AP English Language and Composition 5.3 Passage Drill

All right, we're reading about philosophy... Good versus evil...

Evolutionism... Universe... Boundless possibilities.

Religion... See all these key words we're picking out here for you?

Ah, primitive mind...

Prescientific scope and breadth...

Fallacious... Sounds kind of dirty, but it's not.

Okay. Here we go. Which of the following is suggested by the speaker?

And here are the potential answers.

[ mumbles ]

Hmm. Interesting. Oh, boy, well, break out your scuba gear.

We're about to plunge into some deep thoughts.

Remember deep thoughts from Saturday Night Live? Do they still do that these days?

All right, well, let's begin by nixing option A.

The speaker does a lot of talking about notions of good and evil

and how philosophers should ignore 'em.

But he never claims that society's morals were created by just a few people.

Man, what would it have been like to be on that committee?

Imagine Shmoop on that committee. It would not be pretty.

All right. Option E uses some of the words the speaker uses,

but it doesn't actually touch on any of his ideas.

Minor detail.

He says that philosophers ought to ignore ideas of fate and good and evil.

But this makes it sound like our destiny is somehow decided by our moral values.

Well, if the speaker thought this were true, then telling

philosophers to ignore both things would be an apocalyptic

plot worthy of a super villain.

We'll give him the benefit of the doubt and move on.

D doesn't make the cut, either.

This whole essay is basically the speaker telling modern scholars

that they're still way too concerned with notions of good and evil.

There'd be no reason for him to write this essay if he thought

modern scholars had it all figured out.

This statement cancels out the essay's

reason for being, and there's nothing more depressing than that.

Option C is pretty close.

The speaker says material success

is partly responsible for people being too confident about

their ability to control the world.

But he doesn't say that rich people think the world is fundamentally good.

Though things have to look a little rosier when you're sitting on the deck of your yacht.

All right, well, choice B is the way to go.

The speaker directly says that it's people who are not

on the quest for happiness that find it most.

It's like you trip over happiness and you just find it sitting there right in front of you.

In that case, we would like to announce to the universe

that we're definitely not trying to be happy.

Nope.

[ crash ]