1922] on Auxiliary International Languages 533 



arid there are some who urge the claims of this language. But apart 

 from other obstacles the intrinsic difficulty of Latin is too great. 

 Later on, however, I shall have something to say about the possi- 

 bilities of a sort of simplified Latin. 



The object of an auxiliary international language is not to displace 

 or replace existing languages, but to protect and supplement them. 

 These qualities of neutrality, simplicity, regularity, and compatibility 

 oan be obtained only by means of an artificial auxiliary language. 

 Now this word artificial shocks and frightens people. We are so 

 accustomed to the historical and analytical treatment of languages 

 that we have never dreamt of the possibilities of synthesis. The 

 chemists and physicists have analysed nearly all the things they have 

 found in this world. But if they had rested content only with 

 analysis the practical world would have much less to thank them for. 

 We may not like synthetic butter and synthetic milk, but we have 

 no objection to synthetic soap or synthetic glass. Why not then a 

 synthetic language ? So far as the languages of North and South 

 America and of Western Europe are concerned, the problem is mainly 

 one of the synthesis of existing elements, since amongst these lan- 

 guages there exists already a very large international vocabulary. As 

 Dr. Cottrell has aptly expressed it, our problem is nothing less and 

 nothing more than the science of synthetic linguistics. Looking at 

 the matter from this point of view, we see that the word " artificial " 

 is a misnomer. It is true that the first attempts to solve the problem 

 of an auxiliary international language might be fitly termed artificial. 

 They take us back to the 17th Century. Impressed by the logical 

 manner in which mathematical symbolism represents complex trains 

 •of thought, in a form at once intelligible to mathematicians of all 

 countries, some of the greatest philosophers and mathematicians of 

 that century conceived the idea of an international language which 

 would be a logical algebra of general thought. Descartes in 1629 

 discussed this idea in a letter to his friend Mersenne. Leibniz 

 devoted many years to the problem, though he considered that for 

 immediate practical purposes a simplified and regularised grammar 

 applied to the word elements of Latin would provide the best 

 solution. 



Language systems of this sort are called "philosophical" or 

 a priori. In their construction we might endeavour to make a list 

 of all the primary ideas, and assign arbitrary written symbols, which 

 may be also pronounceable sounds, to these. With the various per- 

 mutations and combinations of these symbols we might then form all 

 derived ideas. It is clear that from a very few symbols we can 

 easily, by means of their permutations and combinations, form thou- 

 sands of derivatives. Wnen the number of primary ideas or 

 elements is relatively small such systems are of great use, and are 

 largely used. The various special codes used in international com- 

 merce are examples of this method. Another example of such an 



