To meet the needs of this conflict, wretchedness has invented a language of combat, which is slang.
To keep afloat and to rescue from oblivion, to hold above the gulf, were it but a fragment of some language which man has spoken and which would, otherwise, be lost, that is to say, one of the elements, good or bad, of which civilization is composed, or by which it is complicated, to extend the records of social observation; is to serve civilization itself.
This service Plautus rendered, consciously or unconsciously, by making two Carthaginian soldiers talk Phoenician; that service Moliere rendered, by making so many of his characters talk Levantine and all sorts of dialects. Here objections spring up afresh.
Phoenician, very good! Levantine, quite right!
Even dialect, let that pass!
They are tongues which have belonged to nations or provinces; but slang! What is the use of preserving slang?
What is the good of assisting slang "to survive"?
To this we reply in one word, only.◆思◆兔◆網◆
Assuredly, if the tongue which a nation or a province has spoken is worthy of interest, the language which has been spoken by a misery is still more worthy of attention and study.
It is the language which has been spoken, in France, for example, for more than four centuries, not only by a misery, but by every possible human misery.