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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: may have grown up wholly or in a great measure independently of them. (1)
The first of these processes has been sometimes attended by the result that
the sound of the words has been carefully preserved and that the meaning of
them has either perished wholly, or is only doubtfully recovered by the
efforts of modern philology. The verses have been repeated as a chant or
part of a ritual, but they have had no relation to ordinary life or speech.
(2) The invention of writing again is commonly attributed to a particular
epoch, and we are apt to think that such an inestimable gift would have
immediately been diffused over a whole country. But it may have taken a
long time to perfect the art of writing, and another long period may have
elapsed before it came into common use. Its influence on language has been
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