| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: there is the distinction between languages which have had a free and full
development of their organisms, and languages which have been stunted in
their growth,--lamed in their hands or feet, and never able to acquire
afterwards the powers in which they are deficient; there is the distinction
between synthetical languages like Greek and Latin, which have retained
their inflexions, and analytical languages like English or French, which
have lost them. Innumerable as are the languages and dialects of mankind,
there are comparatively few classes to which they can be referred.
Another road through this chaos is provided by the physiology of speech.
The organs of language are the same in all mankind, and are only capable of
uttering a certain number of sounds. Every man has tongue, teeth, lips,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde: ALGERNON. Why is it that at a bachelor's establishment the
servants invariably drink the champagne? I ask merely for
information.
LANE. I attribute it to the superior quality of the wine, sir. I
have often observed that in married households the champagne is
rarely of a first-rate brand.
ALGERNON. Good heavens! Is marriage so demoralising as that?
LANE. I believe it IS a very pleasant state, sir. I have had very
little experience of it myself up to the present. I have only been
married once. That was in consequence of a misunderstanding
between myself and a young person.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Octopus by Frank Norris: you, this that happens when I call to her across the night--that
faint, far-off, unseen tremble in the darkness, that intangible,
scarcely perceptible stir. Something neither heard nor seen,
appealing to a sixth sense only. Listen, it is something like
this: On Quien Sabe, all last week, we have been seeding the
earth. The grain is there now under the earth buried in the
dark, in the black stillness, under the clods. Can you imagine
the first--the very first little quiver of life that the grain of
wheat must feel after it is sown, when it answers to the call of
the sun, down there in the dark of the earth, blind, deaf; the
very first stir from the inert, long, long before any physical
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