Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:
It is your duty to train and develop your mind and acquire knowledge, as much as you possibly can obtain. Knowledge is like a deep well, fed by perennial springs, and your mind is the little bucket that you drop into it: you will get as much as you can assimilate. The brain, which is the physical organ of the mind, is one of the two precious products of the aeons of evolution, the other is the imponderable 'Social Instinct'. This wonderful Brain, whose every convolution represents millions of years of Time, really distinguishes you from animals. Many animals have very powerful sense organs; the eagle, the ant and the dog have keener sense of sight than Man. But no animal has a more evolved Brain and Higher intelligence. If you do not develop and use this Brain to the utmost of your power, you are more akin to the beasts than to Homo sapiens.
Knowledge and mental self-culture confer untold blessings upon you. You will not be the victim of superstition and demagogy in religion and politics, not to be doped and duped by the priests and politicians of capitalism and so called Socialism: is this not a noble aim worth striving for? Most men and women today are not free and wise.
They are fleeced and fooled on account of their ignorance. Half the ills of man are due to ignorance.
The passage compares our mind to a little bucket. It does so because:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → our brain as the physical organ of our mind is capable of accepting and storing the information we acquire from life
The passage compares knowledge to a deep well and the mind to "the little bucket that you drop into it", adding that you will get as much as you can assimilate. A bucket draws water and holds it; in the same way the mind takes in knowledge and keeps it. The comparison is about receiving and storing knowledge, which is what this option says.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: our brain is designed like a bucket to store the water needed by our metabolism — Incorrect. Wrong link: the "water" in the comparison stands for knowledge; the passage says nothing about water for the body's metabolism.
Option 3: the shape of our brain is like that of a bucket — Incorrect. Wrong link: the comparison is about the mind's use, not the brain's shape.
Option 4: the brain has a bucket like cavity for storage of physical matter — Incorrect. Not mentioned: the passage speaks of storing knowledge, not physical matter, and mentions no such cavity.