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CSS Solved Precis 1996

Q. 2. Write a précis of the following passage and also suggest a suitable title:

Along with the new revelations of science and psychology there have also occurred distortions of what is being discovered. -Most of the scientists and psychologists have accepted Darwin’s theory of evolution and his observations on “survival of the fittest” as a final word. While enunciating his-postulate on the concept of the fittest, Darwin primarily projected physical force as the main criterion, and remained unmindful of the culture of mind, The psychologist, on the other hand, in his exclusive involvement with the psyche, has overlooked the potential of man’s physical-self and the world outside him. No synthesis has been attempted between the two with the obvious result of the one being sacrificed at the altar of the other. This has given birth to a civilisation which is wholly based on economic considerations, transforming man into a mere “economic being” and limiting, his pleasures and sorrows to sensuous cravings. With the force of his craft and guns, this man of the modern world gave birth to two cannibalistic philosophies, the cunning capitalism and the callous communism. They joined hands to block the evolution of man as a cultural entity, denuding him of the feelings of love, sympathy, and humanness. Technologically, man is immensely powerful; culturally, he is the creature ‘of stoneage, as lustful as ever, and equally ignorant of his destiny. The two world wars and the resultant attitudes display harrowing distortion of the purposes of life and power. In this agonizing situation the Scientist is harnessing forces of nature, placing them at the feet of his country’s leaders, to be used against people in other parts of the world. This state of his servility makes the functions of the scientist appear merely to push humanity to a state of perpetual fear, and lead man to the inevitable destruction as a species with his own inventions and achievements. This irrational situation raises many questions. They concern the role of a scientist, the function of religion, the conduct of politician who is directing the course of history, and the future role of man as a species. There is an obvious mutilation of the purpose of creation, and the relationship .between Cosmos, Life, and Man is hidden from eyes; they have not been viewed collectively.

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CSS Solved Precis 2019

Q. 2. Write a précis of the following passage and also suggest a suitable title:

I think modern educational theorists are inclined to attach too much importance to the negative virtue of not interfering with children, and too little to the positive merit of enjoying their company. If you have the sort of liking for children that many people have for horses or dogs, they will be apt to respond to your suggestions, and to accept prohibitions, perhaps with some good-humoured grumbling, but without resentment. It is no use to have the sort of liking that consists in regarding them as a field for valuable social endeavour, or what amounts to the same thing as an outlet for power-impulses. No child will be grateful for an interest in him that springs from the thought that he will have a vote to be secured for your party or a body to be sacrificed to king and country. The desirable sort of interest is that which consists in spontaneous pleasure in the presence of children, without any ulterior purpose. Teachers who have this quality will seldom need to interfere with children’s freedom, but will be able to do so, when necessary, without causing psychological damage.

Unfortunately, it is utterly impossible for over-worked teachers to preserve an instinctive liking for children; they are bound to come to feel towards them as the proverbial confectioner’s apprentice does towards macaroons. I do not think that education ought to be anyone’s whole profession: it should be undertaken for at most two hours a day by people whose remaining hours are spent away from children. The society of the young is fatiguing, especially when strict discipline is avoided. Fatigue, in the end, produces irritation, which is likely to express itself somehow, whatever theories the harassed teacher may have taught himself or herself to believe. The necessary friendliness cannot be preserved by self-control alone. But where it exists, it should be unnecessary to have rules in advance as to how “naughty” children are to be treated, since impulse is likely to lead to the right decision, and almost any decision will be right if the child feels that you like him. No rules, however wise, are a substitute for affection and tact.

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CSS Solved Precis 2016

Q. 2. Write a précis of the following passage in about 120 words and suggest a suitable title:

During my vacation last May, I had a hard time choosing a tour. Flights to Japan, Hong Kong and Australia are just too common. What I wanted was somewhere exciting and exotic, a place where I could be spared from the holiday tour crowds. I was so happy when John called up, suggesting a trip to Cherokee, a county in the state of Oklahoma. I agreed and went off with the preparation immediately.

We took a flight to Cherokee and visited a town called Qualla Boundary surrounded by magnificent mountain scenery, the town painted a paradise before us. With its Oconaluftee Indian Village reproducing tribal crafts and lifestyles of the 18th century and the outdoor historical pageant Unto These Hills playing six times weekly in the summer nights, Qualla Boundary tries to present a brief image of the Cherokee past to the tourists.

Despite the language barrier, we managed to find our way to the souvenir shops with the help of the natives. The shops were filled with rubber tomahawks and colorful traditional war bonnets, made of dyed turkey feathers. Tepees, coneshaped tents made from animal skin, were also pitched near the shops. “Welcome! Want to get anything?” We looked up and saw a middle-aged man smiling at us. We were very surprised by his fluent English. He introduced himself as George and we ended up chatting till lunch time when he invited us for lunch at a nearby coffee shop.

“Sometimes, I’ve to work from morning to sunset during the tour season. Anyway, this is still better off than being a woodcutter …” Remembrance weighed heavy on George’s mind and he went on to tell us that he used to cut firewood for a living but could hardly make ends meet. We learnt from him that the Cherokees do not depend solely on trade for survival. During the tour off-peak period, the tribe would have to try out other means for income. One of the successful ways is the “Bingo Weekend”. On the Friday afternoons of the Bingo weekends, a large bingo hall was opened, attracting huge crowds of people to the various kinds of games like the Super Jackpot and the Warrior Game Special. According to George, these forms of entertainment fetch them great returns.

Our final stop in Qualla Boundary was at the museum where arts, ranging from the simple hand-woven oak baskets to wood and stone carvings of wolves, ravens and other symbols of Cherokee cosmology are displayed. Back at home, I really missed the place and I would of course look forward to the next trip to another exotic place.

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CSS Solved Precis 2011

Q.2. Make a précis of the given passage and suggest a suitable heading:

The Psychological causes of unhappiness, it is clear, are many and various. But all have something in common. The typical unhappy man is one who having been deprived in youth of some normal satisfaction, has come to value this one kind of satisfaction more than any other, and has, therefore, given to his life a one-sided direction, together with a quite undue emphasis upon the achievement as opposed to the activities connected with it. There is, however, a further development which is very common in the present day. A man may feel so completely thwarted that he seeks no form of satisfaction, but only distraction and oblivion. He then becomes a devotee of “Pleasure”. That is to say, he seeks to make life bearable by becoming less alive. Drunkenness, for example, is temporary suicide; the happiness that it brings is merely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness. The narcissist and the megalomaniac believe that happiness is possible, though they may adopt mistaken means of achieving it; but the man who seeks intoxication, in whatever form, has given up hope except in oblivion. In his case the first thing to be done is to persuade him that happiness is desirable. Men, who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact. Perhaps their pride is like that of the fox who had lost his tail; if so, the way to cure it is to point out to them how they can grow a new tail. Very few men, I believe, will deliberately choose unhappiness if they see a way of being happy. I do not deny that such men exist, but they are not sufficiently numerous to be important. It is common in our day, as it has been in many other periods of the world’s history, to suppose that those among us who are wise have seen through all the enthusiasms of earlier times and have become aware that there is nothing left to live for. The man who hold this view are genuinely unhappy, but they are proud of their unhappiness, which they attribute to the nature of the universe and consider to be the only rational attitude for an enlightened man. Their pride in their unhappiness makes less sophisticated people suspicious of its genuineness; they think that the man who enjoys being miserable is not miserable.

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CSS Solved Precis 2010

Q.2 Write a precis of the following passage in about 100 words and suggest a suitable title.

Of all the characteristics of ordinary human nature envy is the most unfortunate; not only does the envious person wish to inflict misfortune and do so whenever he can with impunity, but he is also himself rendered unhappy by envy. Instead of deriving pleasure from what he has, he derives pain from what others have. If he can, he deprives others of their advantages, which to him is as desirable as it would be to secure the same advantages himself. If this passion is allowed to run riot it becomes fatal to all excellence, and even to the most useful exercise of exceptional skill. Why should a medical man go to see his patients in a car when the labourer has to walk to his work? Why should the scientific investigator be allowed to spend his time in a warm room when others have to face the inclemency of the elements? Why should a man who possesses some rare talent of great importance to the world be saved from the drudgery of his own housework? To such questions envy finds no answer. Fortunately, however, there is in human nature a compensating passion, namely that of admiration. Whoever wishes to increase human happiness must wish to increase admiration and to diminish envy.

What cure is there for envy? For the saint there is the cure of selflessness, though even in the case of saints envy of other saints is by no means impossible. But, leaving saints out of account, the only cure for envy in the case of ordinary men and women is happiness, and the difficulty is that envy is itself a terrible obstacle to happiness.

But the envious man may say: ‘What is the good of telling me that the cure for envy is happiness? I cannot find happiness while I continue to feel envy, and you tell me that I cannot cease to be envious until I find happiness.’ But real life is never so logical as this. Merely to realize the causes of one’s own envious feeling is to take a long step towards curing them.

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CSS Solved Precis 2009

Q.2 Make a precis of the given passage and suggest a suitable heading.

From Plato to Tolstoi art has been accused of exciting our emotions and thus of disturbing the order and harmony of our moral life. “Poetical imagination, according to Plato, waters our experience of lust and anger, of desire and pain, and makes them grow when they ought to starve with drought. “Tolstoi sees in art a source of infection. “Not only in infection,” he says, “a sign of art, but the degree of infectiousness is also the sole measure of excellence in art.” But the flaw in this theory is obvious. Tolstoi suppresses a fundamental moment of art, the moment of form. The aesthetic experience – the experience of contemplation – is a different state of mind from the coolness of our theoretical and the sobriety of our moral judgment. It is filled with the liveliest energies of passion, but passion itself is here transformed both in its nature and in its meaning. Wordsworth defines poetry as “emotion recollected in tranquility”. But the tranquility we feel in great poetry is not that of recollection. The emotions aroused by the poet do not belong to a remote past. They are “here”-alive and immediate. We are aware of their full strength, but this strength tends in a new direction. It is rather seen than immediately felt. Our passions are no longer dark and impenetrable powers; they become, as it were, transparent. Shakespeare never gives us an aesthetic theory. He does not speculate about the nature of art. Yet in the only passage in which he speaks of the character and function of dramatic art the whole stress is laid upon this point. “The purpose of playing,” as Halmet explains, “both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as, twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.” But the image of a passion is not the passion itself. The poet who represents a passion does not infect us with this passion. At a Shakespeare play we are not infected with the ambition of Macbeth, with the cruelty of Richard III, or with the jealousy of Othello. We are not at the mercy of these emotions; we look through them; we seem to penetrate into their very nature and essence. In this respect Shakespeare’s theory of dramatic art, if he had such a theory, is in complete agreement with the conception of the fine arts of the great painters and sculptors.

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CSS Solved Precis 2008

Q.1. Write a précis of the following passage in about 100 words and suggest the title:

Objectives pursued by, organizations should be directed to the satisfaction of demands resulting from the wants of mankind. Therefore, the determination of appropriate objectives for organized activity must be preceded by an effort to determine precisely what their wants are. Industrial organizations conduct market studies to learn what consumer goods should be produced. City Commissions make surveys to ascertain what civic projects would be of most benefit. Highway Commissions conduct traffic counts to learn what constructive programmes should be undertaken. Organizations come into being as a means for creating and exchanging utility. Their success is dependent upon the appropriateness of the series of acts contributed to the system. The majority of these acts is purposeful, that is, they are directed to the accomplishment of some objectives. These acts are physical in nature and find purposeful employment in the alteration of the physical environment. As a result utility is created, which, through the process of distribution, makes it possible for the cooperative system to endure.

Before the Industrial Revolution most cooperative activity was accomplished in small owner managed enterprises, usually with a single decision maker and simple organizational objectives. Increased technology and the growth of industrial organization made necessary the establishment of a hierarchy of objectives. This is turn, required a division of the management function until today a hierarchy of decision makers exists in most organizations.

The effective pursuit of appropriate objectives contributes directly to organizational efficiency. As used here, efficiency is a measure of the want satisfying power of the cooperative system as a whole. Thus efficiency is the summation of utilities received from the organization divided by the utilities given to the organization, as subjectively evaluated by each contributor.

The functions of the management process is the delineation of organizational objectives and the coordination of activity towards the accomplishment of these objectives. The system of coordinated activities must be maintained so that each contributor, including the manager, gains more than he contributes.

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CSS Solved Precis 2007

Q:1 Make a précis of the given passage and suggest a suitable heading.

The author of a work of imagination is trying to effect us wholly, as human beings, whether he knows it or not; and we are affected by it, as human beings, whether we intend to be or not. I suppose that everything we eat has some effect upon us than merely the pleasure of taste and mastication; it affects us during the process of assimilation and digestion; and I believe that exactly the same is true of any thing we read.

The fact that what we read does not concern merely something called our literary taste, but that it affects directly, though only amongst many other influences , the whole of what we are, is best elicited , I think, by a conscientious examination of the history of our individual literary education. Consider the adolescent reading of any person with some literary sensibility. Everyone, I believe, who is at all sensible to the seductions of poetry, can remember some moment in youth when he or she was completely carried away by the work of one poet. Very likely he was carried away by several poets, one after the other. The reason for this passing infatuation is not merely that our sensibility to poetry is keener in adolescence than in maturity. What happens is a kind of inundation, or invasion of the undeveloped personality, the empty (swept and garnished) room, by the stronger personality of the poet. The same thing may happen at a later age to persons who have not done much reading. One author takes complete possession of us for a time; then another, and finally they begin to affect each other in our mind. We weigh one against another; we see that each has qualities absent from others, and qualities incompatible with the qualities of others: we begin to be, in fact, critical: and it is our growing critical power which protects us from excessive possession by anyone literary personality. The good critic- and we should all try to critics, and not leave criticism to the fellows who write reviews in the papers- is the man who, to a keen and abiding sensibility, joins wide and increasingly discriminating. Wide reading is not valuable as a kind of hoarding, and the accumulation of knowledge or what sometimes is meant by the term „a well-stocked mind.‟ It is valuable because in the process of being affected by one powerful personality after another, we cease to be dominated by anyone, or by any small number. The very different views of life, cohabiting in our minds, affect each other, and our own personality asserts itself and gives each a place in some arrangement peculiar to our self.

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CSS Solved Precis 2006

Q:1. Make a précis of the given passage and suggest a suitable heading:

It was not so in Greece, where philosophers professed less, and undertook more. Parmenides pondered nebulously over the mystery of knowledge; but the pre-Socratics kept their eyes with fair consistency upon the firm earth, and sought to ferret out its secrets by observation and experience, rather than to create it by exuding dialectic; there were not many introverts among the Greeks. Picture Democritus, the Laughing Philosopher; would he not be perilous company for the dessicated scholastics who have made the disputes about the reality of the external world take the place of medieval discourses on the number of angles that could sit on the point of a pin? Picture Thales, who met the challenge that philosophers were numskulls by “cornering the market” and making a fortune in a year. Picture Anaxagoras, who did the work of Darwin for the Greeks and turned Pericles form a wire-pulling politician into a thinker and a statesman, Picture old Socrates, unafraid of the sun or the stars, gaily corrupting young men and overturning governments; what would he have done to these bespectacled seedless philosophasters who now litter the court of the once great Queen? To Plato, as to these virile predecessors, epistemology was but the vestibule of philosophy, akin to the preliminaries of love; it was pleasant enough for a while, but it was far from the creative consummation that drew wisdom’s lover on. Here and there in the shorter dialogues, the Master dallied amorously with the problems of perception, thought, and knowledge; but in his more spacious moments he spread his vision over larger fields, built himself ideal states and brooded over the nature and destiny of man. And finally in Aristotle philosophy was honoured in all her boundless scope and majesty; all her mansions were explored and made beautiful with order; here every problem found a place and every science brought its toll to wisdom. These men knew that the function of philosophy was not to bury herself in the obscure retreats of epistemology, but to come forth bravely into every realm of inquiry, and gather up all knowledge for the coordination and illumination of human character and human life.

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CSS Solved Precis 2005

Q1. Make a précis of the given passage and suggest a suitable heading

Basically, psychoses and neuroses represent man’s inability to maintain a balanced or equated polarity in conducting his life. The ego becomes exclusively or decidedly one sided. In psychoses there is a complete collapse of the ego back into the inner recesses of the personal and collective unconsciouses. When he is repressed toward fulfilling some life goal and where he is further unable to sublimate himself toward another goal, man regresses into goal structures not actually acceptable to himself or to the society. Strong emotional sickness of the psychotic type is like having the shadow run wild. The entire psyche regresses to archaic, animal forms of behaviors. In less severe forms of emotional sickness there may be an accentuated and overpowering use of one of the four mental functions at the expense of the other three. Either thinking, feeling, intuiting or seeing may assume such a superior role as to render the other three inoperative. The persona may become so dominant as to create a totally one-sided ego, as in some forms of neurotic behavior. All in all, whatever the type of severity of the emotional disorder, it can be taken as a failure of the psyche to maintain a proper balance between the polarities of life. Essentially, psychoses and neuroses are an alienation of the self from its true goal of self actualization. In this sense the culture is of no consequence. Emotional disorder is not a question of being out of tune with one’s culture so much as it is of being out of tune with one’s self. Consequently, neurosis is more than bizarre behavior, especially as it may be interpreted by contemporaries in the culture. This interpretation avoids the sociological question of what is a mental disorder, since form of behavior which is acceptable in one culture may be considered neurotic in other culture. To Jung, the deviation from cultural norms is not the point. The inability to balance out personal polarities is.

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