NOVEMBER 5, 1897.] 
tolerates a wide diversity of tongue in 
which to conduct its business or store up 
its ideas and valuable records. As already 
stated, difference of speech and writing 
tends to keep nations and races estranged, 
and so makes for war rather than peace. 
The only progress toward a uniformity of 
mother tongues now visible is by the slow 
and fitful process of political absorption by 
conquest or by trade. Singularly enough 
the acknowledged languages of learning, the 
Latin and Greek, seem to be losing rather 
than gaining their hold upon the best litera- 
ture. This is not altogether a misfortune ; 
for languages grow and expand to conform 
to the ideas of those who use them; and 
the original connotations of words are lost 
in their adaptations to new conceptions. In 
spite of the attempt to uphold the Roman 
tongue by the medical and priestly profes- 
sions, it is no longer that spoken by Cicero. 
The English of to-day differs widely from 
that of Chaucer. But few famous treatises 
in science, philosophy, history or even the- 
ology are now written in Latin; other 
tongues command more readers, and it no 
longer so well serves as a vehicle for modern 
ideas. No language can escape this fate. 
The English, which is conceded by compe- 
tent observers to be as rich, as flexible and 
precise as any of the great Huropean 
tongues—though not as simple and sym- 
metrical as some others—has embalmed in 
it quite as many of the indispensable works 
of the world, and has besides the suftrages 
of a hundred and twenty millions of people 
to whom it is vernacular, is nevertheless 
susceptible of great rectification, especially 
in the matter of pronunciation, spelling, 
and in the irregularity of the verbs. The 
testimony of Professor Merz, in writing of 
‘Scientific Thought in the 19th Century,’ 
although strangely oblivious of American 
contributions, as such, uses the following 
language, after referring to the decaying 
use of the classics: 
SCIENCE. 
683 
“The largest number of (Scientific) works perfect 
in form and substance, classical for all time, belongs 
probably to France; the greatest bulk of scientific 
work probably to Germany, but of the new ideas 
which during the century have fructified science the 
larger share belongs probably to England. Such 
seems to be the impartial verdict of history. During 
the second half of the century a process of equali- 
zation has gone on which has taken away something 
of the characteristic peculiarities of earlier time. 
The great problems of science and life are now every- 
where attacked by similar methods. Scientific teach- 
ing proceeds on similar line, and ideas and discoveries . 
are cosmopolitan property. So much more interest- 
ing must it be for those who have been born members 
of this international republic of learning to trace the 
way in which this confederation has grown up, what 
have been the different national contributions to its 
formation, and how the spirit of exact science, once 
domiciled only in Paris, has gradually spread into all 
countries and leavened the thought and literature of 
the world.’’ } 
Nevertheless the hope of establishing 
either Latin or Greek as alternative world- 
languages, of learning, has not been aban- 
doned among the classically educated; but 
all expectation of seeing the former gener- 
ally adopted, at least as a spoken tongue, 
must have passed. If the great start of the 
Roman Hmpire, and the subsequent exten- 
sion of its speech over a larger empire by 
the Church, did not suffice to give it prece- 
dence the chances are much against it 
now. Like the Roman jurisprudence it 
lives chiefly in its offspring. It has been 
more or less engrafted on the native tongues; 
itself is practically a dead language. The 
Greek survives among living tongues, but 
has only a limited field as such. In scien- 
tific and classical education, and notably 
in nomenclature, it has a future of utility 
as an enricher. Some of the international 
medical conferences are, I believe, ready to 
adopt it as an alternative language for their 
limited uses. 
Meantime the business of the world be- 
comes more and more international and 
interlingual. The spread of telegraphs by 
land and under seas, the extension of steam- 
