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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift: to, I cannot recollect; unless it be a large vein of wrangling and
satire, much of a nature and substance with the spiders' poison;
which, however they pretend to spit wholly out of themselves, is
improved by the same arts, by feeding upon the insects and vermin
of the age. As for us, the Ancients, we are content with the bee,
to pretend to nothing of our own beyond our wings and our voice:
that is to say, our flights and our language. For the rest,
whatever we have got has been by infinite labour and search, and
ranging through every corner of nature; the difference is, that,
instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to till our hives
with honey and wax; thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of
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