ACT Reading Practice Test 18

SOCIAL SCIENCE: This passage is adapted from The American Republic: Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny by O.A. Brownson © 1866.

The ancients summed up the whole of human wisdom in the maxim “Know Thyself,” and certainly there is for an individual no more important and no more difficult knowledge, than knowledge of himself.

Line 5 Nations are only individuals on a larger scale. They have a life, an individuality, a reason, a conscience, and instincts of their own, and have the same general laws of development and growth, and, perhaps, of decay, as the individual man. Equally important, and no less

10 difficult than for the individual, is it for a nation to know itself, understand its own existence, powers and faculties, rights and duties, constitution, instincts, tendencies, and destiny. A nation has a spiritual as well as a material existence, a moral as well as a physical

15 existence, and is subjected to internal as well as external conditions of health and virtue, greatness and grandeur, which it must in some measure understand and observe, or become lethargic and infirm, stunted in its growth, and end in premature decay and death.

20 Among nations, no one has more need of full knowledge of itself than the United States, and no one has, to this point, had less. It has hardly had a distinct consciousness of its own national existence, and has lived the naive life of the child, with no severe trial,

25 till the recent civil war, to throw it back on itself and compel it to reflect on its own constitution, its own separate existence, individuality, tendencies, and end. The defection of the slaveholding States, and the fearful struggle that has followed for national unity and

30 integrity, have brought the United States at once to a distinct recognition of itself, and forced it to pass from thoughtless, careless, heedless, reckless adolescence to grave and reflecting manhood. The nation has been suddenly compelled to study itself, and from now

35 on must act from reflection, understanding, science, and statesmanship, not from instinct, impulse, passion, or caprice, knowing well what it does, and why it does it. The change which four years of civil war have wrought in the nation is great, and is sure to give it the

40 seriousness, the gravity, and the dignity it has so far lacked. Though the nation has been brought to a consciousness of its own existence, it has not, even yet, attained a full and clear understanding of its own

45 national constitution. Its vision is still obscured by the floating mists of its earlier morning, and its judgment rendered indistinct and indecisive by the wild theories and fancies of its childhood. The national mind has been quickened, the national heart has been opened,

50 the national disposition prepared, but there remains the important work of dissipating the mists that still linger, of brushing away these wild theories and fancies, and of enabling it to form a clear and intelligent judgment of itself, and a true and just appreciation of

55 its own constitution tendencies. As the individual states have vindicated their national unity and integrity, and are preparing to make a new start in history, nothing is more important than that they should make that new start with a clear and

60 definite view of their national constitution, and with a distinct understanding of their political mission in the future of the world. The citizen who can help his countrymen to do this will render them an important service and deserve well of his country, though he may

65 have been unable to serve in her armies and defend her on the battle-field. The work now to be done by American statesmen is even more difficult and more delicate than that which has been accomplished by our brave armies. As yet the people are hardly better pre-

70 pared for the political work to be done than they were at the outbreak of the civil war for the military work they have so nobly achieved. But, with time, patience, and good-will, the difficulties may be overcome, the errors of the past corrected, and the government placed

75 on the right track for the future.