What should be the real object of reading?

The answer is B) To weigh and consider. This line comes from Francis Bacon's essay Of Studies, where he says we should read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. For Bacon, reading is a process of judgement, not of collecting verdicts.

Why the others are off:

• A reverses the intended purpose. Bacon lists reading only to contradict as a bad motive, one of the attitudes he rejects.
• C sounds sensible, but Bacon's distinction concerns how a book is read, not reducing it to notes. Distilling content is a note-making exercise and does not test whether the argument holds.
• D is a partial goal. Understanding the author is necessary, but Bacon's point is that the reader must then weigh the argument critically, which D does not capture.

Core concept: critical reading, and the difference between passive absorption and active judgement. This links to GS Paper I (modern Western thought and Indian thinkers) and to Mains ethics and essay papers, where weighing evidence before accepting a position matters.

Trap: choosing D because it looks like the 'natural' purpose of reading. Understanding is the first step, not the object Bacon names.