58 INTEKNATIONAL LANGUAGE AND SCIENCE 



already, particularly in science, the beginnings of an inter- 

 national (and largely artificially created) auxiliary language 

 which is written, spoken, and read. We find here ready 

 made the first provisional lexicon of the scientific inter- 

 national language. It cannot, therefore, be urged that 

 science should " select " any one of the proposed artificial 

 languages, because the selection of words is by no means an 

 arbitrary process. The only procedure possible to science 

 must be the construction of an international language on the 

 basis of the already existing foundations. Science can never 

 accept as an international language, one which destroys the 

 actually existing internationally of scientific nomenclature. 



As we see, these considerations, like the former, lead us 

 to the conclusion that the auxiliary language must be based 

 on the principle of maximum internationality; that is to 

 say, its vocabulary must be taken d posteriori from the 

 international treasury, and must not be invented according 

 to any a priori system or special idiom. It follows from 

 this that the auxiliary language of the future must inevi- 

 tably be chiefly Romance in its character, for Latin is the 

 international auxiliary language which still lives and 

 flourishes for, and by means of, science. 



The objection might be made here that the simplest 

 solution would be the reintroduction of Latin into science 

 as the auxiliary language. But this contradicts one of our 

 fundamental premises, for Latin fails just as much as all 

 other national languages to satisfy our second criterion,- 

 namely, that of complete logical precision. Besides, it is 

 too difficult. 



Esperanto does not even approximately satisfy the 

 necessary conditions; it infringes, in fact, all three. On 

 the one hand, its vocabulary is very far from being con- 

 structed according to the principle of maximum internation- 

 ality ; on the other hand, the Esperantists are supposed to 

 make up for this defect by the famous principle of 



