The Tyranny of Shams

by Joseph McCabe

We are tormented in a hundred ways, yet we contemplate this absurd muddle and waste with as resigned an air as if we still believed that the Almighty had, in a fit of temper, created the confusion of tongues at ancient Babel. So subtle and strong is the hold of custom on us that we rarely even ask ourselves whether this is a wise or an unalterable arrangement. We hear with indifference, if not with amusement, of societies which propose to adopt one international tongue in the place of this ridiculous confusion; we languidly picture to ourselves little groups of long-haired faddists meeting in bleak halls to attract our duller neighbours to the cultivation of one more innocent enthusiasm. We have not time for these things. When a sensible man has given adequate time to business and pleasure, he has, he says, no hours to spare for these idealistic luxuries. Yet a moment’s serious reflection would show us that the sole aim of these “faddists” is to make life less crowded and laborious, to lighten our business and add to our pleasure, to introduce common-sense into a large part of our conduct. To such strange contradictions and absurdities does this resolve to resist innovation bring us.

Most people are, perhaps,—if they ever give a thought to the matter,—under the impression that it is a mountainous and impracticable task to introduce such a reform into the life of the world. It is, on the contrary, one of the simplest and most practicable reforms to which men could set their hands. It is even less controversial a measure than the abolition of war. There are few prejudices of our time which have not attracted the ingenuity of some faddist or other; but this is one of the few. More emphatically here than in the case of war, all that we need is the will of the majority to change our anachronistic practice. When one regards the entirely uncontroversial nature of the reform and the immense economy it will entail, it is hardly unreasonable to hope that this will of the majority may soon be secured.

I assume that, when we agree to direct our “Governments” to carry out this elementary improvement of international life, they will summon an international commission of philologists, educators, and commercial men, whose business it will be to create a new language. This step will not be taken until the voluntary movement for reform has reached such proportions as to arouse the interest of politicians; but in the end we rely on governmental action, as it is necessary to reform schools and Parliaments. This international commission will, no doubt, examine impartially such languages as Esperanto. Possibly these existing international tongues will be found more complex than an ideal language ought to be, and less attentive to the finer values of speech. For the simple purpose of expression it is possible to create a tongue far less complex than any in use in the civilised world to-day: a tongue that could be learned in a few months even by the untrained intelligence. It would proceed on the entirely opposite principle to that of modern word-makers: the principle, for instance, that changes “fireworks” into “pyrotechnics” (a piece of bad Greek for good English), or “gardening” into “horticulture.” The use of this debased Latin and Greek in science has a certain advantage under our present polyglot system, as it is an approach toward international agreement, but it is making more onerous than ever the burden of our languages. We want a simple means of expression and intercourse, with a power of expanding to meet the advance of thought and discovery without needing to run to such lengths as “diaminotrihydroxydodecanoic acid.” No existing national speech would meet the purpose, least of all English; but it would be advisable to have some regard to æsthetic interests in framing a new language, and the old tongues would supply a good deal of material in this regard. The success of the poet depends on qualities of words as well as qualities of imagination, and we have no wish, like Plato, to exclude poets from the ideal commonwealth. We should retain large numbers of these short expressive words.

Great numbers of people hesitate in face of this proposal because they feel that it is a very large innovation, however simple and indisputable it is in principle. They contemplate such things as a nervous child gazes on the sea from the steps of a bathing machine. Intellectually, a few such plunges would be of incalculable service to our generation. One can understand people hesitating before some disputed economic or political scheme, but to shrink from adopting plain and large reforms such as this is not a sign of health. We need to purge our sluggish imaginations of their prejudices, to brace our intellectual power, to take pride in our creativeness.

When the new international tongue is ready, a few years will suffice to make it prevail over the older languages in the leading countries which helped to set up the commission. It will become the one speech of the school, the press, commerce, law, government, and, possibly, the church. The travelling public will, as every Esperantist knows, at once discover the advantage. The commercial world will find it a splendid economy and a priceless boon to international trade. A man will be able to travel from London to Tokyo with as little difficulty as from Woolwich to Ealing; and it will be found that when the foreign tongue, which so instinctively suggests to us the uniform of an enemy, has disappeared, one of the worst obstacles to mutual good-feeling will be removed. When the Englishman can talk to the Berliner with perfect ease,—I assume that all beginnings of dialect would be suppressed as mercilessly as weeds in a well-kept garden,—just as a citizen of London now talks with a citizen of New York or Sydney, a very dangerous chasm will be bridged. It is quite certain that the calamitous attitude of modern Germany could not have proceeded to such a dangerous pitch if the Imperialist and other literature which is responsible for it had been intelligible to the whole of Europe. A few students of particular aspects of German life were more or less acquainted with it, and we refused to believe then. Now we discover, to our amazement, that a neighbouring nation has for decades been openly educated up to a pitch of unscrupulous aggression, and the world has been threatened with an incalculable catastrophe. I am not overlooking the real reasons for this development, but I say confidently that it would have been impossible if a national literature were not generally confined within the nation which produces it.

In the school the advantage would be very considerable. Our overstrained and bespectacled children would be spared several hours a day of their school-work or home-work. The whole ancient and modern-language section of the curriculum would be suppressed, and this suppression, with other reforms which I will describe later, would enlarge the teacher’s opportunity of giving real education and spare the pupil a great deal of devastating brain-fag. For the education of older people the gain would be almost as great. A Birmingham artisan could read the latest novel of d’Annunzio or latest play of Hauptmann without the assistance of expert or inexpert translators. All the older literature that is worth preserving would be translated by specially qualified interpreters into the new tongue, and the originals would then become the toys of leisured pedants. If, as I suggested, a proper attention to word-values were secured in the making of the new tongue, there is no reason why it should not express poetical sentiments as gracefully and pleasantly as any existing tongue.

Is there any Utopian element in this scheme? Most people will probably recognise that the only bit of utopianism in it is the expectation that the majority of any nation can be induced to adopt it. That might seem to justify one in using impatient language about the wisdom of the majority of us, but it is no reflection on the scheme itself. The reformer, however, is ill-advised in reflecting on the intelligence of his fellows. Carlyle’s “twenty-seven millions, mostly fools,” discovered in the end that all their follies, which he so vigorously denounced in his Latter-Day Pamphlets, were more permanent and accurate than his “eternal verities.” It is usually want of leisure or immediate profit which alienates the public from schemes of reform. Possibly a scheme which so plainly promises more leisure to us and a very considerable profit may hope to win attention. The reform of spelling I, of course, take as an integral part of the scheme.

But this reform of international intercourse must take a more comprehensive shape than the mere suppression of this confusing plurality of tongues. It is just as foolish of us to maintain a plurality of weights and measures, of coinage and postage-stamps, of social and civic and juridical forms. Even if we confine our attention to the leading civilised nations, we find in these respects a confusion which outrages the elementary instincts of commercial life and lays a monstrous burden of superfluous trouble on us all. Travellers and business-men endure it year after year with the most amazing patience. Men who would be fired to instant action if they found a trace of such disorder in their domestic or commercial concerns resign themselves to this colossal muddle of international intercourse as calmly as if it were a providential and entirely sacred arrangement. I remember once passing rather rapidly from Lucerne to London, by way of Wiesbaden, Cologne, and Brussels: on another occasion by way of Cologne and Amsterdam. The hours one has to spend in calculating coinage (or lose the exchange-value), the worry expended in struggling for stamps or dinners in the less familiar tongues, the confusion of train-rules and street-usages and civic regulations, reflect a system of chaotic disorder; to say nothing of the “sizes” of boots or collars you need, the weight of tobacco or fruit, and so on.

All this is a portentous example of slavery to tradition, whether the tradition be reasonable or no. We have not the slightest regard for the historical development of this muddle and the peculiar folly of retaining it in our generation. Our earlier ancestors measured their woollens or their corn or their mead by the simple standards that are apt to occur to primitive peoples. Even, however, where the same standard occurred to, or commended itself to, different and remote communities, its vagueness was fatal. “A thousand paces” (a mille, as the Romans said) seemed a fair reckoning for long distances, but the stretch varied, and we have Irish miles and German miles and English miles and nautical miles. Our ounces and yards and pints are as intelligent as most of the other things which the ancient Briton invented, but, being British, they seem sacred to us. A hundred years ago a far superior standard, the decimal system, was put before us, but our fathers felt that it smacked of the French Revolution and Napoleon and atheism. We smile at their prejudice, yet we have no greater disposition to alter our unintelligent ways. The German would be horrified at having to reckon his distances in kilometres. The British lion, the French or German or Russian or American eagle,—there is a marvellous love of that symbol of aspiration and progress,—or the rising sun of Japan, must have its own system of weights and measures and coins. Passing through a strip of Canada some months ago I had, from lack of the local stamps, to entrust my post to a kindly waitress; and was, of course, robbed. Of late years, Australia has patriotically resolved to have its own coins, and has fought parliamentary battles over its stamps.

The often-imagined visitor from another planet would not be so much surprised at this extraordinary and costly muddle of patriotic shams as at our faculty for progress in commerce and industry amidst it all. We seem to be quite blind to the larger applications of our modern doctrine of efficiency. Regarded as an economic system, which it really is, the international arrangement of our civilised world is full of crudities which are more worthy of a Papuan pedlar. The contrast between the methods of a large Chicago store or a British or German engineering-business and the methods we retain in far larger and more important concerns will one day be a subject of amazement. The evil of which I am speaking eats into the very heart of an industrial and commercial system which prides itself on its order, economy, and efficiency. Yet this comprehensive muddle is contemplated almost without protest by business-men. If it were merely the leisure hours of travellers which were dissipated in this abstruse study of foreign tongues and coins and customs, we might merely deplore proverbial vagaries of taste. But the abuse is immeasurably greater than this; the advantage we should gain by this scheme of unification can scarcely be calculated. One would think that the reform was really difficult to achieve, or lay under the frown of some imposing school of theologians or moralists or economists!