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according to logical rule tout en marchant, it is impossible to avoid thinking, at each moment, exactly what you do mean. Where there is no idiom, no arbitrary usage, no ready-made phrase, there is also far less danger of yielding to a fatal facility.

Take an instance or two. In the Prayer Book occurs the phrase "Fulfil, O Lord, our desires and petitions." At Sunday lunch a mixed party of people, after attending morning service, were asked how they would render into Esperanto the word "desires." They nearly all plumped for deziraĵo. Now, the Esperanto root for "desire" is dezir-. By adding -o it becomes a noun = the act of desiring, a desire. By adding the suffix -aĵ, and then -o, it becomes concrete = a desire- (i.e. desired-) thing, a desire. A reference to the dictionary showed that the English word "desire" has both these meanings, but none of these people had a sufficiently accurate idea of the use of language to realize this. It was only when a gentleman passed his plate for a second helping of beef, and was asked which he expected to be fulfilled—the beef, or his aspiration for beef—that he, under the stimulus of hunger, adopted the rendering dezir-o, thereby saving at once his bacon and his additional beef.

It is not of course necessary for people to define pedantically to themselves the meaning of every word they use, but surely it must conduce to clear thinking to use a language in which you are perpetually called upon, if you are writing seriously, to make just the mental effort necessary to think what you do mean.

Again, consider the use of prepositions. This is, in nearly all national languages, extremely fluctuating and arbitrary. Take a few English phrases showing the use of the prepositions "at" and "with." "At seven o'clock"; "at any price"; "at all times "at the worst"; "let it go at that"; "I should say at a guess," etc. "Come with me"; "write with a pen"; "he came with a rush"; "things are different with us"; "with a twinkle in his eye"; "with God all things are possible," etc. Try to turn these phrases into any language you think you know; the odds are that you will find yourself "up against it pretty badly." The fact is, that