Latin cannot be dismissed quite so hastily. It has in its favour the powerful argument that it has once already been found adequate to serve as the universal language. There is a widespread opinion to-day among the medical profession--the profession most actively interested in the establishment of a universal language--that Latin should be adopted, and before the International Medical Congress at Rome in 1894, a petition to this effect was presented by some eight hundred doctors in India.[238] It is undoubtedly an admirable language, expressive, concentrated, precise. But the objections are serious. The relative importance of Latin to-day is very far from what it was a thousand years ago, for conditions have wholly changed. There is now no great influence, such as the Catholic Church was of old, to enforce Latin, even if it possessed greater advantages. And the advantages are very mixed. Latin is a wholly dead tongue, and except in a degenerate form not by any means an easy one to learn, for its genius is wholly opposed to the genius even of those modern languages which are most closely allied to it. The world never returns on its own path. Although the prestige of Latin is still enormous, a language could only be brought from death to life by some widespread motor force; such a force no longer exists behind Latin. There remain English and French, and these are undoubtedly the two natural languages most often put forward--even outside England and France--as possessing the best claims for adoption as auxiliary international mediums of communication.