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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What "call" does Mencken make to America's poets in Chapter 7?
(a) He wishes them to speak upon the beauty of the female figure.
(b) He wishes them to burn all of their poems and drown themselves.
(c) He wishes them to rewrite Ode to a Grecian Urn.
(d) He wishes them to write a funeral service for the damned.

2. What comparison does Mencken make between man and animal in Chapter 1?
(a) The only thing man cannot do that animal can is fly.
(b) Man in every way has faculties that are superior to animals.
(c) The faculties of animal and man precisely balance when taken as a whole.
(d) Many animals have superior faculties to man.

3. What does Mencken believe about the universality of morality?
(a) Morality is universal, and differences between moral systems are small.
(b) Morality is specific to regions of the world.
(c) Morality depends upon the language one speaks.
(d) Morality is specific to a particular individual.

4. What period in history does Mencken refer to as "New Deal No. 1"?
(a) Britain in the 1910s.
(b) France in the 1840s.
(c) America in the 1770s.
(d) North Africa in the 1900s.

5. What is the relationship between free will and morality?
(a) Free will has no relationship to morality.
(b) Free will creates several difficulties for morality.
(c) Free will and morality work hand in hand in a positive way.
(d) Free will is the cause as well as the effect of morality.

Short Answer Questions

1. In Chapter 7, Mencken notes that there are too few books written about what subject?

2. What kind of men does a democracy produce?

3. What is the "altruist" motivated by?

4. What aspect of Lincoln's historical persona does Mencken doubt, or at least question?

5. Mencken compares Theodore Roosevelt's political ideas to which other politician's?

Short Essay Questions

1. Discuss Mencken's history of democracy. Before it arrived, what did people think of democracy? How was it conceived? How did it evolve?

2. What is the degree of women's "civility" according to Mencken? How does emotion factor in to civility?

3. What is the average person's opinion of government, according to Mencken?

4. Who is Professor Thorstein Veblen, and what is Mencken's opinion of him and his work?

5. Is morality necessary in Mencken's view? How many people are moral people? Is there a good and evil, or is that a human-created concept?

6. What does Mencken feel about the relationship between science and religion?

7. What is Mencken's opinion of the contemporary American South? What are its features? What rules the South?

8. Summarize Mencken's appraisal of William Jennings Bryan. How is Mencken's opinion related to the Scopes Monkey Trial?

9. What does Mencken have to say about politicians? What kind of people are they? How do they operate?

10. What is the origin of morality according to Mencken?

(see the answer keys)

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