THE NEED FOR A COMMON SCIENTIFIC LANGUAGE 3 



which the congress is held usually dominates. The German 

 speaks French in Paris, but the Englishman mostly only 

 English, and demands, as occurred at the recent Refrigeration 

 Congress in Paris, the translation into English of the papers 

 read at the sectional meetings. Only very few can take part 

 in the discussions, and many must be well content if they 

 are able to understand the usually rapidly delivered papers. 

 Many an important criticism is not made because one does 

 not possess the expertness necessary for discussing a question 

 in a foreign language, and does not wish to expose oneself to 

 the chance of a rebuff, caused not so much by ignorance of 

 the matter in hand as by want of facility in expression. 



Every member of a congress has noticed that whenever 

 the language employed in the papers changes, a consider- 

 able number of the audience leave with more or less noise, 

 in order to avoid being compelled to listen to a paper which 

 they do not understand. Congresses would be certainly 

 much better attended were it not that these difficulties keep 

 many away. 



One cannot hope that an increasing diffusion of the 

 knowledge of the three chief languages will cause these 

 difficulties to diminish, still less to disappear. They will, 

 rather, increase still more, since the number of national 

 languages desiring to take part in the work of civilisation 

 is constantly growing. Already, at the present time, 

 Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and the Scandinavian and Slavonic 

 languages must be taken into account, besides the three 

 chief languages. National sentiment forces the scientific 

 men of these countries to use the national languages, even 

 when they perceive that this procedure does not conduce to 

 mutual understanding. Even if the scientific men them- 

 selves were completely free from national amour propre, they 

 would be obliged by their fellow-countrymen to employ their 

 own languages, not so much for the purpose of advancing 

 scientific knowledge and learning as in order to contribute 



B 2 



