原文: 

It is  perhaps  no accident that many of the outstanding figures of the past were exceptionally versatile men. Right up until comparatively recent times, it was possible  for an intelligent person to acquaint himself with almost every branch of knowledge. Thus  men of genius like Leonardo Da Vinci or Sir Philip Sidney  engaged in many careers at once as a matter of course. Da Vinci was so busy with his numerous inventions that he barely found the time to complete his paintings; Sidney  who died in battle when he was only thirty-two years old  was not only a great soldier but a brilliant scholar and poet as well. Both these men came very near to fulfilling the Renaissance ideal(文艺复兴时期的典型) of the “universal man”  the man who was proficient as everything.
  
Today  we rarely  if ever  hear that a musician has just invented a new type of submarine. Knowledge has become divided and sub-divided into countless  narrowlydefined compartments. The specialist is venerated(受尊敬的); the versatile person  far from being admired  is more often regarded with suspicion. The modern world is a world of highly-skilled “experts” who have had to devote the greater part of their lives to a very limited field of study in order to compete with their fellows.
  
With this high degree of specialization  the frontiers of knowledge are steadily being pushed back more rapidly than ever before. But this has not been achieved without considerable cost. The scientist  who outside his own particular subject is little more than a moron(低能者)  is a modern phenomenon; as is the man of letters who is barely aware of the tremendous strides that have been made in technology. Similarly  specialization has indirectly affected quite ordinary people in every walk of life. Many activities which were once pursued for their own sakes  are often given up in despair: they require techniques  the experts tell us  which take a life-time to master. Why learn to play the piano  when you can listen to the world's greatest pianists in your own drawing-room?
  
Little by little  we are becoming more and more isolated from each other. It is almost impossible to talk to your neighbor about his job  even if he is engaged in roughly the same work as you are. The Royal Society in Britain includes among its members only the most eminent(杰出的) scientists in the country. Yet it is highly disconcerting(窘迫的) to find that even here  as one of its fellows put it  at a lecture only 10％ of the members can understand 50％ of what is being said!

题目

The passage implies that ______.
A．men of remarkable achievements in the past were accidentally versatile
B．no great man in the past was qualified as universal except da Vinci
C．nowadays versatile men are generally highly regarded
D．nowadays it is nearly impossible for a man to be versatile

一开始选D，但看到第一段Right up until comparatively recent times, it was possible  for an intelligent person to acquaint himself with almost every branch of knowledge.感觉D也不对。