EELATIONSHIP OF LANGUAGE TO SCIENCE 55 



nature of this relationship must be, and it follows there- 

 from whether any particular system will or will not be 

 serviceable to science. There are two necessary criteria, 

 namely, internationality of vocabulary and logical precision 

 of expression. 



One might be inclined to emphasise the importance of the 

 second criterion without paying any attention whatever to 

 the first, and to regard a system constructed on a purely 

 logical basis as alone worthy of science. But this would 

 be a retrograde step, for indeed the question of artificial 

 language originated with the idea of a so-called philosophical 

 language in the mind of Leibnitz and afterwards. If one 

 takes the point of view that the scientific auxiliary language 

 should be constructed on an ideographic basis (that is to 

 say, a system of correlation between symbols and ideas, 

 which, however, as it is a language, must be capable of 

 being spoken), one arrives at an a priori system, as it 

 is called in the theory of universal language. Thanks to 

 the laborious and self-sacrificing work of the thousands 

 who during the last twenty years have devoted and still 

 devote themselves to the great experiments in language, we 

 are able nowadays to refer this question to the test of 

 experience. The latter has shown with absolute certainty 

 that a priori systems cannot be spoken. The learning of any 

 natural language, with all its irregularities, peculiarities, 

 and anomalies, is child's play compared to the learning 

 of an a priori system. All experiments in this direction 

 have failed and need no longer be seriously considered. 

 But even when an artificial language has not been con- 

 structed d priori another error, producing much the same 

 effect, may very greatly injure its facility in practice. 

 An otherwise so successful system as Volapiik came finally 

 to grief through an error of this sort. Although Volapuk 

 was constructed by a man of whom it is said that he 

 was master of, or at least acquainted with, fifty-five living 



