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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: in a name. The name Menschikoff, for instance, has nothing in it
to my ears more human than a whisker, and it may belong to a rat.
As the names of the Poles and Russians are to us, so are ours to
them. It is as if they had been named by the child's
rigmarole,--IERY FIERY ICHERY VAN, TITTLE-TOL-TAN. I see in my
mind a herd of wild creatures swarming over the earth, and to
each the herdsman has affixed some barbarous sound in his own
dialect. The names of men are, of course, as cheap and
meaningless as BOSE and TRAY, the names of dogs.
Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy if men were
named merely in the gross, as they are known. It would be
Walking |
