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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: To poetry the form and polish of language is chiefly to be attributed; and
the most critical period in the history of language is the transition from
verse to prose. At first mankind were contented to express their thoughts
in a set form of words having a kind of rhythm; to which regularity was
given by accent and quantity. But after a time they demanded a greater
degree of freedom, and to those who had all their life been hearing poetry
the first introduction of prose had the charm of novelty. The prose
romances into which the Homeric Poems were converted, for a while probably
gave more delight to the hearers or readers of them than the Poems
themselves, and in time the relation of the two was reversed: the poems
which had once been a necessity of the human mind became a luxury: they
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