Page:Dr. Esperanto's International Language. Introduction and complete grammar. Por angloj. Warsaw, 1889.pdf/5

— 5 — their ancestors came from thousands of years ago, but to dislike the strange sound of their language. Any one, who has lived for a length of time in a commercial city, whose inhabitants were of different unfriendly nations, will easily understand what a boon would be conferred on mankind by the adoption of an international idiom, which, withontwithout [sic] interfering with domestic affairs or the private-life of nations, would play the part of an official and commercial dialect, at any rate in countries inhabited by people of different nationalities.

The immense importance, which it may well be imagined, an international language would acquire in science, commerce, etc., I will not here expatiate on: whoever has but once bestowed a thought on the subject will surely acknowledge that no sacrifice would be too great, if by it we could obtain a universal tongue. It is, therefore, imperative that the slightest effort in that direction should be attended to. The best years of my life have been devoted to the momentous cause which I am now bringing before the public, and I hope that, on account of the importance of the subject, my readers will peruse this pamphlet attentively to the end.

I shall not here enter upon an analysis of the various attempts already made to give the public a universal language, but will content myself with remarking that these efforts have amounted, either to a short system of mutually-intelligible signs, or to a natural simplification of the grammar of existing modern languages, with a change of their