试题出自试卷《河南省普通专升本《专业英语》真题（2020年）》

Early national concepts of fame differ greatly from their late-twentieth-and early-twenty-first- century equivalents. While today fame suggests little more than notoriety(坏名声)，in the early national period it encompassed an entire ethic(道德规范)。
The concept of fame had particular power among the early national political elite, though its roots reached back to the beginnings of Western civilization; Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, by Plutarch. was a literal guide to gathering fane, describing and ranking a series of heroes who had achieved immortal fame-the highest of goals. In the early American Republic, young gentlemen schooled to find models of personal behavior in Plutarch and other classical texts received this idea from a young age. As Alexander Hamilton put it in The Federalist Papers, “the love of fame” was the “ruling passion of the noblest minds”
As suggested by Plutarch’s image of great men, a man earned fame by doing great deeds for the state. Francis Bacon mapped out a hierarchy of such acts in his widely read The Essays, assigning fame to “fathers of their country” who reigned justly, “champions of the empire” who defended or expanded territories, “saviors of empire” who coped with national crises, lawgivers who governed descendants through their laws, and-highest of all-“founders of states and commonwealths” .For early national leaders engaged in the creation of a new nation, this sensibility infused(注人)their political efforts with a sense of lofty purpose as well as deep personal meaning.
Seekers of fame wanted to make history and leave their mark on the world. America's founding generation assumed that they were doing just that. “We live in an important era and in a new- country,” Benjamin Rush observed in 1788. “Much good may be done by individuals and that too in a short time.” Fame was considered a noble passion because it transformed ambition and self- interest into a desire to achieve great goals that served the public good. Even as fame fueled and inspired a man’s ambitions, it reined them in; one could only achieve everlasting fame through public service. In essence, fame was a selfish virtue, enabling leaders to be simultaneously self- serving and public-minded; in a sense, it humanized the seemingly lofty and unreachable ideal of community-minded republican virtue.
1. From the early national period to today, the idea of fame has changed____.
2. We can learn from Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans____.
3. What does “lofty purpose” (underlined in Paragraph 3) of the early national leaders refer to?
4. Why could leaders be both self-serving and public-minded?
5. What does this passage mainly talk about?