question_answer

Being stupid and having no imagination, animals often behave far more sensibly than men. Efficiently and by instinct they do the right, appropriate thing at the right moment- eat when they are hungry, look for water when they feel thirsty, make love in the mating season, rest or play when they have leisure. Men are intelligent and imaginative, they look backwards and ahead, they invent ingenious explanation for observed phenomena, and hey devise elaborate and roundabout means for the achievement of remote ends. Their intelligence, which has made them the masters of the world, often causes them to act like imbeciles. No animal, for example, is clever and imaginative enough to suppose that an eclipse is the work of a serpent devouring the sun. That is the sort of explanation that could occur only to the human mind. And only a human being would dream of making ritual gestures in the hope of influencing, for his own benefit, the outside world. While the animal, obedient to its instinct, goes quietly about its business, man, being endowed with reason and imagination, wastes half his time and energy in doing things that are completely idiotic. In time, it is true, experience teaches him that magic formulas and ceremonial gestures do not give him what he wants. But until experience has taught him- and he takes a surprisingly long time to learn- man's behaviour is in many respects far stellar than that of the animals.

The imagination of an animal devouring the sun can be done:

 

A) rightly by animals.                

B) instinctively by animals.

C) only by men.                    

D) Both [a] and [b]

E) None of these