6 INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE AND SCIENCE 



But even assuming that the young man continues the 

 study of the language that he has learnt as a child, or even 

 indeed learns another during his school days, he will pos- 

 sess at best that approximate knowledge of the three chief 

 languages which we have characterised above as being 

 neither qualitatively nor quantitatively sufficient, because it 

 does not suffice for oral intercourse, and because other 

 languages must be taken into account. 



The proposal has, therefore, been made to choose, by 

 international agreement, one of the national languages as a 

 universal intermediary language. If everybody learnt this 

 language, then the difficulty would be surmounted. 



This proposal is, however, still-born. Every attempt to 

 realise it is bound to be shipwrecked on the rock of national 

 jealousy, as has been often shown before, for it is evident 

 that the nation whose language was chosen would receive a 

 very great advantage. The widely spoken English language 

 possesses, it is true, a very simple grammar, but it would be 

 very unsuitable for this purpose on account of its extremely 

 difficult pronunciation. 



Just as science has succeeded in giving to the world a 

 uniform system of weights and measures by choosing 

 instead of a national unit of length one common to all 

 nations, namely, the length of an earth quadrant, so only 

 that language could find general acceptance which was based 

 on the common possession of those peoples for whom it was 

 intended. By that we mean the stock of words common to 

 the three great families of languages, the Germanic, Romance, 

 and Slavonic. 



Against this the objection will be raised : " An artificial 

 language ; in other words, a Utopia ! How could one think 

 of artificially creating a language, which, after all, is a living 

 and spontaneously developing organism ? One might as 

 well think of artificially creating a live horse ! " 



It is true that one cannot make a live horse, but one can 



