Thanks for the question! General principles can refer to both the conclusions or the premises of the passage. They’re basically just generalities, or statements that can apply to a variety of situations. For example, “Killing is wrong” is a general principle, because it applies to killing in general, across a broad possibility of scenarios: self-defense, insanity, emotional rage, a premeditated murder. And it’s a “principle” because generally they try to prescribe something, or say something about how the world should be. So here, for example, it’s saying that killing is wrong; in other words, killing shouldn’t happen. (E) isn’t the answer to this specific question, by the way, (B) is.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.
