"My dear ——,
"I really can't put it any more plainly, so I must just repeat it: we are not trying to introduce a language that has any interest for anybody in itself. An international language is a labour-saving device. The question is, Is it an efficient one? If so, it must surely be adopted. The world wants to be saved labour. It never pays permanently to do things a longer way, if the shorter one produces equally good results. No one has yet proved, or, in my opinion, advanced any decent argument tending to show, that the results produced by a universal language will not be just as good for many purposes1 as those produced by national languages. That the results are more economically produced surely does not admit of doubt.
1And those very important ones, relatively to man's whole field of activity.
'Personally, any living language interests me more than Esperanto.' Of course it does. So it does me, and most sensible people. But what the
digamma does it matter to Esperanto whether we are interested in it or not? It is not there to interest us. The question is, Does it, or not, save us or others unprofitable labour on a large scale? Neither you nor most sane persons are probably particularly interested in shorthand or Morse codes or any signalling systems. Yet they bear up.
"Do try to see that we think there is a certain felt want, amongst countless numbers of persons, which is much more efficiently and economically met by a neutral, easy, international language, than by any national one. That is the position you have got to controvert, if you are seriously to weaken the argument in favour of an international language. If you say that it is not a want felt by many people, I can only say, at the risk of being dogmatic, that you are wrong. I happen to know that it is.1 The question then is, Is there an easy way of meeting that want? And the equally certain and well-grounded answer is, There is....
1I have before me a list of 119 societies, representing many different lines of work and play and many nations, who had already in 1903 given in their adhesion to a scheme for an international language. Technical terms alone (in all departments of study) want standardizing, and an international language affords the best means. The number of societies is now (1907) over 270.
"As to your argument that what is easy is more easily forgotten—it is true. But I think you must see that, neither in practice nor in principle, does it or should it make for choosing the harder way of arriving at a given result. Chance the forgetting, if necessary re-learning as required, and use the time and effort saved for some more remunerative purpose.
"'One is God's handiwork, the other a man's toy.' I should have said the first was man's lip-work, but I see what you mean. It is God working through his creature's natural development. The same is equally true of all man's 'toys.' Man moulded his language in pursuance of his ends under God. Under the same guidance he moulded the steam engine, the typewriter, shorthand, the semaphore, and all kinds of signals. What are the philosophical differentia that make Esperanto a toy, and natural language God's handiwork? Apparently the fact that Esperanto is 'artificial,' i.e. consciously produced by art. If this is the criterion, beware lest you damn man's works wholesale. If this is not the criterion, what is?
"'An Englishman who knows French and German would do much better to devote any extra time at his disposal to the study of his own language.' Yes—if his object is to qualify as an artist in language. No—if his object is to save time and trouble in communicating with foreigners. You must compare like with like. It is unscientific and a confusion of thought to change the subject-matter of a man's employment of his time on grounds other than those fairly intercomparable. You have dictated as to how a man should employ his time by changing his object in employing his time. This makes the whole discussion irrelevant, in so far as it deals with the comparative advantage of studying one language or the other.