Few doctor have any time for the study of philosophy, for their profession is an exacting one, and it is all they can do to keep abreast of its advances. What is true of Medical Science is also true of the whole civilized world. Men at present are so engrossed in their various occupations, in manufacturing goods, in buying and selling. in accumulating wealth or in struggling merely to maintain themselves that they have no time left to wonder what living is all about.
The expression that "their profession is an exacting one" is the best described by which one of the following statements?
- Doctors have to be very precise in their work
- Medical Science is a well-defined subject
- Doctors have a challenging job with hardly any spare time
- Medical Science is a more exact subject than philosophy
The Correct Option is C
Solution and Explanation
The question requires us to determine which statement best describes the expression "their profession is an exacting one." This phrase implies that the profession in question—being a doctor—is demanding and leaves little room for personal time or other pursuits.
- Understanding the Context:
The provided comprehension passage highlights that doctors, due to their demanding profession, find it challenging to devote time to other pursuits, such as studying philosophy. This suggests that their job requires significant dedication and effort. - Analyzing the Options:
- Option A: "Doctors have to be very precise in their work" – While precision is important in the medical profession, the statement "exacting" emphasizes the demanding nature of the profession rather than precision alone.
- Option B: "Medical Science is a well-defined subject" – This option is unrelated to the statement in question, as the focus is on the demanding nature of the profession, not how well-defined the field is.
- Option C: "Doctors have a challenging job with hardly any spare time" – This directly aligns with the context provided in the passage. The word "exacting" signifies the demanding and time-consuming nature of being a doctor.
- Option D: "Medical Science is a more exact subject than philosophy" – Although it compares medical science with philosophy, it does not address the demands placed on doctors.
- Conclusion:
Based on the analysis, the correct statement that best describes "their profession is an exacting one" is Option C: "Doctors have a challenging job with hardly any spare time." This clearly aligns with the statement's implication that the job demands a significant amount of dedication and leaves no free time.
The expression "it is all they can do" in the first sentence conveys the idea of all that
- doctor can manage to do
- philosophers say is good for man
- doctors are expected to do
- people today are willing to do
The Correct Option is A
Solution and Explanation
The given comprehension passage discusses the challenges faced by doctors and individuals in general concerning their busy lives. The phrase "it is all they can do" focuses on the limitations experienced by doctors. Let's analyze why the correct answer is "doctor can manage to do" and eliminate the incorrect options.
- Understanding the context: The passage highlights how doctors, due to the demands of their profession, barely have time to keep up with advancements in medical science. This statement, "it is all they can do," signifies the maximum effort doctors can extend, suggesting their capacity is stretched to its limits due to the workload.
-
Analyzing the options:
- Option 1: Doctor can manage to do - This option accurately captures the sentiment expressed in the passage. It implies that doctors are doing the best they can under the constraints of their profession. This is the correct choice.
- Option 2: Philosophers say is good for man - This doesn't align with the passage context. The discussion isn't about philosophical ideals or the general good for humans but the workload of doctors.
- Option 3: Doctors are expected to do - While this could reasonably relate to expectations, it fails to capture the essence of limitation signified by "it is all they can do." The phrase suggests effort capacity rather than societal expectations.
- Option 4: People today are willing to do - This option shifts the focus away from doctors to a broader, unspecified group, which misinterprets the specific reference to doctors within the passage.
- Conclusion: The expression "it is all they can do" highlights the extent of the doctors' efforts, pointing to their maximum possible exertion in keeping up with advances in their field. Therefore, the correct answer is "doctor can manage to do," as this aligns with the limitation and effort described.
The author compares medical profession with various other occupation in order to show that
- Doctors are much more busy than people in other occupations
- Doctor had to read a great deal online people in other occupations
- The study of philosophy is particularly important to doctors
- People in their occupations have no more time to study philosophy than doctors have
The Correct Option is D
Solution and Explanation
The question asks us to determine why the author compares the medical profession with other occupations based on the provided passage.
Let's break down the passage:
The author mentions that doctors have limited time for philosophy due to the demanding nature of their profession. This idea is extended to the general situation in the civilized world, where people are so occupied with their professions (manufacturing, business, etc.) that they, too, lack time for philosophical pursuits.
Analyzing the Options:
- Doctors are much more busy than people in other occupations: The passage highlights the busyness of all professions, not just doctors specifically being busier.
- Doctor had to read a great deal online people in other occupations: The passage doesn't emphasize online reading or compare it between professions.
- The study of philosophy is particularly important to doctors: While philosophy is mentioned, the passage points out the overall lack of time for its study, not its specific importance to doctors.
- People in their occupations have no more time to study philosophy than doctors have: This mirrors the passage's message that people across various occupations are similarly lacking time for philosophical pursuits due to their professional commitments.
Conclusion: Option 4 correctly captures the author's comparison of medical and other occupations. The passage suggests that just like doctors, people in other professions have little time for philosophy, emphasizing a common theme of professional busy-ness.
Top Questions on Reading Comprehension
- Acrucial moderating factor in how people experience comparisons is self-esteem. Individuals with high self-esteem are more likely to interpret upward comparison as informative rather than threatening. They are more resilient in the face of others’ success and more likely to believe they can reach their own goals. In contrast, people with low self-esteem are more prone to interpret comparison as judgment, reinforcing negative self-views and triggering feelings of inadequacy.
This dynamic creates a self-reinforcing loop. People with high self-esteem are less vulnerable to upward comparison, which intensifies those doubts. Those with a secure sense of self are more likely to use comparison as a learning tool. The same external stimulus—a colleague’s achievements, a friend’s popularity—can have radically different effects depending on internal stability.
Self-esteem also influences how people choose their comparison targets. Research has found that individuals often engage in “selective comparison,” seeking out those who confirm their existing beliefs about themselves. This can become a subtle form of self-sabotage. Someone who feels unworthy may subconsciously seek out targets that reinforce that sense, perpetuating a narrative of inferiority. One of the most promising antidotes to social comparison is temporal comparison—evaluating oneself not against others, but against one’s own past. This method has been shown to increase motivation and satisfaction, especially when individuals can see concrete progress. Temporal comparison activates the same reward circuits as social comparison but avoids the threat systems associated with social ranking. It also reinforces agency: individuals focus on what they can control and improve rather than what others control. In therapeutic and coaching settings, temporal comparison is used to help clients build self-efficacy and track growth over time.
Moreover, people who focus on self-improvement rather than social dominance are less likely to fall into cycles of envy or self-pity. They can still use others as inspiration, but they do so without attaching their self-worth to the outcome. This is not to say they never compare—but that they focus on learning, rather than judgment. The most skilful approach to comparison may lie in eliminating it, but in reframing it as feedback. When we interpret comparison as information rather than a verdict, we can ask, “What can I learn from this?” This shift turns comparison into a growth tool. Teachers mentor their students, not as rivals. Psychologists emphasize that the key variable here is mindset.
A fixed mindset sees comparison as a threat. If someone else is better, it means we are worse. A growth mindset sees comparison as a map. If someone else has reached a certain level, it means the path exists. This reframing is not just a cognitive trick. It changes the emotional tone of comparison, making it more likely to inspire than to wound. Reframing also requires emotional regulation—the ability to notice an initial pang of envy or shame without reacting impulsively. With practice, individuals can learn to pause, reflect, and reinterpret their emotional responses. Over time, this builds resilience and self-trust, allowing comparison to become a learning tool rather than a cage.- XAT - 2026
- Verbal and Logical Ability
- Reading Comprehension
When people who are talking don’t share the same culture, knowledge, values, and assumptions, mutual understanding can be especially difficult. Such understanding is possible through the negotiation of meaning. To negotiate meaning with someone, you have to become aware of and respect both the differences in your backgrounds and when these differences are important. You need enough diversity of cultural and personal experience to be aware that divergent world views exist and what they might be like. You also need the flexibility in world view, and a generous tolerance for mistakes, as well as a talent for finding the right metaphor to communicate the relevant parts of unshared experiences or to highlight the shared experiences while demphasizing the others. Metaphorical imagination is a crucial skill in creating rapport and in communicating the nature of unshared experience. This skill consists, in large measure, of the ability to bend your world view and adjust the way you categorize your experiences. Problems of mutual understanding are not exotic; they arise in all extended conversations where understanding is important.
When it really counts, meaning is almost never communicated according to the CONDUIT metaphor, that is, where one person transmits a fixed, clear proposition to another by means of expressions in a common language, where both parties have all the relevant common knowledge, assumptions, values, etc. When the chips are down, meaning is negotiated: you slowly figure out what you have in common, what it is safe to talk about, how you can communicate unshared experience or create a shared vision. With enough flexibility in bending your world view and with luck and charity, you may achieve some mutual understanding.
Communication theories based on the CONDUIT metaphor turn from the pathetic to the evil when they are applied indiscriminately on a large scale, say, in government surveillance or computerized files. There, what is most crucial for real understanding is almost never included, and it is assumed that the words in the file have meaning in themselves—disembodied, objective, understandable meaning. When a society lives by the CONDUITmetaphor on a large scale, misunderstanding, persecution, and much worse are the likely products.- XAT - 2026
- Verbal and Logical Ability
- Reading Comprehension
Later, I realized that reviewing the history of nuclear physics served another purpose as well: It gave the lie to the naive belief that the physicists could have come together when nuclear fission was discovered (in Nazi Germany!) and agreed to keep the discovery a secret, thereby sparing humanity such a burden. No. Given the development of nuclear physics up to 1938, development that physicists throughout the world pursued in all innocence of any intention of finding the engine of a new weapon of mass destruction—only one of them, the remarkable Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, took that possibility seriously—the discovery of nuclear fission was inevitable. To stop it, you would have had to stop physics. If German scientists hadn’t made the discovery when they did, French, American, Russian, Italian, or Danish scientists would have done so, almost certainly within days or weeks. They were all working at the same cutting edge, trying to understand the strange results of a simple experiment bombarding uranium with neutrons. Here was no Faustian bargain, as movie directors and other naifs still find it intellectually challenging to imagine. Here was no evil machinery that the noble scientists might hide from the problems and the generals. To the contrary, there was a high insight into how the world works, an energetic reaction, older than the earth, that science had finally devised the instruments and arrangements to coart forth. “Make it seem inevitable,” Louis Pasteur used to advise his students when they prepared to write up their discoveries. But it was. To wish that it might have been ignored or suppressed is barbarous. “Knowledge,” Niels Bohr once noted, “is itself the basis for civilization.” You cannot have the one without the other; the one depends upon the other. Nor can you have only benevolent knowledge; the scientific method doesn’t filter for benevolence. Knowledge has consequences, not always intended, not always comfortable, but always welcome. The earth revolves around the sun, not the sun around the earth. “It is a profound and necessary truth,” Robert Oppenheimer would say, “that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them.”
...Bohr proposed once that the goal of science is not universal truth. Rather, he argued, the modest but relentless goal of science is “the gradual removal of prejudices.” The discovery that the earth revolves around the sun has gradually removed the prejudice that the earth is the center of the universe. The discovery of microbes is gradually removing the prejudice that disease is a punishment from God. The discovery of evolution is gradually removing the prejudice that Homo sapiens is a separate and special creation.- XAT - 2026
- Verbal and Logical Ability
- Reading Comprehension
As the post–World War II generation of liberal democratic leaders forged new, highly successful domestic and international institutions and policies throughout the West, the weaknesses of liberal democracy that dominated the two decades after World War II faded from view. But they did not go away.
First, because liberal democracy restrains majorities, it slows the achievement of goals that majorities support. This generates frustration with institutional restraints, and an unacknowledged envy of authoritarian systems that can act quickly and decisively. China can build huge cities in the time it takes the United States to review the environmental impact of small highway projects. Liberal democracy requires more patience than many possess. Second, liberal democracy requires tolerance for minority views and ways of life to which many citizens are deeply opposed. It is natural to feel that if we consider certain views or ways of life to be odious, we should use public power to suppress them. In many such cases, liberal democracy restrains this impulse, a psychological burden that some will find unbearable.
This leads directly to the third inherent problem of liberal democracy—the distinction it requires us to make between civic identity and personal or group identity. For example, although we may consider certain religious views false and even dangerous, we must, for civic purposes, accept those who hold these views as our equals. They may freely express these views; they may organize to promote them; they may vote, and their votes are given the same weight as ours. The same goes for race, ethnicity, gender, and all the particularities that distinguish us from one another.
This requirement often goes against the grain of natural sentiments. We want the public sphere to reflect what we find most valuable about our private commitments. Liberal democracy prevents us from fully translating our personal identities into our public lives as citizens. This too is not always easy to bear. The quest for wholeness—for a political community, or even a world, that reflects our most important commitments—is a deep yearning to which liberal leaders can always appeal.
Nor is the fourth inherent difficulty of liberal democracy—the necessity of compromise—easy to bear. If what I want is good and true, why should I agree that public decisions must incorporate competing views? James Madison gives us the answer: in circumstances of liberty, diversity of views is inevitable, and unless those who agree with us form a majority so large as to be irresistible, the alternative to compromise is inaction, which is often more damaging, or oppression, which always is.- XAT - 2026
- Verbal and Logical Ability
- Reading Comprehension
Beware of the old newspapers
stacked
on that little three legged stool over there.
Don’t disturb them.
I know it for a fact
that snakes have spawned in between these sheets.
Don’t even look in that direction.
It’s not because of breeze
that their corners are fluttering.
It’s alive, that nest of newspapers.
new born snakes, coiling and uncurling,
are turning their heads to look at you.
That white corner has spread its hood.
A forked tongue
shoots out of its mouth.
Keep your eyes closed.
Get rid of the whole goddamn pile if you
want to
in the morning.- XAT - 2026
- Verbal and Logical Ability
- Reading Comprehension
Questions Asked in CMAT exam
- A "Febian Entrepreneur" is a term used to describe a type of entrepreneur who focuses on gradual and steady growth rather than rapid scaling. Which of the following best describes the approach of a Febian Entrepreneur?
- CMAT - 2025
- Current Affairs
- The Lean Startup methodology, popularized by Eric Ries, emphasizes a cycle of building, measuring, and learning to create successful products efficiently. Which of the following is a key principle of the Lean Startup approach?
- CMAT - 2025
- Current Affairs
- Dudhwa National Park, known for its rich biodiversity and tiger conservation efforts, is located in which Indian state?
- CMAT - 2025
- Current Affairs
- The first CDS (Chief of Defence Staff) of India was appointed to enhance coordination and integration among the three branches of the Indian Armed Forces. Who was the first CDS of India?
- CMAT - 2025
- Current Affairs
- A clock is set at 8 am. It loses 10 minutes every 24 hours. What will be the true time when the clock shows 11 am?
- CMAT - 2025
- Logical and Analytical Reasoning Skills