ENGLISH AS AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE 345 



For our own experience in the eigthteenth century has taught us 

 that universality is a mixed blessing, perhaps a curse in disguise. As 

 everything must be sacrificed to perspicuity and simplicity, there is a 

 danger of enfeebling the language, of making it colorless. It breeds 

 self-satisfaction, and, by making the study of other languages less use- 

 ful, it favors ignorance and one-sidedness. For many years, the French 

 smiled contemptuously at whatever was not French. They are at pres- 

 ent reacting almost too vigorously against that tendency; let us hope 

 that England and America will escape both these dangers. The as- 

 sumption of superiority on the part of one language and therefore of 

 one race, of one or two nations, causes jealousy, diffidence, hatred. 

 France had to pay a heavy price for her once exalted position. She had 

 to convince the world that she was not in any way a menace before sym- 

 pathy would flow back to her. 



The present situation, with the curse of Babel still on our heads, is 

 not, of course, incompatible with progress, national and international. 

 With the diffusion of the study of modern languages, with the multipli- 

 cation of translations — some famous works have appeared simultane- 

 ously in eleven tongues — with the growing international vocabulary of 

 science, commerce and pleasure, the world feels more and more its 

 essential unity. We can live and prosper without an international lan- 

 guage ; but, in the same way, we could have lived and prospered without 

 the printing press, the railroads and the telegraph. 



The problem remains with us, baffling and entrancing. We all 

 realize what a progress it would mean if all conventions, societies, pub- 

 lications of world-wide scope, would adopt one world-wide language ; if 

 not diplomatists, scientists and scholars alone, but the business man, 

 the social worker, the missionary, even the common laborer, had a 

 simple, universal means of intercommunication. 



We have attempted to show that through neither conquest, natural 

 development or international agreement had any living language a 

 serious chance of being accepted as international. But is there no other 

 solution? Are we not substituting, in every domain, order for chaos, 

 science for tradition, the organizing will of man for the blind arrange- 

 ments of fate ? Is it beyond the capacity of our scholars to select or in 

 the last resort to devise, a perfectly neutral tongue? If French or 

 English will not do, why not try Esperanto ? 



VOL. LXXIX. — 24. 



