INTELLECT
AND SEX
Improving your
vocabulary will make the most significant improvement in
your GRE score. Check your understanding of the following underlined
GRE-type words. If you can't give a dictionary definition of a word, look it
up, learn its parts, and add it to your list of words to study.
Unlike the Greeks
whom we so admire, with our lips for their taste and their reason, we make
no provision in society for the bacchanalian part of being. We do not know how to laugh or
revel. We are serious thinkers or serious alcoholics. We read Freud's Civilization and Its
Discontents and approve but do not heed. The Middle Ages, for all their fits of puritanism
and
supposed fears of eternal punishment, knew how to wash away anxiety in laughter and make
room in civilization for the Dionysiac, as well as for its sublimation in work. We have
lost all
three forms of release and can only look for "relaxation," wondering why we are timid and
tired, afraid of power, and looking for shelter in little huts--art, the home, the religions of the
East--like sufferers from agoraphobia.
The relation of
work to the Dionysiac naturally suggests another relation--that of Intellect to
sex. It can be said that a chief hindrance to the development of Intellect in the young is the
incoherence of our sexual morality. It bedevils them by enjoying prolonged continence,
yet
subjects them also to guilt by tolerating inelegant substitutes and furtive infractions--attaching
always, and enforcing at times, dire penalties to the crime of being found out. In a word, we
show the young in every way that on this subject mental chaos rules. Science itself, allied to
advertising and cultural snobbery, has complicated the fulfillment of the sexual instinct by the
pedantry of "technique," only to find this destructive of the pleasure it was meant
to enhance; so
that after a quarter-century of profitable pontificating and book-selling at the expense of
mortified couples, the new wisdom advises the burning of the books.
FOURTEEN COMMON
PREFIXES AND ROOTS
Over 10,000 common
and a total of about 100,000 English words can be made from a
combination of these master word parts. They are found over and over in our language and
stand as proof that by learning a short list of important recurring prefixes and roots, the student
can unlock part or all of many words.
|
PREFIX
|
ROOT
|
WORD
|
|
1. Pre
(before)
|
capere;
capt, cap, cept (take, seize)
|
1.
PRECEPT
|
|
2. De
(away from)
|
tener;
ten, tent, tin, tain (hold, have)
|
2.
DETAIN
|
|
3. Inter
(between)
|
mittere: mit,
miss (send)
|
3.
INTERMITTENT
|
|
4. Ob
(against)
|
stare:
sta, sis, sti (stand)
|
4.
OBSTINATE
|
|
5. In
(into)
|
ferre; fer
(bear, yield, carry)
|
5.
INFER
|
|
6. Mono
(one)
|
graphein: graph
(write)
|
6.
MONOGRAPH
|
|
7. Epi
(upon)
|
legein:
leg, lig, lect, log (say, study of)
|
7.
EPILOGUE
|
|
8. A; ad
(to, towards)
|
specere:
spec, spic, spect (see)
|
8.
ASPECT
|
|
9. Un
(not) com (together)
|
plicare: plic,
pli, ply (to fold, bend)
|
9.
UNCOMPLICATED
|
|
10. Non
(not) ex (out of)
|
tendere: tend,
tens, tent (stretch)
|
10.
NONEXTENDED
|
|
11. Re (again,
back)
pro (forward)
|
ducere:
duc, duct (lead)
|
11.
REPRODUCTION
|
|
12. In (not)
dis (apart from)
|
ponere: pos,
pon (place, put)
|
12.
INDISPOSED
|
|
13. Over
(above)
sub (under)
|
facere:
fac, fec, fic, fact (do, make, put)
|
13.
OVERSUFFICIENT
|
|
14. Mis
(wrong)
trans (across, beyond)
|
scribere: scrib,
script (write)
|
14.
MISTRANSCRIBE
|
1. readin'
