III. Linguistic principles necessary for the construction of an international auxiliary language, with an appendix on the criticism of Esperanto, by O. Jespersen 27 IV. On the application of logic to the problem of an international language, by L. Couturat 42 V. The relationship of the international language to science, by R. Lorenz 53 VI. The question of nomenclature, by W. Ostwald 61 VII. Conclusion; Reading, Writing, and Speaking, by L. Pfaundler 69 APPENDIX I. _Linguo Internaciona di la Delegitaro_; grammar, word-formation, list of grammatical words 75 " II. Specimen pages from the International-English Dictionary 82 " III. An experiment in double translation 84 " IV. _Uniono di l'amiki di la linguo internaciona_; extracts from the provisional statutes, and membership form 86 INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE AND SCIENCE CHAPTER I THE NEED FOR A COMMON SCIENTIFIC LANGUAGE All who are occupied with the reading or writing of scientific literature have assuredly very often felt the want of a common scientific language, and regretted the great loss of time and trouble caused by the multiplicity of languages employed in scientific literature. The remarkable and regrettable feature of this state of affairs is that we once possessed, and have now lost, such a common language, namely, Latin. Even in the first third of the last century Gauss wrote a portion of his mathematical and physical papers in Latin, and up to the middle of the last century the dissertations of the scientific candidates at the German universities were translated into Latin by their philological colleagues, since the former were no longer sufficiently conversant with that language. The fall of Latin as the language of scholars and men of science could not, however, be prevented, nor does there exist the faintest chance of its ever recovering its lost position. The reasons for this are known to all. The rise and development of science, for the expression of whose ideas the language of Cicero no longer sufficed, the fall of scholasticism, with its Church Latin, the diffusion of knowledge amongst people not possessing a university training, the foundation of technical high schools, and, finally, the growing national sentiment and jealousy of nations who sought to further the spread of their national languages by using them in the works of their scientific men--all this has contributed to displace Latin by the modern national languages. The result is that, instead of one common language for scholars and men of science, we now possess three.