This proposal is, however, still-born. Every attempt to realise it is bound to be shipwrecked on the rock of national jealousy, as has been often shown before, for it is evident that the nation whose language was chosen would receive a very great advantage. The widely spoken English language possesses, it is true, a very simple grammar, but it would be very unsuitable for this purpose on account of its extremely difficult pronunciation. Just as science has succeeded in giving to the world a uniform system of weights and measures by choosing instead of a national unit of length one common to all nations, namely, the length of an earth quadrant, so only that language could find general acceptance which was based on the common possession of those peoples for whom it was intended. By that we mean the stock of words common to the three great families of languages, the Germanic, Romance, and Slavonic. Against this the objection will be raised: "An artificial language; in other words, a Utopia! How could one think of artificially creating a language, which, after all, is a living and spontaneously developing organism? One might as well think of artificially creating a live horse!" It is true that one cannot make a live horse, but one can make an automobile, which under certain circumstances may replace the horse, and even excel its performance. But no one would think on that account of totally doing away with horses. In a similar manner the partisans of an artificial language have no wish to displace the natural languages. In poetry and imaginative literature, wherein the soul of a nation finds its highest expression, the mother-tongue will always be supreme.[1] "But it is unthinkable," one will say, "that an artificial language would ever be generally accepted." Such statements must be received with caution, for they have turned out more than once to be wrong. The introduction of a common system of weights and measures was also declared to be impossible at one time, nevertheless it has since been carried out in science. The construction of a system of telegraph wires connecting the whole civilised world and a telegraph alphabet common to all nations was declared seventy years ago to be an impossibility. Now it is ancient history. The maritime nations have agreed upon a common code of signals. When the English sailor arrives at the Japanese coast, he translates the sentences he wishes to transmit into numbers, which he signals by means of flags, and the Japanese port official translates the signalled numbers by means of the code into Japanese sentences. Why should it therefore be impossible to introduce instead of this intermediary _numerical_ language an intermediary _word_ language, which would give expression to thought in a better and more direct manner?[2] "Quite so, but such an intermediary language would be much more difficult to create than a code of signals arranged for a limited number of words and phrases."