【設問】
次の英文の内容を30～40字の日本語に要約せよ。句読点も字数に含める。
The other day I happened to become aware for the first time that my electric toothbrush was white with two upright blue stripes of rubber to hold the handle. The button to turn the toothbrush on and off was made of the same blue rubber. There was even a matching blue section of the brush itself, and a colored ring of rubber at the base of the brush handle. This was a far more carefully thought-out design than I had ever imagined. The same was true of my plastic throwaway razor with its graceful bend that made it seem as if the head was eagerly reaching out to do its job. If either my toothbrush or razor had been mounted on a base, it might well have qualified as a sculpture. Had they been presented as works of art, I would have seen something more than an object, something deeper in the way forms can take on a life of their own and create enduring values. “Rightly viewed,” Thomas Carlyle wrote in his book Sartor Resartus, “no meanest object is insignificant; all objects are as windows, through which the philosophic eye looks into Infinite itself.”
【解答例】
普段何気なく使っている物も全て緻密に設計されており，それぞれの価値を持っている。 (40字)
【解説】
指定字数からして，明らかに電動歯ブラシや使い捨て剃刀に言及する余裕はない。また，本文最後のトマス・カーライルの言葉も解答に含める必要はない。なぜなら，他者の言葉を引用するのは筆者の主張に説得力を持たせるためであって，筆者の主張がきちんと書けているならば，引用の言葉まで解答に含める必要はないからである。
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