It is true that one cannot make a live horse, but one can make an automobile, which under certain circumstances may replace the horse, and even excel its performance. But no one would think on that account of totally doing away with horses. In a similar manner the partisans of an artificial language have no wish to displace the natural languages. In poetry and imaginative literature, wherein the soul of a nation finds its highest expression, the mother-tongue will always be supreme.[1]
"But it is unthinkable," one will say, "that an artificial language would ever be generally accepted."
Such statements must be received with caution, for they have turned out more than once to be wrong. The introduction of a common system of weights and measures was also declared to be impossible at one time, nevertheless it has since been carried out in science. The construction of a system of telegraph wires connecting the whole civilised world and a telegraph alphabet common to all nations was declared seventy years ago to be an impossibility. Now it is ancient history.
The maritime nations have agreed upon a common code of signals. When the English sailor arrives at the Japanese coast, he translates the sentences he wishes to transmit into numbers, which he signals by means of flags, and the Japanese port official translates the signalled numbers by means of the code into Japanese sentences. Why should it therefore be impossible to introduce instead of this intermediary numerical language an intermediary word language, which would give expression to thought in a better and more direct manner?[2]
"Quite so, but such an intermediary language would be much more difficult to create than a code of signals arranged for a limited number of words and phrases."
How would it be if this difficulty had been already overcome, and the intermediary language already created and proved to be serviceable?
"But that would amount to adding a new language to be learnt to the ones we already have to learn; there would be no advantage in that!"
If, however, this "new" language was really not "new," consisting mostly of words known to every educated person; if its grammar was so simple that its principles could be learned within an hour; and if, therefore, any educated person who knew a single Romance language could learn the whole language in an incredibly short time, would it not be an advantage to acquire it?
To prove this is a simple problem of permutations and combinations, and the proof possesses all the certainty of mathematical reasoning. We shall demonstrate that by an example.