The learning of many languages fills the memory with words instead of facts and thoughts, and this is a vessel which, with every person, can only contain certain limited amount of records. Therefore the learning of many languages is injudicious, inasmuch as it arouses the belief in the possession of dexterity, and, as a matter of fact, it lends a kind of delusive importance to social intercourse. It is also injurious in that it opposes the acquirement of solid knowledge and the intention to win the respect of men in an honest way. Finally, it is the ax which is laid at the root of a delicate sense of language in our mother tongue, which thereby is incurably injured and destroyed. The two nations which have produced the greatest stylists, the Greeks and the French, learned no foreign languages; but as human intercourse grows more cosmopolitan, and as, for instance, a good merchant in London must now be able to read and write eight languages, the learning of many tongues has certainly become a necessary evil; but which, when finally carried to an extreme, will compel mankind to find a remedy, and in some far off future there will be a new language used at first as a language of commerce, then as a language of intellectual intercourse, then for all, as surely as some time or other there will be aviation. Why else should philology have studied the laws of language for a whole century and have estimated the necessary, the valuable, and the successful portion of each separate language? (Nietsche.) In this connection it may be well to repeat once more that Esperanto is only an "auxiliary" language. Nobody dreams of it being a "universal language." EXAMPLES OF ESPERANTO. Simpla, fleksebla, belsona, vere internacia en siaj elementoj[1], la lingvo Esperanto prezentas al la mondo civilizita la sole veran solvon[2] de lingvo internacia: cxar[3], tre facila por homoj nemulte instruitaj, Esperanto estas komprenata sen peno de la personoj bone edukitaj. Mil faktoj atestas la meriton praktikan de la nomita lingvo. [1] "j" has the sound of English "y", as in boy, and is the sign for the plural of nouns and adjectives. [2] "n" is the mark of the accusative or object of the verb. [3] The diacritic sign ^ occurs on c, g, h, j, s and has the force of an h after the first and the last--ch, sh. gx is pronounced like English g in George, which g without sign has the value of g in good. jx is pronounced like s in pleasure, while j simple has the sound of y in yes, esp. jes. hx occurs rarely and is doomed to disappear in favor of k.