November 22, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



815 



tion, we ought to make further advances to- 

 ward ideal speech. All such advances will 

 serve English well in the struggle for adoption 

 as the world-language, for the more cosmo- 

 politan, the less grammatical, in the classical 

 sense, must it be. 



It needed no prophet to foretell the fate of 

 Latin as a would-be international tongue. In 

 the nature of the case, it could never be more 

 than the artificially propagated and sustained 

 speech of more or less extensive and widely 

 scattered societies, cliques, clubs and associa- 

 tions (political, religious, scientific, etc.), for 

 the mind of the Aryan and Semitic races was 

 capable of something higher than speaking 

 through a death-mask, and other populous na- 

 tions have also to be reckoned with — nations 

 like the Chinese, Japanese, Malays, Hindus — 

 who cannot be expected to welcome a dead 

 language over against a live one. Evolution, 

 too, has written a like epitaph over Greek, 

 which some enthusiasts would fain have us ac- 

 cept as a universal language. No such back- 

 ward step is probable or even possible. Against 

 all competitors in the field, English is favored 

 by its increasing degrammatization and the 

 open hospitality it extends to new words from 

 every language under heaven. 



Phonetic spelling must triumph in the end, 

 and as complete a victory waits also for free 

 speaking and free writing — i. e., language un- 

 trammeled by grammatical artificialities. Not 

 a backward-looking Volapiik, but English with 

 its face to the future foreshadows the true 

 world-language. Phonetic spelling has already 

 made a good beginning, which suggests the 

 possibility of similar intentional reforms in 

 English grammar. The present writer will 

 content himself with specifying certain 

 ameliorations of grammar, which, perhaps, 

 may serve, like the ten * rules ' for amended 

 spelling proposed in 1883 by the English and 

 American Philological Associations, or the list 

 reported by the American Committee in 1886, 

 as starters for more ambitious movements of 

 reform. 



The list is as follows : 



1. Drop the so-called subjunctive mood alto- 

 gether. It is moribund in much of our best 

 prose, and can be allowed to die out of our 



poetry with no injury to rhyme or reason, 

 strength or beauty. 



2. Drop inflected forms for the past tense and 

 past participle, making all new verbs, whether 

 introduced from foreign tongues or made within 

 the language itself, conform to the type of hit, 

 let, etc. In America, in particular, drop gotten. 



3. Avoid the use of differing forms for verb 

 and noun. Follow the model of boycott, under 

 ' rule ' 2. 



4. Avoid the use of plural forms of nouns, 

 making all new substantives, whether borrowed 

 from other languages or born of the mother- 

 tongue, conform to the model of sheep, deer, etc. 



5. Avoid the use of Greek or Latin names for 

 ' new things.' Follow the good example of cer- 

 tain scientists, and name them after their dis- 

 coverer, the place of origin, etc. Make new 

 words here conform to the model of gatling, 

 ampere, and the like. 



6. Avoid the use of feminine forms of nouns 

 previously employed with reference to males, 

 letting the thought control the grammar. 

 Drop particularly authoress, poetess, etc. 



7. Avoid forming adverbs by inflection, using 

 for all new words of this class the same form 

 for adjective (or other word) and adverb. 



8. Omit the conjunction that wherever possi- 

 ble. For example, in such cases as ' I know 

 that he is dead.' 



9. Use but and aa as full-fledged prepositions. 



10. Drop whom, using who for both cases. 



11. Ceasing the attempt to distinguish be- 

 tween who and that, and that and which, let the 

 fittest survive in each instance. 



12. Use the pronouns compounded of self and 

 their plurals, both as subjects and objects. 



13. Drop the apostrophe in the possessive case. 

 Other suggestions might be made, but these 



cover sufiicient ground for the present. 



Alexander F. Chamberlain. 

 Clark University, Worcester, Mass. 



SHOBTEB ARTICLES. 

 CATALASE, A NEW ENZYM OF GENERAL OCCUR- 

 RENCE. 



The study of the enzyms has been pursued 

 with growing interest by a number of scientists 

 during later years. These unorganized fer- 

 ments being substances of a highly ephemeral 



