Article 15 says: "The decisions of the academy must be at once submitted to the inventor. If the inventor has not within thirty days protested against the decisions, they are valid. Decisions not approved by the inventor are referred back to the academy, and are valid if carried by a two-thirds majority."
The bishop held out for his right of absolute veto, as his episcopal fellows and their colleagues are doing "in another place" in England. The conflict presents some analogy with other graver constitutional matters, involving discussion of the respective merits of absolute and suspensive veto, and may therefore have some interest at present, apart from its great importance in any scheme for an international language.
The upshot was that dissensions broke out within the academy. The director, unable to carry a complete scheme of reformed grammar, resigned (1891), and the academy, whose business it was to arrange the next congress and keep the movement going, never convened a fourth congress. Several academicians set to work on new artificial languages of their own; and what was left of
the Academy of Volapük, under a new director, M. Rosenberger, a St. Petersburg railway engineer, elected 1893, subsequently turned its attention to working out a new language, to which was given the name Idiom Neutral (see [next chapter]).
It is interesting to note that, when Volapük was nearing its high-water mark, the American Philosophical Society appointed a committee (October 1887) to inquire into its scientific value.
This committee reported in November 1887. The report states that the creation of an international language is in conformity with the general tendency of modern civilization, and is not merely desirable, but "will certainly be realized." It goes on to reject Volapük as the solution of the problem, as being on the whole retrogade in tendency. It is too arbitrary in construction, and not international enough in vocabulary; nor does it correspond to the general trend of development of language, which is away from a synthetic grammar (inflection by means of terminations, as in Latin and Greek) and towards an analytic one (inflection by termination replaced by prepositions and auxiliaries).
But the committee was so fully convinced of the importance of an international language, that it proposed to the Philosophical Society that it should invite all the learned societies of the world to co-operate in the production of a universal language. A resolution embodying this recommendation was adopted by the society, and the invitations were sent out. About twenty societies accepted—among them the University of Edinburgh. The Scots again!
The London Philological Society commissioned Mr. Ellis to investigate the subject, and upon his report declined to co-operate. Mr. Ellis was a believer in Volapük, and furthermore did not agree with the American Philosophical Society's conclusion that an international language ought to be founded on an Indo-Germanic (Aryan) basis. In this Mr. Ellis was almost certainly wrong, as subsequent experience is tending to show. The Japanese, among others, are taking up Esperanto with enthusiasm,
find it easy, and make no difficulty about its Aryan basis. But, apart from linguistic considerations, Mr. Ellis's practical reasoning was certainly sound. It was to this effect: The main thing is to adopt a language that is already in wide use and shown to be adequate. Alterations bring dissension; by sticking to what we have already got, imperfections and all, strife is avoided, and the thing is at once reduced to practice.
This was a wise counsel, and applies to-day with double force to the present holder of the field, Esperanto, which is besides, in the opinion of experts, a better language than Volapük, and far easier to acquire.