THE NEED FOE A COMMON SCIENTIFIC LANGUAGE 7 



make an automobile, which under certain circumstances may 

 replace the horse, and even excel its performance. But no 

 one would think on that account of totally doing away with 

 horses. In a similar manner the partisans of an artificial 

 language have no wish to displace the natural languages. 

 In poetry and imaginative literature, wherein the soul of a 

 nation finds its highest expression, the mother-tongue will 

 always be supreme. 1 



"But it is unthinkable," one will say, "that an artificial 

 language would ever be generally accepted." 



Such statements must be received with caution, for they 

 have turned out more than once to be wrong. The intro- 

 duction of a common system of weights and measures was 

 also declared to be impossible at one time, nevertheless it 

 has since been carried out in science. The construction of 

 a system of telegraph wires connecting the whole civilised 

 world and a telegraph alphabet common to all nations was 

 declared seventy years ago to be an impossibility. Now it 

 is ancient history. 



The maritime nations have agreed upon a common code 

 of signals. When the English sailor arrives at the Japanese 

 coast, he translates the sentences he wishes to transmit into 

 numbers, which he signals by means of flags, and the Japanese 

 port official translates the signalled numbers by means of the 

 code into Japanese sentences. Why should it therefore be 

 impossible to introduce instead of this intermediary numerical 

 language an intermediary word language, which would give 

 expression to thought in a better and more direct manner ? 2 



" Quite so, but such an intermediary language would be 

 much more difficult to create than a code of signals arranged 

 for a limited number of words and phrases." 



1 We do not therefore approve of the poetical attempts of Zamenhof, or 

 the dramatic representation of Goethe's IpJiigenia. 



2 For other comparisons, such as musical notation, chemical formulae, etc., 

 compare the excellent brochure of W. Ostwald, Die Weltsprache. Compare 

 also L. Couturat, Pour la Langue Internationale. 





