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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: words, syllables, letters are not thought of separately when we are
uttering them. Like other natural operations, the process of speech, when
most perfect, is least observed by us. We do not pause at each mouthful to
dwell upon the taste of it: nor has the speaker time to ask himself the
comparative merits of different modes of expression while he is uttering
them. There are many things in the use of language which may be observed
from without, but which cannot be explained from within. Consciousness
carries us but a little way in the investigation of the mind; it is not the
faculty of internal observation, but only the dim light which makes such
observation possible. What is supposed to be our consciousness of language
is really only the analysis of it, and this analysis admits of innumerable
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