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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: expressive not only of the meanest wants of man, but of his highest
thoughts; so various are the aspects in which it is regarded by us. Then
again, when we follow the history of languages, we observe that they are
always slowly moving, half dead, half alive, half solid, half fluid; the
breath of a moment, yet like the air, continuous in all ages and
countries,--like the glacier, too, containing within them a trickling
stream which deposits debris of the rocks over which it passes. There were
happy moments, as we may conjecture, in the lives of nations, at which they
came to the birth--as in the golden age of literature, the man and the time
seem to conspire; the eloquence of the bard or chief, as in later times the
creations of the great writer who is the expression of his age, became
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