Page:Dr. Esperanto's International Language. Introduction and complete grammar. Por angloj. Warsaw, 1889.pdf/8

— 8 — The principal difficulties to be overcome were:

1) To render the study of the language so easy as to make its acquisition mere play to the learner.

2) To enable the learner to make direct use of his knowledge with persons of any nationality, whether the language be universally accepted or not; in other words, the language is to be directly a means of internationnlinternational [sic] communication.

3) To find some means of overcoming the natural indifference of mankind, and disposing them, in the quickest manner possible, and en masse, to learn and use the proposed language as a living one, and not only in last extremities, and with the key at hand.

Amongst the numberless projects submitted at various times to the public, often under the high-sounding but unaccountable name of &bdquo;universal languages&ldquo;, no one has solved at once more than one of the above-mentioned problems, and even that but partially. (Many other problems, of course, presented themselves, in addition to those here noticed, but these, as being of but secondary importance, I shall not in this place discuss).

Before proceeding to enlighten the reader as to the means employed for the solution of the problems, I would ask of him to reconsider the exact significance of each separately, so that he may not be inclined to carp at my methods of solution, merely because they may appear to him perhaps too simple. I do this, because I am well aware that the majority of mankind feel disposed to bestow their consideration on any subject the more carefully, in pro-