144-148 : Read the passage carefully and answer the questions given below it in the context of the passage. Every culture develops some kind of art as suerly as it develops language. Some prime tive cultures have no real mythology or religion but all have some art-dance, song, design (sometimes only on tools or on the human body). Dance, above all, seems to be the oldest elaborated art. The ancient, common character of art contrasts sharply with the prevalent idea that art is a luxury product of civilization, a cultural frill, a piece of social veneer. It fits better with the conviction held by most artists that art is a reflection of human life, the truest record of insight and feeling, and that the strongest military or economic society without art is poor in comparison with the primitive tribe of savage painters, dancers or idol carvers. Whenever society has really achieved culture it has created art, not late in its career, but at the very inception of it. Art is, indeed, the spearhead of human development, social and individual. The vulgar ization of art is the surest symptom of ethnic decline. The growth of a new art or even a great and radically new style always shows, a young and vigorous mind, whether collective or single.148. Which one of the following is closest to the opposite in meaning of the phrase 'at the very inception' as used in the passage?

• A. in the middle
• B. in the beginning
• C. at the very start
• D. at the end