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by an International Language, one that, without entering at all into the inner life of these peoples, could, at least, be made serviceable for usual every-day affairs, in a land inhabited by diverse nationalities, where the official language differs from that of the race over which it bears sway. It seems useless for me to dilate on the vast importance an International Language would hear towards Commerce and Science. He who has pondered carefully upon this question, were it but for once in his whole life, must, of necessity, avow that there could be no sacrifice too great to make if we by so doing could acquire an Universal Language. So, for these reasons, every essay, every attempt in this direction, deserves, feeble though it be, our most serious attention.
The question I now submit to the public is the result of a labor ripened by long years of thought; and, in view of the very great importance of the subject, I trust that the reader will read my pamphlet attentively to the end.
I have no intention of analyzing all the attempts hitherto made towards the creation of an Universal Language, but shall content myself with calling the reader’s attention to the fact that all these authors have striven to create a system of signs wherewith briefly to communicate thought in case of necessity, or have limited themselves to a natural simplification of grammar, or to exchanging words that now exist in living languages by others made up for the occasion, or taken by chance.
The attempts of the first kind were so complicated and so little practicable that they were still-born; those of the second class present some resemblance to a language, but possess no features that could give them the right to be called International; indeed, they seem to have received this name from their inventors from the simple reason that upon the whole habitable globe there exists no spot where even one person
