Esperanto_, to be sacrosanct, and go so far in this matter as to revere as "correct" and "classical" Esperanto the infringements of his own rules, the grammatical errors, and even the misprints to be found in the _Fundamento_. The idea of a powerful organisation has undoubtedly at first sight something very attractive about it. One must, however, not forget, even in the case of an international language, that no organisation in the world can arrest the progress of a necessary development. Every human contrivance and invention is subject to change, errors and deficiencies being corrected. Especially is a rational development inevitable in the case of things, such as an international language, which are subject to the control of our intelligence. Conversely it is not difficult to reply to the question, How is it then possible, when a system has once been chosen, to carry it out and preserve it? For there are two fundamental qualities which, happily for us, are apparent in the history of inventions, and each of which confers stability quite apart from any conventions, namely, a high degree of rational development based on the most profound knowledge and an extraordinary empirical perfection. As examples of the latter may be mentioned the notation of music, which since Guido d'Arezzo (born in 990), or at any rate since Johann Sebastian Bach, has not appreciably changed; the division of time into twenty-four hours and of the hour into sixty minutes, which is at least three hundred years old; the face, mechanism, and hands of a watch, which date, with unimportant changes, from the Renaissance; and, finally, the violin, which retains up to the present day the characteristic form which the ancient Italians gave it. Is it not wonderful that this strangely carved piece of wood must possess just that particular form in order to yield its harmonious tones?