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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. The author accuses the young man of hardening his mind to what?
(a) Lusting after women day and night.
(b) The existence of right and wrong.
(c) To interpret all existence in aesthetic categories.
(d) Frittering away his intellectual life.

2. If one can "lose the whole world" without damaging one's soul, the author of the letter asserts, then what must "one's soul" prove to be?
(a) One's soul must prove to far vaster and more powerful than every healthy marriage in Denmark.
(b) One's soul cannot possibly exist.
(c) One's soul must be some supernatural forcefield.
(d) One's soul must prove to be indifferent to all the finite things in one's immediacy.

3. What is the ethical according to the author?
(a) The ethical is that by which a person spontaneously is what he is.
(b) The ethical is that with which a person punishes a person who misbehaves.
(c) The ethical is a mystery that is fundamentally unknowable.
(d) The ethical is that by which a person becomes what he becomes.

4. What does the author call a poet-existence?
(a) A delight.
(b) A sin.
(c) A drag.
(d) A sacrifice.

5. What does the author urge the young man to do with his "droll fancies"?
(a) Keep them.
(b) Ignore them.
(c) Rid himself of them.
(d) Pass them on to the object of his affection.

6. What does the author call the young man's condition of despair?
(a) Ironic.
(b) Fortunate.
(c) Lively.
(d) Propitious.

7. What happens to choice if one admits meditation according to the author?
(a) If one admits meditation, absolute choice ceases to be meditation.
(b) There is no absolute choice unless one admits meditation.
(c) If one admits meditation, there is no effect whatsoever on absolute choice.
(d) If one admits meditation, then there is no absolute choice.

8. According to the author how does philosophy view history?
(a) Philosophy sees history under the category of freedom.
(b) Philosophy sees history under the category of necessity.
(c) Philosophy sees history under the category of mathematics.
(d) Philosophy sees history under the category of meteorology.

9. What does the author say the young man's attitude toward ethics is?
(a) The author says the young man finds ethics fascinating.
(b) The author says the young man despises ethics.
(c) The author says the young man is not ordinarily disdainful of ethics.
(d) The author says the young man finds ethics amusing.

10. What does the author claim he has never passed himself off as?
(a) A philosopher.
(b) A poet.
(c) A cabinet maker.
(d) A cobbler.

11. According to the author, what is love itself?
(a) A myth.
(b) The aesthetic.
(c) An illusion.
(d) The easy path.

12. What does the author say is "the last to be satisfied"?
(a) The stomach.
(b) The heart.
(c) The eye.
(d) The ear.

13. What does the author say is another way to articulate the importance of living aesthetically?
(a) One must marry well.
(b) One must find the truth.
(c) One must enjoy life.
(d) One must destroy life.

14. What kind of person does the author say the young man is like?
(a) A deaf person.
(b) A dying person.
(c) A flying person.
(d) A mute person.

15. Why does the author say he fights for Either/Or in his letter to the young man?
(a) For money.
(b) For beauty.
(c) For freedom.
(d) For fidelity.

Short Answer Questions

1. What relationship does the author assert between the substance one uses to become intoxicated and how difficult the habit of intoxicating oneself is to cure?

2. What is the author's attitude toward scholarship?

3. To what does he assert he sacrifices his life?

4. Why do the author's two Englishmen travel to Arabia?

5. How does the concept the author mentions act on him?

(see the answer keys)

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