
(Source: Nabard Bank Officer Exam – 2009)
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