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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Spinoza suggest the aim of Biblical language is meant to do?
(a) to compete with Greek mythology
(b) to attract the imagination of popular minds
(c) to conceal great mysteries
(d) to attract intellectuals

2. Where do metaphysics and the nature of God fit into Aristotle's curriculum?
(a) his rhetoric
(b) his theology
(c) his biology
(d) his mathematics

3. In what way is Bacon's reconstruction thought superior to that of Aristotle?
(a) less detailed, evolving slowly
(b) more practical than theoretical
(c) less idealistic and more severe
(d) more flexible for the people

4. What does Voltaire include in his histories?
(a) customs and not laws
(b) society, not just wars
(c) art and not science
(d) people and not dates

5. How is Plato's early life best described?
(a) a comfortable athletic youth and a successful soldier
(b) a playboy and a religious fanatic
(c) a life of poverty and destitution
(d) an idle life and a failure as a soldier

6. What is one result of Aristotle's prolific output of writing?
(a) a definitive answer to all philosophical questions
(b) a need to build larger libraries
(c) an error free reference library
(d) a large amount of errors

7. What biological notion does Aristotle reject?
(a) survival of the fittest
(b) evolution of species
(c) vegetarianism
(d) extinction of species

8. What circumstance does Spinoza say keeps the racial existence of the Jews?
(a) persecution by Christians
(b) Jewish schools of higher education
(c) having no land to call their own
(d) 3,500 years of Jewish tradition

9. When does Plato return to Athens and begin to write?
(a) at the age of thirty while touring the middle east
(b) at the age of fifty in 397 B. C.
(c) at the age of twenty-eight when Socrates dies
(d) at the age of forty in 387 B.C.

10. How does every society and government ruins itself?
(a) by growing tired
(b) by letting down their guard
(c) by being too constrictive
(d) by enabling excess in principle

11. Who suggests that men are at fault because they chose to live in houses in cities?
(a) Bacon
(b) Rousseau
(c) Voltaire
(d) Frederick

12. What is the first of four books written by Spinoza?
(a) The Philosophy of the Ages
(b) The Treatise on Religion and the State
(c) The History of War
(d) The Fall of the Roman Empire

13. What does the Roman empire eventually become?
(a) the Roman Papacy
(b) the world's trade union
(c) the European Union
(d) the Roman Federation

14. What motivates Voltaire to accept Prince Frederick's invitation and travel expenses to join him in his court in Potsdam?
(a) a warrant for his arrest in Paris
(b) an opportunity to learn German
(c) his sorrow after the death of his mistress
(d) his curiosity about German philosophy

15. Although science and philosophy exists in Greece before their times, who were the teachers who greatly advanced the fields?
(a) Aristotle and Onassis
(b) Aristotle and Socrates
(c) Socrates and Plato
(d) Playto and Prothagorus

Short Answer Questions

1. What natural calamity do European religious leaders label as the punishment of God?

2. To answer Rousseau, what satirical story does Voltaire write about the best of all possible worlds?

3. By the thirteenth century A. D., how does the Church unite the European continent?

4. Where is Francois Arouet when he starts using the pen name, Voltaire?

5. What does Aristotle teach at the Lyceum?

(see the answer keys)

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