四川省巴中市2016高考英语二轮复习 阅读理解（1.docVIP

阅读理解（1） 阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项。 (The Importance of Independent Thinking)No one can be a great thinker who does not realize that as a thinker it is her first duty to ? follow her intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth gains more even by the errors of one who with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think. No that it is solely, of chiefly, to form great thinkers that freedom of thinking is required. One the contrary, it is as much or even more indispensable to enable average human beings to attain the mental stature which they are capable of. There have been and many again be great individual thinkers in a general atmosphere of mental slavery. But there never has been, nor ever will be, in that atmosphere an intellectually active people. Where any of heterodox speculation was for a time suspended, where there is a tacit convention that principles are not to be disputed: where the discussion of the greatest questions which can occupy humanity is considered to be closed, we cannot hope to find that generally high scale of mental activity which has made some periods of history so remarkable. Never when controversy avoided the subjects which are large and important enough to kindle enthusiasm was the mind of a people stirred up fro9m its foundation and the impulse given which raised even persons of the most ordinary intellect to something of the dignity of thinking beings.She who knows only her own side of the case knows little of that. Her reasons may be food, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if she s equally unable to refute the reasons of the opposite side; if she does not so much as know what they are, she has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for her would be suspension of judgment, and unless she contents herself with that, she is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of