2000年全国硕士研究生入学考试英语试题

　　For us, this means that evolution is over; the biological Utopia has arrived. Strangely, it has involved little physical change. No other species fills so many places in nature. But in the past 100,000 years—even the past 100 years—our lives have been transformed but our bodies have not. We did not evolve, because machines and society did it for us. Darwin had a phrase to describe those ignorant of evolution:they "look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond his comprehension."No doubt we will remember a 20th century way of life beyond comprehension for its ugliness. But however amazed our descendants may be at how far from Utopia we were, they will look just like us.

　　55.What used to be the danger in being a man according to the first paragraph?

　　[A]A lack of mates.[B]A fierce competition.

　　[C]A lower survival rate.[D]A defective gene.

　　56.What does the example of India illustrate?

　　[A]Wealthy people tend to have fewer children than poor people.

　　[B]Natural selection hardly works among the rich and the poor.

　　[C]The middle class population is 80% smaller than that of the tribes.

　　[D]India is one of the countries with a very high birth rate.

　　57.The author argues that our bodies have stopped evolving because .

　　[A]life has been improved by technological advance

　　[B]the number of female babies has been declining

　　[C]our species has reached the highest stage of evolution

　　[D]the difference between wealth and poverty is disappearing

　　58.Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?

　　[A]Sex Ratio Changes in Human Evolution[B]Ways of Continuing Man's Evolution

　　[C]The Evolutionary Future of Nature[D]Human Evolution Going Nowhere

　　Passage3

　　When a new movement in art attains a certain fashion, it is advisable to find out what its advocates are aiming at, for, however farfetched and unreasonable their principles may seem today, it is possible that in years to come they may be regarded as normal. With regard to Futurist poetry, however, the case is rather difficult, for whatever Futurist poetry may be—even admitting that the theory on which it is based may be right—it can hardly be classed as Literature.

　　This, in brief, is what the Futurist says: for a century, past conditions of life have been conditionally speeding up, till now we live in a world of noise and violence and speed. Consequently, our feelings, thoughts and emotions have undergone a corresponding change. This speeding up of life, says the Futurist, requires a new form of expression. We must speed up our literature too, if we want to interpret modern stress. We must pour out a large stream of essential words, unhampered by stops, or qualifying adjectives, or finite verbs. Instead of describing sounds we must make up words that imitate them; we must use many sizes of type and different colored ink on the same page, and shorten or lengthen words at will.