Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range
2 of time, and is the culling and composition of all. From this point of view, it stands for Language in the
3 largest sense, and is really the greatest of studies. It involves so much; is indeed a sort of universal
4 absorber, combiner, and conqueror. The scope of its etymologies is the scope not only of man and
5 civilization, but the history of Nature in all departments, and of the organic Universe, brought up to date;
6 for all are comprehended in words, and their backgrounds. This is when words become vitalized, and
7 stand for things, as they unerringly and very soon come to do, in the mind that enters on their study with
8 fitting spirit, grasp, and appreciation.
9 Slang, profoundly considered is the lawless germinal element, below all words and sentences,
10 and behind all poetry, and proves a certain freedom and perennial rankness and protestantism in speech.
11 As the United States inherit by far their most precious possession—the language they talk and write—
12 from the Old World, under and out of its feudal institutes, I will allow myself to borrow a simile even of
13 those forms farthest removed from American Democracy. Considering Language then as some mighty
14 potentate, into the majestic audience-hall of the monarch ever enters a personage like one of
15 Shakspeare's clowns, and takes position there, and plays a part even in the stateliest ceremonies. Such
16 is Slang, or indirection, an attempt of common humanity to escape from bald literalism, and express itself
17 illimitably, which in highest walks produces poets and poems, and doubtless in pre-historic times gave the
18 start to, and perfected, the whole immense tangle of the old mythologies. For, curious as it may appear, it
19 is strictly the same impulse-source, the same thing. Slang, too, is the wholesome fermentation or
20 eructation of those processes eternally active in language, by which froth and specks are thrown up,
21 mostly to pass away; though occasionally to settle and permanently crystallize.
22 (. . .)
23 Language, be it remembered, is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary24 makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations
25 of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground. Its final decisions are made by the
26 masses, people nearest the concrete, having most to do with actual land and sea. It impermeates all, the
27 Past as well as the present, and is the grandest triumph of the human intellect.
In the third paragraph, "nearest the concrete" is a figurative way of saying
A. working class
B. short
C. animalistic
D. scientific
E. free