We are tormented in a hundred ways, yet we contemplate this absurd muddle and waste with as resigned an air as if we still believed that the Almighty had, in a fit of temper, created the confusion of tongues at ancient Babel. So subtle and strong is the hold of custom on us that we rarely even ask ourselves whether this is a wise or an unalterable arrangement. We hear with indifference, if not with amusement, of societies which propose to adopt one international tongue in the place of this ridiculous confusion; we languidly picture to ourselves little groups of long-haired faddists meeting in bleak halls to attract our duller neighbours to the cultivation of one more innocent enthusiasm. We have not time for these things. When a sensible man has given adequate time to business and pleasure, he has, he says, no hours to spare for these idealistic luxuries. Yet a moment's serious reflection would show us that the sole aim of these "faddists" is to make life _less_ crowded and laborious, to lighten our business and add to our pleasure, to introduce common-sense into a large part of our conduct. To such strange contradictions and absurdities does this resolve to resist innovation bring us. Most people are, perhaps,--if they ever give a thought to the matter,--under the impression that it is a mountainous and impracticable task to introduce such a reform into the life of the world. It is, on the contrary, one of the simplest and most practicable reforms to which men could set their hands. It is even less controversial a measure than the abolition of war. There are few prejudices of our time which have not attracted the ingenuity of some faddist or other; but this is one of the few. More emphatically here than in the case of war, all that we need is the will of the majority to change our anachronistic practice. When one regards the entirely uncontroversial nature of the reform and the immense economy it will entail, it is hardly unreasonable to hope that this will of the majority may soon be secured.