All men are snobs about something. One is almost tempted to add: There is nothing about which men cannot feel snobbish. But this would doubtless be an exaggeration. There are certain disfiguring and mortal diseases about which there has probably never been any snobbery. I cannot imagine for example, that there are any leprosy-snobs. More picturesque diseases, even when they are dangerous, and less dangerous diseases, particularly when they are the diseases of the rich, can be and very frequently are a source of snobbish self-importance. I have met several adolescent consumption-snobs, who thought that it would be romantic to fade away in the flower of youth, like Keats or Marie Bashkirtseff. Alas, the final stages of the consumptive fading are generally a good deal less romantic than these ingenuous young tubercle-snobs seem to imagine. To anyone who has actually witnessed these final stages, the complacent poeticizing of those adolescents must seem as exasperating as they are profoundly pathetic. In the case of those commoner disease-snobs, whose claim to distinction is that they suffer from one of the maladies of the rich, exasperation is not tempered by very much sympathy. People who possess sufficient leisure, sufficient wealth, not to mention sufficient health, to go travelling from spa to spa, from doctor to fashionable doctor, in search of cures from problematical diseases (which, in so far as they exist at all, probably have their source in overeating) cannot expect us to be very lavish in our solicitude and pity. - Aldous Huxley
What snobbery does the author see and often meet in the adolescents?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → consumption – snobbery
The writer says: "I have met several adolescent consumption-snobs", young people who thought it would be romantic to fade away in the flower of youth, like Keats. Consumption is an old name for tuberculosis, and he also calls these young people "tubercle-snobs". So the snobbery he meets in adolescents is consumption-snobbery.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: modernity – snobbery — Incorrect. Not mentioned: Modernity means the quality of being modern, or new ways of living and thinking. The passage says nothing about anyone feeling proud of being modern; the adolescents are proud of a disease.
Example: The old city blends tradition with modernity.
Option 2: beauty – snobbery — Incorrect. Not mentioned: the passage says nothing about pride in good looks. The only diseases linked with appearance are the disfiguring ones, about which, the writer says, there has probably never been any snobbery.
Option 3: snobbery of ignorance — Incorrect. Wrong link: Ignorance means lack of knowledge or information. The young snobs do not know how painful the last stages of consumption are, but their snobbery is about the disease, not a pride in not knowing things.
Example: His ignorance of the rules cost the team a penalty.