These are not errors that betoken or lead
to general final corruption, and the great Anglo-Saxo-Norman race is
many centuries distant from the period when it may be expected to show
signs of that decadence which, visible at first in the waning moral
and intellectual energies of a people, soon spots its speech.
Nevertheless, as inaccuracies, laxities, vulgarisms--transgressions
more or less superficial--such errors take from the correctness, from
the efficacy, from the force as well as the grace, of written or
spoken speech.
The high level of strength, suppleness and beauty occupied by our
English tongue has been reached, and can only be maintained, by
strenuous, varied, and continuous mental action. Offenses against the
laws and proprieties of language--like so many other of our
lapses--are in most cases effects of the tendency in human nature to
relax its tone. None save the most resolute and rigorous but have
their moods of unwatchfulness, of indolence. Moreover, men are
prone to resist mental refinement and intellectual subdivisions.
Discrimination requires close attention and sustained effort; and
without habitual discrimination there can be no linguistic precision
or excellence.
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