52 INTEENATIONAL LANGUAGE AND SCIENCE 



that logic newly constituted under the name of the logic oj 

 relationships, which is, however, as old as the world, since 

 it lies, though obscurely, at the basis of the formative pro- 

 cesses in our natural languages. That is the reason why 

 the international language offers to philosophers a particu- 

 larly instructive field of study. It is worthy of their 

 interest in other respects. Not only does it offer to them, 

 as it does to all men, a medium of communication between 

 all countries, but it furnishes them also with an instrument 

 of precision for the analysis and exact expression of the 

 forms of thought, which is very superior, from the point of 

 view of logic, to our traditional languages, encumbered as 

 these are with confused and ambiguous expressions. It is 

 their duty to contribute to the development and perfecting 

 of a language which, without losing anything of its practical 

 qualities, can and must realise by degrees the ideal of human 

 language ; if it is true that there does exist an ideal in our 

 languages, though hidden and irremediably disfigured by all 

 sorts of anomalies. To quote a saying of Schuchardt, 

 Was die Sprache gewollt halen die Sprachen zerstort. 1 



L. COUTURAT. 



1 " What language aimed at languages have destroyed." The remarks 

 contained in this chapter have been developed and applied to the criticism 

 of Esperanto in my fitude sur la Derivation (1st edition, unpublished, 1907, 

 2nd edition in French and in Ido, 1909). 



