script of each lecture of this kind was to be delivered, before or during the session, to the recording secretary of that section before which the essay was to be read. Remarks on articles read could be made in any language, provided the member making such remarks handed them in, before the close of the meeting, written in one of the official languages. I enumerate these details in order to illustrate how complicated the difficulties of a polyglot congress are. Everybody can complete this chapter either from personal experience or by reflection.
One might think the remedy in this dilemma would be the adoption of a universal language, and indeed, this idea has already for a long time occupied the minds of the greatest thinkers, above all, of Leibnitz. . His attempt was based on the supposition that every act of thinking might successfully be reduced to an arithmetical basis, if it were possible to discover symbols for the most simple comprehensions and for the combination, as well, of such symbols, as, for instance, is done in mathematical science. Already in his youth he aimed at this purpose in a well-developed plan, maintained up to an old age, of a "Characteristica universalis," or "ars signum et lingua philosophica." However, this
