SAT Reading Comprehension - Paired Passages

    Much of what goes by the name of pleasure is simply an effort     to destroy consciousness. If one started by asking, what is     man? what are his needs? how can he best express himself?     one would discover that merely having the power to avoid work 5   and live one’s life from birth to death in electric light and     to the tune of tinned music is not a reason for doing so. Man     needs warmth, society, leisure, comfort and security: he also     needs solitude, creative work and the sense of wonder. If he     recognized this he could use the products of science and 10  industrialism eclectically, applying always the same test:     does this make me more human or less human? He would then     learn that the highest happiness does not lie in relaxing,     resting, playing poker, drinking and making love simultaneously. Adapted from an essay by George Orwell

    Examine the recently laid egg of some common animal, such as     a salamander or newt. It is a minute spheroid – an apparently     structureless sac, enclosing a fluid, holding granules in     suspension. But let a moderate supply of warmth reach its 5   watery cradle, and the plastic matter undergoes changes so     rapid, yet so steady and purposeful in their succession, that     one can only compare them to those operated by a skilled     modeler upon a formless lump of clay. As with an invisible     trowel, the mass is divided and subdivided into smaller and 10  smaller portions. And, then, it is as if a delicate finger     traced out the line to be occupied by the spinal column, and     molded the contour of the body; pinching up the head at one     end, the tail at the other, and fashioning flank and limb     into due proportions, in so artistic a way, that, after 15  watching the process hour by hour, one is almost     involuntarily possessed by the notion, that some more subtle     aid to vision than a microscope, would show the hidden     artist, with his plan before him, striving with skilful     manipulation to perfect his work. Adapted from an essay by T H Huxley

Passage 3     There are not many places that I find it more agreeable to     revisit when in an idle mood, than some places to which     I have never been. For, my acquaintance with those spots is     of such long standing, and has ripened into an intimacy of 5   so affectionate a nature, that I take a particular interest     in assuring myself that they are unchanged. I never was in     Robinson Crusoe’s Island, yet I frequently return there. I     was never in the robbers’ cave, where Gil Blas lived, but     I often go back there and find the trap-door just as heavy 10  to raise as it used to be. I was never in Don Quixote’s     study, where he read his books of chivalry until he rose     and hacked at imaginary giants, yet you couldn’t move a     book in it without my knowledge. So with Damascus, and     Lilliput, and the Nile, and Abyssinia, and the North Pole, 15  and many hundreds of places — I was never at them, yet it     is an affair of my life to keep them intact, and I am     always going back to them. Passage 4     The books one reads in childhood create in one’s mind a     sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous 20  countries into which one can retreat at odd moments     throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can     even survive a visit to the real countries which they are     supposed to represent. The pampas, the Amazon, the coral     islands of the Pacific, Russia, land of birch-tree and 25  samovar, Transylvania with its boyars and vampires, the     China of Guy Boothby, the Paris of du Maurier—one could     continue the list for a long time. But one other     imaginary country that I acquired early in life was     called America. If I pause on the word “America”, and 30  deliberately put aside the existing reality, I can call     up my childhood vision of it. Adapted from: The Uncommercial Traveller, C Dickens (1860)

The author implies that the answers to the questions in sentence two would reveal that human beings

2. The author would apparently agree that playing poker is

3. The author makes his main point with the aid of  

4. In the context of the final sentence the word “subtle” most nearly means

The first sentence of passage 3 contains an element of

By calling America an “imaginary country” the author of passage 4 implies that

 Both passages make the point that

Both passages list a series of places, but differ in that the author of passage 3