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Of harmony:

This essay is selected from Religio Medici, written by Thomas Browne. It tells something about harmony. That is to say, the author considers harmony as doctor’s belief.

In this passage, the writer uses music to stand for harmony, rather than describes what harmony is or how to keep harmony directly. In the first sentence, it mentions “Cupid” to indicate that harmony and love are inseparable. In the meantime, it leads harmony to music. “there is a musick wherever there is a harmony, order, or propor tion” tells the relationship between harmony and music. And “well-ordered”, “regular” and “symmetry” are what exactly the similarity between them. And then, the writer refers to something related to disharmony, in which we can get to know that Thomas is a pious believer of a religion.

In author’s opinion, he thought the music is a symbol of harmony, no matter it exists in a tavern or Church. As long as the music can “make one man merry”, that is harmony. However, t he voice of h armony won’t be heard by everyone, only the understandings can catch it. Here the author uses “understanding” to refer to the people who like harmony. At the end of this passage, Thomas Browne wrote a gorgeous sentence to tell us that the sound of harmony is in the ears of God.

Thomas Browne is good at using rhetorical flourishes, and it has a great reflection in this passage, such as “hieroglyphically”, “intellectually”.He also uses metonymy and literary quotation to make the language more interesting and abundant. Thomas tells harmony from his own perspective firstly, next uses music to take the place of harmony to make it more visual and more acceptable. And then, he shows his respect of harmony according to his attitude to the people who declaims against Church music. At last, he expounds the importance and benefit of harmony. This passage has legible ideas so that after we read it for the first time, we can have clear comprehension of author’s opinion.

In music, the sound of two or more notes heard simultaneously. In a narrower sense harmony refers to the extensively developed system of chords and the rules that govern relations between them in Western music. We are trying to build a harmonious society, if we can find a simple way from the similar things like music, we may be able to realize our dream at an early date.

The importance of one’s own language:

This is a perfect argumentative essay from John Lock, who is a famous British philosopher.

First, I want give a brief introduction of the author. John Locke, widely known as the Father of Classical Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work had a great impact upon the development of epistemology and political philosophy. Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self .Locke defines the self as that conscious thinking thing, Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning Education is an outline on how to educate this mind,"Associationism", as this theory would come to be called, exerted a powerful influence over eighteenth-century thought, particularly educational theory, From this text ,we can also see this theory.

At the beginning of this text, the author expresses his argument about the importance and benefits of mastering a kind of language, such as gives a Grace and gains a favorable attention, so that British people should pay more attention to English rather than Latin. This is a great disciplinary approach. Before giving argument, we can demonstrate it by its importance and benefits, which makes our argument more powerful.

Secondly, after showing his argument, he gives some proofs from the contrary aspect to say the current situation of ignoring English and stressing Latin and Greek. There are few people thoroughly understand and master their own language. If anyone among us has a facility or purity more than ordinary in his Mother T ongue, it is owing to Chance, or his Genius, or anything, rather than to his Education, or any care of his Teacher.

Latin only used by learned man but not everyone.

In the last second paragraph, he cites the fact that Greeks attach more importance on their mother tongue to strengthen his point. And in the last paragraph he restates his argument and gives his own suggestion. The language in this text is beautiful and it is very logical. Also the point is very clear with sufficient arguments.

As for the theme, in my opinion, just as the author says, we should learn our mother tongue well before