The following text is from H.G. Wells' 1898 novel
The War of the Worlds.
No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable.
It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.
Which choice best states the function of the underlined portion in the text as a whole?
Correct
Incorrect
When identifying the author's reason for including a portion of the passage, consider the structure of the entire passage. Here, the text starts with a discussion of how alien life was once considered "impossible or improbable." In the underlined portion, the narrator mentions how "curious" some of the ideas in "those departed days" were. However, nothing specific is listed until the next sentence, which discusses how humans might have "fancied" the existence of Martians and how they were "inferior" to humans. With that in mind, predict what function the underlined portion might serve: it establishes that people used to have funny ideas about the Martians, without giving details. This best fits (D).
Choice (A) is incorrect because the focus is on humans and what they once believed. (B) is incorrect because no contrast exists; in fact, the underlined sentence builds upon the ideas of the previous sentence. Choice (C) is incorrect as the text does not offer specific examples until the subsequent sentence.
