Page:International Language.djvu/164

intellectual things in general. This is the result of early drudging at a subject in which progress is very slow, and which by its nature is uncongenial. The great desideratum is a linguistic subject which shall at once inculcate a feeling for language (German Sprachgefühl), and yet be easy enough to admit of rapid progress. Nothing keeps alive the quickening zest that makes learning fruitful like the consciousness of making rapid progress.

Hitherto arithmetic and Euclid have been the ideal subjects for providing the kind of problem required—one that can be worked out with certainty by the aid of rule and use of brain, without calling for knowledge or experience that the child cannot have. The facts are self-evident, and follow from principles, without involving any extraneous acquaintance with life or literature, and no deadening memory work is required. If only there were some analogous subject on the literary side, to give a general grip of principles, uncomplicated by any arbitrary element, what a boon it would be! and what a sound preparation for real and more advanced linguistic study for those who showed aptitude for this line! Arithmetic and Euclid both really depend upon common sense; but partly owing to their abstract nature, and partly because they are always classed as "mathematics," they seem to contain something repellent to many literary or linguistic types of mind.

With the invention of a perfectly regular and logically constructed language, a concrete embodiment of the chief principles of language structure, we have offered us for the first time the hitherto missing linguistic equivalent of arithmetic or Euclid. In a regular language, just because everything goes by rule, problems can be set and worked out analogous to sums in arithmetic and riders in Euclid. Given the necessary roots and rules, the learner can manufacture the necessary vocabulary and produce the answer with the same logical inevitability; and he has to use his brains to apply his rules, instead of merely copying words out of a dictionary, or depending upon his memory for them.