It is noteworthy that the same thing necessarily happens in the case of any new system of spelling.
The most prominent advocates of phonetic spelling have been also the authors of a system of phonetic shorthand.
Like the written and printed alphabet of Europe, the alphabet of Phonography was made phonetic. Indeed it started off as a more nearly perfect phonetic system than the ordinary European alphabet. But as its use advances its employment undergoes the same change. The phonetic symbols are abbreviated by grammalogues and contractions, and this proceeds in accordance with a principle unconsciously recognised but which really depends on the same inherent necessity to preserve in a consistent form the expression of the radical vocables of Speech. Finally, in the hands of the expert stenographer the system of phonetic shorthand (though he still uses the sound as the guide and indicator of his actions) is as far removed from a pure phonetic representation as the ordinary method of spelling. Indeed, unless some such suprasensible and unifying principle were available, phonetic spelling would speedily perish in an infinity of degenerate variations.
We adduce this illustration as one which very well confirms our main argument. We have no desire to discuss on its merits the general question of Spelling Reform, which of course is quite apart from the attempt to establish a scheme of spelling on a purely phonetic basis. A more rational system of spelling is nevertheless an object worthy of all consideration.
Intellectualism and sensationalism have both broken down. The world of speculation is anxiously looking for a new clue. Witness the pathetic eagerness with which it clutches at every floating straw. The innumerable "isms" by which it seeks ever and anon to keep itself afloat are most of them but the sometimes unrecognisable wreckage of the old systems drifting about under very inappropriate names. Such terms as Realism and Idealism are freely used (generally prefixing the adjective "new") by writers in philosophic periodicals in a sense which might make Plato, Aquinas, or Kant turn in their graves.
We see their votaries encumbered with the trappings of a futile erudition of the insignificant or clinging pathetically to the insecure relics of teleological doctrine, or, still less virile, seeking support in a return to the unscientific tales of supernatural spiritualism. Such efforts are vain.
Only by facing the facts with all their consequences, whatever these may be and whatever they may involve for the proudest aspirations of mankind—only thus can truth be attained. And lest any should say that we preach an unrelieved pessimism, let us remind such that Knowledge is not after all the source of Life, that another category and a different principle—that, namely, which we indicate under the term Love-divine—must have generated the potent current of Life, and that no one should close the door against the hopes of the human Intelligence until he has discovered what are the limits imposed upon what Perfect Love can do.
The question still remains whether mankind will be equal to the effort required to assimilate the essential truth. They very nearly failed to assimilate the Copernican cosmogony. For sixteen hundred years after it was first offered to mankind the race preferred to grope in the darkness and confinement of a false conception.
If they succeed in accomplishing the reception of the new truth, unheard-of progress may be looked for. If they fail, civilisation must disappear and humanity decline. There is no middle course. As Bacon remarked, in this theatre of man's life it is reserved only to God and angels to be lookers-on.