Passage (Thomas Babington Macaulay, "Milton," *Edinburgh Review*, August 1825): "We think that, as civilisation advances, poetry almost necessarily declines. Therefore, though we fervently admire those great works of imagination which have appeared in dark ages, we do not admire them the more because they have appeared in dark ages. On the contrary, we hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilised age. We cannot understand why those who believe in that most orthodox article of literary faith, that the earliest poets are generally the best, should wonder at the rule as if it were the exception. Surely the uniformity of the phaenomenon indicates a corresponding uniformity in the cause. The fact is, that common observers reason from the progress of the experimental sciences to that of imitative arts. The improvement of the former is gradual and slow. Ages are spent in collecting materials, ages more in separating and combining them. Even when a system has been formed, there is still something to add, to alter, or to reject. Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages. In these pursuits, therefore, the first speculators lie under great disadvantages, and, even when they fail, are entitled to praise. Their pupils, with far inferior intellectual powers, speedily surpass them in actual attainments. Any intelligent man may now, by resolutely applying himself for a few years to mathematics, learn more than the great Newton knew after half a century of study and meditation." Macaulay introduces the discussion of the experimental sciences primarily in order to:
Aargue that scientific progress proves that the arts must also accumulate over time.
Bconcede that mathematicians and natural philosophers have outpaced poets in recent centuries.
Cintroduce Newton as the chief example of a poetic genius in a scientific age.
Dillustrate the kind of cumulative progress whose model, he argues, common observers mistakenly extend to poetry.
Answer & Solution
Correct answer: D. illustrate the kind of cumulative progress whose model, he argues, common observers mistakenly extend to poetry.
Macaulay frames the science discussion with "common observers reason from the progress of the experimental sciences to that of imitative arts" — i.e. he is naming a mistaken inference his readers commonly make. He then describes how science *actually* progresses (cumulatively, across generations) so the reader sees the model his opponents are illegitimately extending to poetry.
- **A** is the *opposite* — Macaulay introduces the science contrast to *deny* this analogy.
- **C** would be a concession that the passage does not make; Macaulay is talking about *kinds* of progress, not relative achievements.
- **D** misuses Newton, who appears as an example of how today's students can surpass yesterday's geniuses *in science* — not as a poet at all.
The rhetorical move (set up the opposing inference → show its source → reject it) is a recurring GRE structure.
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