2022 CSAT — Q41

Locate. On “the passage is based on the idea that,” find the premise the passage builds from, not its consequences. The passage opens: men live “as workers merely, not as human beings. An excessive amount of labour is rule today in every circle of society, with the result that man’s spiritual element cannot thrive.” Everything after — can’t use leisure, doesn’t want to think, seeks mere entertainment — is presented as the result of that excessive labour.

Test (cause-vs-effect / thesis-vs-detail). The founding idea is the diagnosis: overstrain/excessive labour is the evil of the age. (b) names it. (c) “cannot think well” and (d) “cannot care for spiritual welfare” are flagged in the passage as outcomes (“with the result that…”) of overwork — symptoms, not the base. (a) “should not work hard” is a prescription the passage never issues; it diagnoses excessive labour, it doesn’t counsel against hard work as such.

Eliminate by anatomy. (c)/(d) offer a detail as if it were the main idea — genuine passage points, but downstream effects dressed up as the founding idea. (a) is a step the text never licenses and over-states the case — a “don’t work hard” prescription beyond anything the passage says. The transferable rule: “based on the idea that” wants the cause the passage assumes, not the effects it lists. Key: (b).

“An excessive amount of labour is rule today in every circle of society, with the result that man’s spiritual element cannot thrive.” — the passage’s founding premise is that overwork/overstrain is the root condition of the age, FROM WHICH the inability to think, to use leisure, and to grow spiritually follow. (b) “the great evil of our age is overstrain” names that founding idea. (c) “cannot think well” and (d) “cannot care for spiritual welfare” are effects of the overstrain, not the base idea; (a) “should not work hard” is a prescription the passage never makes → (b).

The passage’s premise is that excessive labour (overstrain) is the defining ill of the age, and that this overwork is why the spiritual element cannot thrive and the mind seeks idle entertainment.

• (b) names that premise — overstrain as the great evil. Correct.
• (c)/(d) are effects of the overstrain, not the base idea.
• (a) prescribes against hard work — never stated.

Answer: (b).

The whole item hinges on cause vs effect. The passage signals it grammatically — “An excessive amount of labour… with the result that man’s spiritual element cannot thrive.” Whatever sits after “with the result that” is an effect; the cause before it (overstrain) is the idea the passage is based on. (c) and (d) are real but downstream; choose the premise, not its symptoms. (b).