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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. On what does Spencer say the soul of men living humble and precarious lives relies?
(a) more on reality than on possibility
(b) more on future hope than reality
(c) more on guidence than education
(d) more on mythology than on science

2. As Russell visits China, he develops new perspectives and better understanding of a profounder culture to what effect?
(a) his mathematical formula is proven
(b) his philosophic systems loosen
(c) his habits change
(d) his curiosity grows

3. What is Schopenhauer's masterpiece?
(a) The Will of Man
(b) The Idea of the World
(c) The Fall of Rome
(d) The World as Will and Idea

4. How does Schopenhauer say people rationalize the things they acquire?
(a) only wanting things that have a built in reason
(b) reasons are manufactured to suit the climate
(c) a need to keep current in a changing world
(d) reasons are found after getting what is wanted or willed

5. In what work does Spencer freely express his best ideas with suggestive generalization and political philosophy?
(a) The Evolution of Thought
(b) The Evolution of Society
(c) The Evolution of Life
(d) The Evolution of Mind

6. What is needed by a strong man who seeks intensity and experience at the cost of tragic woe?
(a) altruism
(b) assistance
(c) pessimism
(d) optimism

7. Whose mission is it to save religion from reason and science from skepticism?
(a) Kant's
(b) Voltaire's
(c) Berkeley's
(d) Rousseau's

8. Where does Schopenhauer go to write a doctoral dissertation in philosophy?
(a) the library
(b) the university
(c) the country
(d) the monastery

9. What does Kant set out to prove is innate and does not come from experience?
(a) moral sense
(b) common sense
(c) directional sense
(d) religious sense

10. Why does Schopenhauer's book receive little attention at first?
(a) the publisher prints only a few copies
(b) people have grown tired of reading philosophies
(c) Europe is too poor and exhausted to read about its own condition
(d) nobody recognizes the name of Schopenhauer

11. How does the German Bismarck eliminate Europe's delusions, democracy, and ideals?
(a) recognizing that nations have different philosophies
(b) recognizing that nations now aid one another
(c) recognizing that nations are not autonimous.
(d) recognizing that nations do not share altruism

12. What is the irony of Kant's quiet Prussian life relative to Voltaire's Parisian life?
(a) both of them lack credibility in their day
(b) both of them become quite wealthy
(c) both of them get into trouble with their governments
(d) both of them live in exile

13. What becomes the Gospel on which Nietzsche's other works comment?
(a) Zarathustra
(b) himself
(c) Wagner
(d) Schopenhauer

14. What does Schopenhauer suggest is a deception of nature that disillusions?
(a) marriage and happiness
(b) education and marriage
(c) love and marriage
(d) beauty and happiness

15. Instead of God and heaven, what does Spencer define as life?
(a) equilibration and dissolution
(b) confusion and evolution
(c) desperation and satisfaction
(d) regulation and manumission

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Spencer label as the art of methodical self-confusion?

2. With what famous composer does does Nietzsche study the piano?

3. Where does Spencer say that Religion is central?

4. What does the publisher of Schopenhauer's book eventually tell him?

5. What does Spencer call a rationalizing myth for belief that defies conception?

(see the answer keys)

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