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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: change is said to be insensible: sounds, like animals, are supposed to
pass into one another by imperceptible gradation. But in both cases the
newly-created forms soon become fixed; there are few if any vestiges of the
intermediate links, and so the better half of the evidence of the change is
wanting.
(3) Among the incumbrances or illusions of language may be reckoned many
of the rules and traditions of grammar, whether ancient grammar or the
corrections of it which modern philology has introduced. Grammar, like
law, delights in definition: human speech, like human action, though very
far from being a mere chaos, is indefinite, admits of degrees, and is
always in a state of change or transition. Grammar gives an erroneous
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