2025 CSAT — Q53

Locate. This asks for the central idea, so find the author’s culminating claim. The passage builds from “a statesman learns more from his opponents” to its summit: national unity “depends upon a sufficiently even balance of political power” so the administration can’t be arbitrary and opposition can’t be revolutionary. The indispensability of a balanced opposition is the anchor.

Test (thesis-vs-detail + scope-fit). The key must state that opposition is essential to the balance of power and good governance — and must not flip the passage’s direction or endorse the extremes the author warns against. (d) — “the opposition is indispensable for the balance of political power and good governance” — is exactly the author’s summit claim.

Eliminate by anatomy. (a) gets the direction backwards — the passage says without opponents the statesman is ruined; (a) claims the administration becomes more responsible without opposition, the reverse. (b) is half right, half wrong and gets the direction backwards — it endorses “revolutionaries,” the very thing the author says the balance exists to prevent. (c) is a claim the passage never actually makes — “support of opposition for political survival” misreads the relationship; the author’s point is checking power, not survival via support. Key: (d).

“he ought also to pray never to be left without opponents; for they keep him on the path of reason and good sense. The national unity of free people depends upon a sufficiently even balance of political power to make it impracticable for the administration to be arbitrary and for opposition to be revolutionary.” The critical message is that opposition is indispensable for the balance of power and good governance (d).

The author argues that a good statesman needs opponents — they “keep him on the path of reason and good sense” — and that national unity rests on “a sufficiently even balance of political power” so that the administration cannot be arbitrary nor the opposition revolutionary. The critical message is that opposition is indispensable for the balance of political power and good governance.

(d) states this. Answer: (d).

Every distractor flips or distorts the author’s direction: (a) reverses the value of opposition, (b) endorses the extreme the author warns against, (c) swaps “check on power” for “support for survival.” On a central-idea question for a balance-of-power argument, the key is the option that preserves both the indispensability of opposition and the balance (neither arbitrary administration nor revolutionary opposition). That is (d).