Primeros intentos de construir una lengua internacional.—La urgente necesidad de una lengua auxiliar en la actualidad.—El volapük.—Las pretensiones del español.—El latín.—Las pretensiones del inglés.—Sus desventajas.—Las pretensiones del francés.—Sus desventajas.—El crecimiento moderno del sentimiento nacional opuesto a la selección de una lengua natural.—Ventajas de una lengua artificial.—Requisitos que debe cumplir.—El esperanto.—Su amenazada disrupción.—La Asociación Internacional para la adopción de una lengua auxiliar internacional.—El primer paso que debe darse.
Ever since the decay of Latin as the universal language of educated people, there have been attempts to replace it by some other medium of international communication. That decay was inevitable; it was the outward manifestation of a movement of individualism which developed national languages and national literatures, and burst through the restraining envelope of an authoritarian system expounded in an official language. This individualism has had the freest play, and we are not likely to lose all that it has given us. Yet as soon as it was achieved the more distinguished spirits in every country began to feel the need of counterbalancing it. The history of the movement may be said to begin with Descartes, who in 1629 wrote to his friend Mersenne that it would be possible to construct an artificial language which could be used as an international medium of communication. Leibnitz, though he had solved the question for