THE "DELEGATION." 21 



ideas of chance and haphazard originally associated with it 

 in one's mind. It is, therefore, quite unnecessary in the 

 case of an international language to be afraid of " the 

 arbitrary action of private persons who possess neither the 

 right nor the authority to introduce reforms into Espe- 

 ranto," as Dr. Zamenhof has recently stated. One ought 

 rather to feel sure that the best means of defending an 

 international language against arbitrary changes is the 

 degree of its concordance with sound theoretical principles. 

 Wilhelm Ostwald has given us an account of the work of 

 the Delegation. The commission consisted of representatives 

 of the English, German, Italian, Scandinavian, and Slavonic 

 languages. Famous philologists such as Otto Jespersen, of 

 Copenhagen, and Baudouin de Courtenay, of St. Peters- 

 burg, as well as the philosopher L. Couturat, of Paris, 

 rendered priceless services. The proceedings, which were 

 held in the College de France, began with the interviewing 

 of a number of the inventors of artificial languages or their 

 representatives, all such people having been invited to the 

 conference. Where this procedure was not possible the 

 corresponding writings and documents were examined and 

 discussed. Concerning this work Ostwald writes, " Although 

 these labours were very fatiguing, they proved all the more 

 effective for the progressive elucidation of the problem in 

 hand. From the very multiplicity of the attempts at a 

 solution and their discussion there arose in the minds of 

 the workers, in a manner never to be forgotten, a clear con- 

 ception of the main conditions required for a successful 

 solution of the problem, and a recognition of the errors 

 which a disregard of one or other of these conditions had 

 produced in the existing systems." Whilst an account of 

 the nature of these principles and of their application to the 

 construction of an international auxiliary language will be 

 given by competent authorities in the following chapters, we 

 may here mention that the Delegation decided that none of 



