INTERNATIONAL SPEECH 163 



root-words for at least the Indo-European races, living within or 

 bordering on the confines of the old Koman Empire, whose vocabu- 

 laries are already saturated with Greek and Latin roots, absorbed 

 during the long centuries of contact with Greek and Eoman civiliza- 

 tion. As the center of gravity of the world's civilization now stands, 

 this seems the most rational beginning. Such a language shall then 

 have: 



Second, a grammatical structure stripped of all the irregularities 

 found in every existing tongue, and that shall be simpler than any of 

 them. It shall have : 



Third, a single, unalterable sound for each letter, no silent letters, 

 no difficult, complex, shaded sounds, but simple primary sounds, capable 

 of being combined into harmonious words, which latter shall have but 

 a single stress accent that never shifts. 



Fourth, mobility of structure, aptness for the expression of com- 

 plex ideas, but in ways that are grammatically simple, and by means 

 of words that can easily be analyzed without a dictionary. 



Fifth, it must be capable of being, not merely a literary language, 

 but a spoken tongue, having a pronunciation that can be perfectly 

 mastered by adults through the use of manuals, and in the absence 

 of oral teachers. 



Finally, and as a necessary corollary and complement to all of the 

 above, this international auxiliary language must, to be of general 

 utility, be exceedingly easy of acquisition by persons of but moderate 

 education, and hitherto conversant with no language but their own — 

 in all a most formidable and exacting list of requirements. Is it 

 possible, is it worth while to attempt to fulfill them? 



The redoubtable Doctor Johnson, on visiting the Giants' Causeway 

 in Ireland, remarked that " it was worth seeing, but not worth going 

 to see." By a sort of analogy, there are very many people who would 

 doubtless endorse the idea of an international tongue, were one achieved 

 and at hand, but who would not, in the absence of one, consider the 

 difficult game of its devising worth the candle of its getting. How- 

 ever, it is interesting to note that this very fascinating problem has 

 occupied the minds of men to such an extent during the past two 

 hundred years that no less than sixty distinct systems of interna- 

 tional speech have been published within that period. That these 

 attempts are not to be classified with the chimeras of perpetual 

 motion and the like, we may assure ourselves from no less authoritative 

 an opinion than that of the late Professor Max Miiller, who gave it 

 as his deliberate judgment that an artificial international language, was 

 not only a necessary, but a practical and feasible project. That it 

 is inconceivably difficult so to combine all the necessary features of 

 such a language as to ensure its general adoption is evidenced by the 

 fact that out of the sixty systems referred to, but two have actually 



