Reading Comprehension

What, according to the author, should one be wary of?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.

Although it is generally best not to mix work with friendship, there are times when a friend can be used to greater effect than an enemy. A man of power, for example, often has dirty work that has to be done, but for the sake of appearances it is generally preferable to have other people do it for him; friends often do this the best, since their affection for him makes them willing to take chances. Also, if plans go awry for some reason, the friend can be used as a convenient scapegoat. This ‘fall of the favourite’ was a trick often used by kings and sovereigns. They would let their closest friend at court take the fall for a mistake, since the public would not believe that they would deliberately sacrifice a friend for such purpose. Of course, once the card is played out, the friend is lost forever. It is best, then, to reserve the scapegoat role for someone who is close but not too close.
Finally, the problem about working with friends is that it confuses the boundaries and distances that working requires. But if both partners in the arrangement understand the dangers involved, a friend often can be employed to great effect. One must never let one’s guard down in such a venture, however; always be on the lookout for any signs of emotional disturbance such as envy and ingratitude. Nothing is stable in the realm of power, and even the closest of friends can be transformed into the worst of enemies.
When a friend is hired, his qualities kept hidden for long and let it come to fore by and by. Strangely enough, it is the act of kindness that unbalances everything. People want to feel they deserve their good fortune. The receipt of a favour can become oppressive. He may get a feeling that he has been chosen because he is a friend and not because he merited it. There is almost a touch of condescension in the act of hiring friends that secretly afflicts them. The injury will come out slowly. A little more honesty, flashes of resent and envy here and there, and before it is realized the friendship has faded away. The more favours and gifts one bestows to revive friendship, the less gratitude is received.
Ingratitude has a long and deep history. It has demonstrated its powers for so many centuries, that it is truly amazing that people continue to underestimate them. Better to be wary. One should never expect gratitude from a friend. It will be a pleasant surprise to find that they are actually grateful. The problem with using or hiring friends is that it will inevitably limit the power one intended to have. The friend is rarely the one who is most able to help; and in the end, skill and competence are far more important than friendly feelings.
All working situations require a kind of distance between people. People try to work, not to make friends; friendliness (real or false) only obscures that fact. The key to power is the ability to judge who is best suited to further the interests of an organization in all situations. Keep friends for friendship, but work with the skilled and competent. (Robert Greene in Power)

According to the passage, is the ‘needs of the population’ avowed principle of the bourgeois that the author refers to?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows:

The bourgeois intelligentsia of the West, like the English Fabians, elevates municipal socialism to a special ‘trend’ precisely because it dreams of social peace, of class conciliation, and seeks to divert public attention away from the fundamental questions of the economic system as a whole, and of the state structure as a whole, to minor questions of local self-government. In the sphere of questions in the first category, the class antagonisms stand out most sharply; that is the sphere which affects the very foundations of the class rule of the bourgeoisie. Hence it is in that sphere that the philistine, reactionary utopia of bringing about socialism piecemeal is particularly hopeless. Attention is diverted to the sphere of minor local questions, being directed not to the question of the class rule of the bourgeoisie, nor to the question of the chief instruments of that rule, but to the question of distributing the crumbs thrown by the rich bourgeoisie for the ‘needs of the population.’ Naturally, since attention is focussed on such questions as the spending of paltry sums (in comparison with the total surplus value and total state expenditure of the bourgeoisie), which the bourgeoisie itself is willing to set aside for public health, or for education (the bourgeoisie must have trained workers able to adapt themselves to a high technical level!), and so on, it is possible, in the sphere of such minor questions, to hold forth about ‘social peace’, about the harmfulness of the class struggle, and so on. What class struggle can there be if the bourgeoisie itself is spending money on the ‘needs of the population’, on public health, on education? What needs is there for a social if it is possible through the local self-governing bodies, gradually, step by step, to extend ‘collective ownership’, and ‘socialistic’ production: the horse tramways, the slaughter-houses etc?
The philistine opportunism of that ‘trend’ lies in the fact that people forget the narrow limits of the so-called ‘municipal socialism’ (in reality, municipal capitalism, as the English Social-Democrats properly point out in their controversies with the Fabians). They forget that so long as the bourgeoisie rules as a class it cannot allow any encroachment, even from the ‘municipal’ point of view, upon the real foundations of its rule; that if the bourgeoisie allows, tolerates, ‘municipal socialism’, it is because the latter does not touch the foundations of its rule, does not interfere with the important sources of its wealth, but extends only to the narrow sphere of local expenditure, which the bourgeoisie itself allows the ‘population’ to manage. It does not need more than a slight acquaintance with ‘municipal socialism’ in the West to know that any attempt on the part of socialist municipalities to go a little beyond the boundaries of their normal, i.e., minor, petty activities, which give no substantial relief to the workers, any attempt to meddle with capital, is invariably vetoed in the most emphatic manner by the central authorities of the bourgeois state.
And it is this fundamental mistake, this petty-bourgeois opportunism of the West-European Fabians, Possibilists, and Bernsteinians that is taken over by our advocates of municipalisation. (Power—Robert Greene)

Which of the following is the chief reason for the bourgeois intelligentsia to seek to elevate municipal socialism to a special ‘trend’?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows:

The bourgeois intelligentsia of the West, like the English Fabians, elevates municipal socialism to a special ‘trend’ precisely because it dreams of social peace, of class conciliation, and seeks to divert public attention away from the fundamental questions of the economic system as a whole, and of the state structure as a whole, to minor questions of local self-government. In the sphere of questions in the first category, the class antagonisms stand out most sharply; that is the sphere which affects the very foundations of the class rule of the bourgeoisie. Hence it is in that sphere that the philistine, reactionary utopia of bringing about socialism piecemeal is particularly hopeless. Attention is diverted to the sphere of minor local questions, being directed not to the question of the class rule of the bourgeoisie, nor to the question of the chief instruments of that rule, but to the question of distributing the crumbs thrown by the rich bourgeoisie for the ‘needs of the population.’ Naturally, since attention is focussed on such questions as the spending of paltry sums (in comparison with the total surplus value and total state expenditure of the bourgeoisie), which the bourgeoisie itself is willing to set aside for public health, or for education (the bourgeoisie must have trained workers able to adapt themselves to a high technical level!), and so on, it is possible, in the sphere of such minor questions, to hold forth about ‘social peace’, about the harmfulness of the class struggle, and so on. What class struggle can there be if the bourgeoisie itself is spending money on the ‘needs of the population’, on public health, on education? What needs is there for a social if it is possible through the local self-governing bodies, gradually, step by step, to extend ‘collective ownership’, and ‘socialistic’ production: the horse tramways, the slaughter-houses etc?
The philistine opportunism of that ‘trend’ lies in the fact that people forget the narrow limits of the so-called ‘municipal socialism’ (in reality, municipal capitalism, as the English Social-Democrats properly point out in their controversies with the Fabians). They forget that so long as the bourgeoisie rules as a class it cannot allow any encroachment, even from the ‘municipal’ point of view, upon the real foundations of its rule; that if the bourgeoisie allows, tolerates, ‘municipal socialism’, it is because the latter does not touch the foundations of its rule, does not interfere with the important sources of its wealth, but extends only to the narrow sphere of local expenditure, which the bourgeoisie itself allows the ‘population’ to manage. It does not need more than a slight acquaintance with ‘municipal socialism’ in the West to know that any attempt on the part of socialist municipalities to go a little beyond the boundaries of their normal, i.e., minor, petty activities, which give no substantial relief to the workers, any attempt to meddle with capital, is invariably vetoed in the most emphatic manner by the central authorities of the bourgeois state.
And it is this fundamental mistake, this petty-bourgeois opportunism of the West-European Fabians, Possibilists, and Bernsteinians that is taken over by our advocates of municipalisation. (Power—Robert Greene)

What is the underlying idea of the passage?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows:

The bourgeois intelligentsia of the West, like the English Fabians, elevates municipal socialism to a special ‘trend’ precisely because it dreams of social peace, of class conciliation, and seeks to divert public attention away from the fundamental questions of the economic system as a whole, and of the state structure as a whole, to minor questions of local self-government. In the sphere of questions in the first category, the class antagonisms stand out most sharply; that is the sphere which affects the very foundations of the class rule of the bourgeoisie. Hence it is in that sphere that the philistine, reactionary utopia of bringing about socialism piecemeal is particularly hopeless. Attention is diverted to the sphere of minor local questions, being directed not to the question of the class rule of the bourgeoisie, nor to the question of the chief instruments of that rule, but to the question of distributing the crumbs thrown by the rich bourgeoisie for the ‘needs of the population.’ Naturally, since attention is focussed on such questions as the spending of paltry sums (in comparison with the total surplus value and total state expenditure of the bourgeoisie), which the bourgeoisie itself is willing to set aside for public health, or for education (the bourgeoisie must have trained workers able to adapt themselves to a high technical level!), and so on, it is possible, in the sphere of such minor questions, to hold forth about ‘social peace’, about the harmfulness of the class struggle, and so on. What class struggle can there be if the bourgeoisie itself is spending money on the ‘needs of the population’, on public health, on education? What needs is there for a social if it is possible through the local self-governing bodies, gradually, step by step, to extend ‘collective ownership’, and ‘socialistic’ production: the horse tramways, the slaughter-houses etc?
The philistine opportunism of that ‘trend’ lies in the fact that people forget the narrow limits of the so-called ‘municipal socialism’ (in reality, municipal capitalism, as the English Social-Democrats properly point out in their controversies with the Fabians). They forget that so long as the bourgeoisie rules as a class it cannot allow any encroachment, even from the ‘municipal’ point of view, upon the real foundations of its rule; that if the bourgeoisie allows, tolerates, ‘municipal socialism’, it is because the latter does not touch the foundations of its rule, does not interfere with the important sources of its wealth, but extends only to the narrow sphere of local expenditure, which the bourgeoisie itself allows the ‘population’ to manage. It does not need more than a slight acquaintance with ‘municipal socialism’ in the West to know that any attempt on the part of socialist municipalities to go a little beyond the boundaries of their normal, i.e., minor, petty activities, which give no substantial relief to the workers, any attempt to meddle with capital, is invariably vetoed in the most emphatic manner by the central authorities of the bourgeois state.
And it is this fundamental mistake, this petty-bourgeois opportunism of the West-European Fabians, Possibilists, and Bernsteinians that is taken over by our advocates of municipalisation. (Power—Robert Greene)

What is the central theme of the passage?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.

It is no antiquarian pedantry that traces the origin of parliament back to Saxon times. For the tradition that the king must govern with the advice of his great men was already well established when the Conqueror arrived, and his Great Council not only included men who had been of the Council of Edward the Confessor, but was rightly regarded by Englishmen as the constitutional equivalent of  the witena gemot.
Feudalism was basically a system of land tenure by which the freeman held land from his lord in return for certain services – military and other – and the lord in his turn owed service to the king as overlord. But it was much more than a system of land tenure. Feudalism was a whole way of life – a social system in which lord and vassal were bound together by the closest possible ties. In the oath of homage the vassal swore ‘to become your man for the tenement I hold of you and to bear faith to you of life and members and earthly honours against all other men. The effect of this relationship was to bring into being a community of tenants with the lord at its centre. This community found its concrete expression in the honorial court, to which the tenants were bound to come and wherein the lord was entitled to their advice. When, therefore, we are told, the Conqueror asserted his lordship over every acre of the land, he thereby brought into being a single feudal community, the honour of England, His vassals, alias tenants-in-chief, alias barons, as members of this feudal community, owed duty of attendance and advice in the royal court.
Royal courts were held thrice a year on the solemn occasions at Christmas, Easter and Whitsun when the Normal kings wore their crowns. The chronicler tells us that there were present ‘all great men of England, archbishops, bishops, earls, thegns and knights.’ It is well known that from the earliest times a special notification of summons was sent to each tenant-in-chief and there were penalties for non-attendance. At these courts pleas were judged and decisions taken on matters of state. The tradition of these great courts at the crown-wearings was never quite lost. A hundred years later, in 1176, Henry II held his Christmas court at Nottingham and immediately afterwards held a great council with bishops, earls and barons of the kingdom, at which various great business was done; and when, in the middle of the next century (in 1258), the barons at Oxford demanded three parliaments a year they were harking back to the old thrice-yearly crown-wearing courts.
In the intervals between these great national assemblies, and for the ordinary business of government, the king relied upon a small number of personal advisers. These advisers were the members of the royal household and essentially, therefore, royal servants. In the Norman and Angevin periods, these household officers were normally drawn from the ranks of the baronage, but with the growing complexity of administration, several of the most important offices, notably those of the chancellor, the treasurer and the justices, came to be held by officials – men of non-baronial rank with professional qualifications. At the same time, this little group of personal advisers began to acquire an organisation of its own and we can speak of a ‘council’ rather than of ‘counsellors’. (British Parliament)

The author says that tracing back the origin of parliament to Saxon times would not be an antiquarian pedantry. Does he, according to the passage, encourage or discourage this exercise of tracing back the origin?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.

It is no antiquarian pedantry that traces the origin of parliament back to Saxon times. For the tradition that the king must govern with the advice of his great men was already well established when the Conqueror arrived, and his Great Council not only included men who had been of the Council of Edward the Confessor, but was rightly regarded by Englishmen as the constitutional equivalent of  the witena gemot.
Feudalism was basically a system of land tenure by which the freeman held land from his lord in return for certain services – military and other – and the lord in his turn owed service to the king as overlord. But it was much more than a system of land tenure. Feudalism was a whole way of life – a social system in which lord and vassal were bound together by the closest possible ties. In the oath of homage the vassal swore ‘to become your man for the tenement I hold of you and to bear faith to you of life and members and earthly honours against all other men. The effect of this relationship was to bring into being a community of tenants with the lord at its centre. This community found its concrete expression in the honorial court, to which the tenants were bound to come and wherein the lord was entitled to their advice. When, therefore, we are told, the Conqueror asserted his lordship over every acre of the land, he thereby brought into being a single feudal community, the honour of England, His vassals, alias tenants-in-chief, alias barons, as members of this feudal community, owed duty of attendance and advice in the royal court.
Royal courts were held thrice a year on the solemn occasions at Christmas, Easter and Whitsun when the Normal kings wore their crowns. The chronicler tells us that there were present ‘all great men of England, archbishops, bishops, earls, thegns and knights.’ It is well known that from the earliest times a special notification of summons was sent to each tenant-in-chief and there were penalties for non-attendance. At these courts pleas were judged and decisions taken on matters of state. The tradition of these great courts at the crown-wearings was never quite lost. A hundred years later, in 1176, Henry II held his Christmas court at Nottingham and immediately afterwards held a great council with bishops, earls and barons of the kingdom, at which various great business was done; and when, in the middle of the next century (in 1258), the barons at Oxford demanded three parliaments a year they were harking back to the old thrice-yearly crown-wearing courts.
In the intervals between these great national assemblies, and for the ordinary business of government, the king relied upon a small number of personal advisers. These advisers were the members of the royal household and essentially, therefore, royal servants. In the Norman and Angevin periods, these household officers were normally drawn from the ranks of the baronage, but with the growing complexity of administration, several of the most important offices, notably those of the chancellor, the treasurer and the justices, came to be held by officials – men of non-baronial rank with professional qualifications. At the same time, this little group of personal advisers began to acquire an organisation of its own and we can speak of a ‘council’ rather than of ‘counsellors’. (British Parliament)

According to the passage, the writer alludes to a tradition that he so approvingly speaks of. It is

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.

It is no antiquarian pedantry that traces the origin of parliament back to Saxon times. For the tradition that the king must govern with the advice of his great men was already well established when the Conqueror arrived, and his Great Council not only included men who had been of the Council of Edward the Confessor, but was rightly regarded by Englishmen as the constitutional equivalent of  the witena gemot.
Feudalism was basically a system of land tenure by which the freeman held land from his lord in return for certain services – military and other – and the lord in his turn owed service to the king as overlord. But it was much more than a system of land tenure. Feudalism was a whole way of life – a social system in which lord and vassal were bound together by the closest possible ties. In the oath of homage the vassal swore ‘to become your man for the tenement I hold of you and to bear faith to you of life and members and earthly honours against all other men. The effect of this relationship was to bring into being a community of tenants with the lord at its centre. This community found its concrete expression in the honorial court, to which the tenants were bound to come and wherein the lord was entitled to their advice. When, therefore, we are told, the Conqueror asserted his lordship over every acre of the land, he thereby brought into being a single feudal community, the honour of England, His vassals, alias tenants-in-chief, alias barons, as members of this feudal community, owed duty of attendance and advice in the royal court.
Royal courts were held thrice a year on the solemn occasions at Christmas, Easter and Whitsun when the Normal kings wore their crowns. The chronicler tells us that there were present ‘all great men of England, archbishops, bishops, earls, thegns and knights.’ It is well known that from the earliest times a special notification of summons was sent to each tenant-in-chief and there were penalties for non-attendance. At these courts pleas were judged and decisions taken on matters of state. The tradition of these great courts at the crown-wearings was never quite lost. A hundred years later, in 1176, Henry II held his Christmas court at Nottingham and immediately afterwards held a great council with bishops, earls and barons of the kingdom, at which various great business was done; and when, in the middle of the next century (in 1258), the barons at Oxford demanded three parliaments a year they were harking back to the old thrice-yearly crown-wearing courts.
In the intervals between these great national assemblies, and for the ordinary business of government, the king relied upon a small number of personal advisers. These advisers were the members of the royal household and essentially, therefore, royal servants. In the Norman and Angevin periods, these household officers were normally drawn from the ranks of the baronage, but with the growing complexity of administration, several of the most important offices, notably those of the chancellor, the treasurer and the justices, came to be held by officials – men of non-baronial rank with professional qualifications. At the same time, this little group of personal advisers began to acquire an organisation of its own and we can speak of a ‘council’ rather than of ‘counsellors’. (British Parliament)

As per the passage, the Norman and Angevin periods are notable for

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.

It is no antiquarian pedantry that traces the origin of parliament back to Saxon times. For the tradition that the king must govern with the advice of his great men was already well established when the Conqueror arrived, and his Great Council not only included men who had been of the Council of Edward the Confessor, but was rightly regarded by Englishmen as the constitutional equivalent of  the witena gemot.
Feudalism was basically a system of land tenure by which the freeman held land from his lord in return for certain services – military and other – and the lord in his turn owed service to the king as overlord. But it was much more than a system of land tenure. Feudalism was a whole way of life – a social system in which lord and vassal were bound together by the closest possible ties. In the oath of homage the vassal swore ‘to become your man for the tenement I hold of you and to bear faith to you of life and members and earthly honours against all other men. The effect of this relationship was to bring into being a community of tenants with the lord at its centre. This community found its concrete expression in the honorial court, to which the tenants were bound to come and wherein the lord was entitled to their advice. When, therefore, we are told, the Conqueror asserted his lordship over every acre of the land, he thereby brought into being a single feudal community, the honour of England, His vassals, alias tenants-in-chief, alias barons, as members of this feudal community, owed duty of attendance and advice in the royal court.
Royal courts were held thrice a year on the solemn occasions at Christmas, Easter and Whitsun when the Normal kings wore their crowns. The chronicler tells us that there were present ‘all great men of England, archbishops, bishops, earls, thegns and knights.’ It is well known that from the earliest times a special notification of summons was sent to each tenant-in-chief and there were penalties for non-attendance. At these courts pleas were judged and decisions taken on matters of state. The tradition of these great courts at the crown-wearings was never quite lost. A hundred years later, in 1176, Henry II held his Christmas court at Nottingham and immediately afterwards held a great council with bishops, earls and barons of the kingdom, at which various great business was done; and when, in the middle of the next century (in 1258), the barons at Oxford demanded three parliaments a year they were harking back to the old thrice-yearly crown-wearing courts.
In the intervals between these great national assemblies, and for the ordinary business of government, the king relied upon a small number of personal advisers. These advisers were the members of the royal household and essentially, therefore, royal servants. In the Norman and Angevin periods, these household officers were normally drawn from the ranks of the baronage, but with the growing complexity of administration, several of the most important offices, notably those of the chancellor, the treasurer and the justices, came to be held by officials – men of non-baronial rank with professional qualifications. At the same time, this little group of personal advisers began to acquire an organisation of its own and we can speak of a ‘council’ rather than of ‘counsellors’. (British Parliament)

Why did the author term the demand of Christopher Columbus of being called “Grand Admiral of the Ocean” as insanely bold?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Most of us are timid. We want to avoid tension and conflict and we want to be liked by all. We may contemplate a bold action but we rarely bring it to life. We are terrified of the consequences, of what others might think of us, of the hostility we will stir up if we dare to go beyond our usual place.
Although we may disguise our timidity as a concern for others, a desire not to hurt or offend them, in fact it is the opposite—we are really self-absorbed, worried about ourselves and how others perceive us. Boldness, on the other hand, is outer-directed, and often makes people feel more at ease, since it is less self-conscious and less repressed.
Few are born bold. Even Napoleon had to cultivate the habit on the battlefield, where he knew it was a matter of life and death. In social setting he was awkward and timid, but he overcame this and practised boldness in every part of his life because he saw its tremendous power, how it could literally enlarge a man (even one who, like Napoleon, was in fact conspicuously small).
We must practise and develop boldness. There are immense uses for it. The best place to begin is often the delicate world of negotiation, particularly those discussions in which we are asked to set our price. How often we put ourselves down by asking for too little. When Christopher Columbus proposed that the Spanish court finance his voyage to the Americans, he also made the insanely bold demand that he be called ‘Grand Admiral of the Ocean.’ The court agreed. The price he set was the price he received—he demanded to be treated with respect, and so he was. Henry Kissinger too knew that in negotiation, bold demands work better than starting off with piecemeal concessions and trying to meet the other person halfway. We must set our value high, and then, as Count Lusting did, set it higher.
If boldness is not natural, neither is timidity. It is an acquired habit, picked up out of a desire to avoid conflict. If timidity has taken hold, then, it must be rooted out. Fears of consequences of a bold action are way out of proportion to reality, and in fact the consequences of timidity are worse. When value is lowered, we create a self-fulfilling cycle of doubt and disaster. The problems created by an audacious move can be disguised, even remedied, with more and greater audacity. (Modified and extracted from Power—Robert Greene)

According to the author, which of the following is true in context of the passage?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows:

The bourgeois intelligentsia of the West, like the English Fabians, elevates municipal socialism to a special ‘trend’ precisely because it dreams of social peace, of class conciliation, and seeks to divert public attention away from the fundamental questions of the economic system as a whole, and of the state structure as a whole, to minor questions of local self-government. In the sphere of questions in the first category, the class antagonisms stand out most sharply; that is the sphere which affects the very foundations of the class rule of the bourgeoisie. Hence it is in that sphere that the philistine, reactionary utopia of bringing about socialism piecemeal is particularly hopeless. Attention is diverted to the sphere of minor local questions, being directed not to the question of the class rule of the bourgeoisie, nor to the question of the chief instruments of that rule, but to the question of distributing the crumbs thrown by the rich bourgeoisie for the ‘needs of the population.’ Naturally, since attention is focussed on such questions as the spending of paltry sums (in comparison with the total surplus value and total state expenditure of the bourgeoisie), which the bourgeoisie itself is willing to set aside for public health, or for education (the bourgeoisie must have trained workers able to adapt themselves to a high technical level!), and so on, it is possible, in the sphere of such minor questions, to hold forth about ‘social peace’, about the harmfulness of the class struggle, and so on. What class struggle can there be if the bourgeoisie itself is spending money on the ‘needs of the population’, on public health, on education? What needs is there for a social if it is possible through the local self-governing bodies, gradually, step by step, to extend ‘collective ownership’, and ‘socialistic’ production: the horse tramways, the slaughter-houses etc?
The philistine opportunism of that ‘trend’ lies in the fact that people forget the narrow limits of the so-called ‘municipal socialism’ (in reality, municipal capitalism, as the English Social-Democrats properly point out in their controversies with the Fabians). They forget that so long as the bourgeoisie rules as a class it cannot allow any encroachment, even from the ‘municipal’ point of view, upon the real foundations of its rule; that if the bourgeoisie allows, tolerates, ‘municipal socialism’, it is because the latter does not touch the foundations of its rule, does not interfere with the important sources of its wealth, but extends only to the narrow sphere of local expenditure, which the bourgeoisie itself allows the ‘population’ to manage. It does not need more than a slight acquaintance with ‘municipal socialism’ in the West to know that any attempt on the part of socialist municipalities to go a little beyond the boundaries of their normal, i.e., minor, petty activities, which give no substantial relief to the workers, any attempt to meddle with capital, is invariably vetoed in the most emphatic manner by the central authorities of the bourgeois state.
And it is this fundamental mistake, this petty-bourgeois opportunism of the West-European Fabians, Possibilists, and Bernsteinians that is taken over by our advocates of municipalisation. (Power—Robert Greene)

Besides being a system of land tenure, feudalism, according to the passage, was a/an

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.

It is no antiquarian pedantry that traces the origin of parliament back to Saxon times. For the tradition that the king must govern with the advice of his great men was already well established when the Conqueror arrived, and his Great Council not only included men who had been of the Council of Edward the Confessor, but was rightly regarded by Englishmen as the constitutional equivalent of  the witena gemot.
Feudalism was basically a system of land tenure by which the freeman held land from his lord in return for certain services – military and other – and the lord in his turn owed service to the king as overlord. But it was much more than a system of land tenure. Feudalism was a whole way of life – a social system in which lord and vassal were bound together by the closest possible ties. In the oath of homage the vassal swore ‘to become your man for the tenement I hold of you and to bear faith to you of life and members and earthly honours against all other men. The effect of this relationship was to bring into being a community of tenants with the lord at its centre. This community found its concrete expression in the honorial court, to which the tenants were bound to come and wherein the lord was entitled to their advice. When, therefore, we are told, the Conqueror asserted his lordship over every acre of the land, he thereby brought into being a single feudal community, the honour of England, His vassals, alias tenants-in-chief, alias barons, as members of this feudal community, owed duty of attendance and advice in the royal court.
Royal courts were held thrice a year on the solemn occasions at Christmas, Easter and Whitsun when the Normal kings wore their crowns. The chronicler tells us that there were present ‘all great men of England, archbishops, bishops, earls, thegns and knights.’ It is well known that from the earliest times a special notification of summons was sent to each tenant-in-chief and there were penalties for non-attendance. At these courts pleas were judged and decisions taken on matters of state. The tradition of these great courts at the crown-wearings was never quite lost. A hundred years later, in 1176, Henry II held his Christmas court at Nottingham and immediately afterwards held a great council with bishops, earls and barons of the kingdom, at which various great business was done; and when, in the middle of the next century (in 1258), the barons at Oxford demanded three parliaments a year they were harking back to the old thrice-yearly crown-wearing courts.
In the intervals between these great national assemblies, and for the ordinary business of government, the king relied upon a small number of personal advisers. These advisers were the members of the royal household and essentially, therefore, royal servants. In the Norman and Angevin periods, these household officers were normally drawn from the ranks of the baronage, but with the growing complexity of administration, several of the most important offices, notably those of the chancellor, the treasurer and the justices, came to be held by officials – men of non-baronial rank with professional qualifications. At the same time, this little group of personal advisers began to acquire an organisation of its own and we can speak of a ‘council’ rather than of ‘counsellors’. (British Parliament)

According to the passage, 'boldness' is

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Most of us are timid. We want to avoid tension and conflict and we want to be liked by all. We may contemplate a bold action but we rarely bring it to life. We are terrified of the consequences, of what others might think of us, of the hostility we will stir up if we dare to go beyond our usual place.
Although we may disguise our timidity as a concern for others, a desire not to hurt or offend them, in fact it is the opposite—we are really self-absorbed, worried about ourselves and how others perceive us. Boldness, on the other hand, is outer-directed, and often makes people feel more at ease, since it is less self-conscious and less repressed.
Few are born bold. Even Napoleon had to cultivate the habit on the battlefield, where he knew it was a matter of life and death. In social setting he was awkward and timid, but he overcame this and practised boldness in every part of his life because he saw its tremendous power, how it could literally enlarge a man (even one who, like Napoleon, was in fact conspicuously small).
We must practise and develop boldness. There are immense uses for it. The best place to begin is often the delicate world of negotiation, particularly those discussions in which we are asked to set our price. How often we put ourselves down by asking for too little. When Christopher Columbus proposed that the Spanish court finance his voyage to the Americans, he also made the insanely bold demand that he be called ‘Grand Admiral of the Ocean.’ The court agreed. The price he set was the price he received—he demanded to be treated with respect, and so he was. Henry Kissinger too knew that in negotiation, bold demands work better than starting off with piecemeal concessions and trying to meet the other person halfway. We must set our value high, and then, as Count Lusting did, set it higher.
If boldness is not natural, neither is timidity. It is an acquired habit, picked up out of a desire to avoid conflict. If timidity has taken hold, then, it must be rooted out. Fears of consequences of a bold action are way out of proportion to reality, and in fact the consequences of timidity are worse. When value is lowered, we create a self-fulfilling cycle of doubt and disaster. The problems created by an audacious move can be disguised, even remedied, with more and greater audacity. (Modified and extracted from Power—Robert Greene)

According to the author ‘most of us are timid’ because

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Most of us are timid. We want to avoid tension and conflict and we want to be liked by all. We may contemplate a bold action but we rarely bring it to life. We are terrified of the consequences, of what others might think of us, of the hostility we will stir up if we dare to go beyond our usual place.
Although we may disguise our timidity as a concern for others, a desire not to hurt or offend them, in fact it is the opposite—we are really self-absorbed, worried about ourselves and how others perceive us. Boldness, on the other hand, is outer-directed, and often makes people feel more at ease, since it is less self-conscious and less repressed.
Few are born bold. Even Napoleon had to cultivate the habit on the battlefield, where he knew it was a matter of life and death. In social setting he was awkward and timid, but he overcame this and practised boldness in every part of his life because he saw its tremendous power, how it could literally enlarge a man (even one who, like Napoleon, was in fact conspicuously small).
We must practise and develop boldness. There are immense uses for it. The best place to begin is often the delicate world of negotiation, particularly those discussions in which we are asked to set our price. How often we put ourselves down by asking for too little. When Christopher Columbus proposed that the Spanish court finance his voyage to the Americans, he also made the insanely bold demand that he be called ‘Grand Admiral of the Ocean.’ The court agreed. The price he set was the price he received—he demanded to be treated with respect, and so he was. Henry Kissinger too knew that in negotiation, bold demands work better than starting off with piecemeal concessions and trying to meet the other person halfway. We must set our value high, and then, as Count Lusting did, set it higher.
If boldness is not natural, neither is timidity. It is an acquired habit, picked up out of a desire to avoid conflict. If timidity has taken hold, then, it must be rooted out. Fears of consequences of a bold action are way out of proportion to reality, and in fact the consequences of timidity are worse. When value is lowered, we create a self-fulfilling cycle of doubt and disaster. The problems created by an audacious move can be disguised, even remedied, with more and greater audacity. (Modified and extracted from Power—Robert Greene)

What is the central idea of the passage?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Most of us are timid. We want to avoid tension and conflict and we want to be liked by all. We may contemplate a bold action but we rarely bring it to life. We are terrified of the consequences, of what others might think of us, of the hostility we will stir up if we dare to go beyond our usual place.
Although we may disguise our timidity as a concern for others, a desire not to hurt or offend them, in fact it is the opposite—we are really self-absorbed, worried about ourselves and how others perceive us. Boldness, on the other hand, is outer-directed, and often makes people feel more at ease, since it is less self-conscious and less repressed.
Few are born bold. Even Napoleon had to cultivate the habit on the battlefield, where he knew it was a matter of life and death. In social setting he was awkward and timid, but he overcame this and practised boldness in every part of his life because he saw its tremendous power, how it could literally enlarge a man (even one who, like Napoleon, was in fact conspicuously small).
We must practise and develop boldness. There are immense uses for it. The best place to begin is often the delicate world of negotiation, particularly those discussions in which we are asked to set our price. How often we put ourselves down by asking for too little. When Christopher Columbus proposed that the Spanish court finance his voyage to the Americans, he also made the insanely bold demand that he be called ‘Grand Admiral of the Ocean.’ The court agreed. The price he set was the price he received—he demanded to be treated with respect, and so he was. Henry Kissinger too knew that in negotiation, bold demands work better than starting off with piecemeal concessions and trying to meet the other person halfway. We must set our value high, and then, as Count Lusting did, set it higher.
If boldness is not natural, neither is timidity. It is an acquired habit, picked up out of a desire to avoid conflict. If timidity has taken hold, then, it must be rooted out. Fears of consequences of a bold action are way out of proportion to reality, and in fact the consequences of timidity are worse. When value is lowered, we create a self-fulfilling cycle of doubt and disaster. The problems created by an audacious move can be disguised, even remedied, with more and greater audacity. (Modified and extracted from Power—Robert Greene)

Which of the following support(s) the notion of 'aesthetic jumboism'? I. The painting of a sunflower is appreciated more than a painting of a violet. II. Big oxen have been proved to perform better than the dwarfs. III.Tall people are aesthetically pleasing to the eye. IV. A disbelief in the notion that God is in the details. V. All the accolades are reserved for the best; the next best only becomes the also ran.

PASSAGE

There is hardly a composer concerning whom so many erroneous notions are current as concerning Chopin, and of all the histories of music I have seen that very few critics devote to Chopin an amount of space approximately proportionate to his importance. One of the most absurd of the misconceptions is that Chopin's genius was born in full armour, and that it did not pass through several stages of development, like that of other composers. Chopin did display remarkable originality at the very beginning, but the apparent maturity of his first published works is due to the fact that he destroyed his earliest efforts and disowned those works which are known as posthumous, and which may have created confusion in some minds by having received a higher opus number than his last works.
Another misconception regarding Chopin is that his latest works are morbid and unintelligible. The same charge was brought by philistines against the best works of Beethoven, Schumann, and Wagner. The fact is that these last works are of an almost matchless harmonic depth and originality, as superior to his earlier works as Wagner's last music dramas are to his first operas. Schumann was the first to recognize the revolutionary significance of Chopin's style. "Chopin's works," he says, "are cannons buried in flowers;" and in another place he declares that he can see in "Chopin's G minor Nocturne a terrible declaration of war against a whole musical past."
Chopin was quiet and retiring in his personal disposition so much so that his small voice was lost in the din of musical warfare. He warmly defended the principles of the romantic school, if necessary, and had decided opinions of other musicians, especially of the popular pianists of his day who vitiated the public taste with their show pieces; but he generally kept them to himself or confided them only to his friends.
The world is yet to acknowledge that Chopin is one of the very greatest explorers and pioneers in the domain of art. This can be explained by, for want of a better term, aesthetic Jumboism. When the late lamented Jumbo was in New York he attracted so much attention that his colleagues, although but little inferior in size, had "no show" whatever. Everybody crowded around Jumbo, stuffing him with bushels of oranges and apples, while the other elephants were entirely ignored. As elephants are intelligent animals, is it not probable that Pilot, the next in size to Jumbo, went mad and had to be shot because he was jealous of the exclusive attentions bestowed on his rival? In aesthetics, this Jumboism, this exaggerated desire for mammoth dimensions, seems to be a trait of the human mind which it is difficult to eradicate. It cannot be said that the critics of art or literature follow the popular disposition to measure genius with a yard-stick; but in music there seems to be a general tendency to do this. Liszt remarks, apropos, in his work on Chopin: "The value of the sketches made by Chopin's extremely delicate pencil has not yet been acknowledged and emphasized sufficiently. It has become customary in our days to regard as great composers only those who have written at least half a dozen operas, as many oratorios, and several symphonies."