GMAT Reading Comprehension - The History of the Evolution of Life, Incomplete as it Yet is, Already Reveals to us how the Intellect has Been Formed

Reading passage question

The history of the evolution of life, incomplete as it yet is, already reveals to us how the intellect has been formed, by an uninterrupted progress, along a line which ascends through the vertebrate series up to man. It shows us in the faculty of understanding an appendage of the faculty of acting, a more and more precise, more and more complex and supple adaptation of the consciousness of living beings to the conditions of existence that are made for them. Hence should result this consequence that our intellect, in the narrow sense of the word, is intended to secure the perfect fitting of our body to its environment, to represent the relations of external things among themselves—in short, to think matter.

But from this it must also follow that our thought, in its purely logical form, is incapable of presenting the true nature of life, the full meaning of the evolutionary movement. Created by life, in definite circumstances, to act on definite things, how can it embrace life, of which it is only an emanation or an aspect? Deposited by the evolutionary movement in the course of its way, how can it be applied to the evolutionary movement itself? As well contend that the part is equal to the whole, that the effect can reabsorb its cause, or that the pebble left on the beach displays the form of the wave that brought it there. In fact, we do indeed feel that not one of the categories of our thought—unity, multiplicity, mechanical causality, intelligent finality, etc.—applies exactly to the things of life: who can say where individuality begins and ends, whether the living being is one or many, whether it is the cells which associate themselves into the organism or the organism which dissociates itself into cells?

“The history of the evolution of life, incomplete as it yet is, already reveals to us how the intellect has been formed.”- is a GMAT reading comprehension passage with answers. Candidates need a strong knowledge of English GMAT reading comprehension.

This GMAT Reading Comprehension consists of 3 comprehension questions. The GMAT Reading Comprehension questions are designed for the purpose of testing candidates’ abilities in understanding, analyzing, and applying information or concepts. Candidates can actively prepare with the help of GMAT Reading Comprehension Practice Questions.

Questions and Solutions

1. What is the main purpose of the author in writing the passage?

(A) To discuss a puzzling situation
(B) To clarify a confusion
(C) To raise doubts about a commonly held belief
(D) To discuss the history of a theory
(E) To define a term

2. Which of the following can be inferred from the information in the passage?

(A) There is no clarity at the moment on how intellect has been formed.
(B) Our thoughts are also a part of the evolutionary process.
(C) Certain categories of thoughts can be applied to specific aspects of life.
(D) Humans have most likely stopped evolving.
(E) Thoughts cannot explain evolution.

3. What is the function of the lines ‘As well contend...brought it there’?

(A) To further emphasize the confusion of thoughts explaining evolution while also being part of evolution
(B) To introduce multiple categories of thoughts
(C) To conclude that thoughts cannot be used to explain evolution
(D) To display how intellect has been formed
(E) To state that it may indeed be possible for our thoughts to explain evolution

Suggested GMAT Reading Comprehension Samples

• GMAT Reading Comprehension - Jon Clark’s Study of the Effect of the Modernization of a Telephone Exchange.
• GMAT Reading Comprehension - Utilitarian Models of the State, Subordinating Individual Rights to a Calculus.
• GMAT Reading Comprehension - Bracken fern has been spreading from its woodland strongholds for centuries
• GMAT Reading Comprehension - Anthropologists once thought that the ancestors of modern humans began to walk upright
• GMAT Reading Comprehension - The term "editor" covers a number of functions ranging
• GMAT Reading Comprehension - Lee Bollinger, rejecting traditional models of the defense
• GMAT Reading Comprehension - Maria Helena P.T. Machados’s bilingual edition of Brazil Through the Eyes
• GMAT Reading Comprehension - In his New York Times blog in August, 2006, Douglas Coupland
• GMAT Reading Comprehension - That placebos can cure everything from dandruff to leprosy
• GMAT Reading Comprehension - Research data indicate that there is a great deal of poverty in the United States
• GMAT reading comprehension - From the Beginning, Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was Convinced about the Basic Astronomical Verities.
• GMAT Reading Comprehension - It is So Uncommon for a Rarified Academic Term to Make the Leap.
• GMAT Reading Comprehension - The Passage into U.S. Law on October 3, 2008, of the $700 Billion
• GMAT Reading Comprehension - In the United States the Per Capita Costs of Schooling have Risen.
• GMAT Reading Comprehension - Without Entering Now into the Why, let me Observe that the Printer may Always Ascertain.
• GMAT Reading Comprehension - Years After the Movement to Obtain Civil rights for Black People in the United States
• GMAT Reading Comprehension - Photography in Europe was Largely Guided by the Notions of the Picturesque
• GMAT Reading Comprehension - In Recent years, A Growing Belief that the Way Society Decides
• GMAT Reading Comprehension - When Anton Van Leeuwenhoek made the First Recorded Estimation of Global Population
• GMAT Reading Comprehension - Direct Observation of Contemporary Societies at the Threshold