,
In every part of the earth,
In this day of my generation.
But the flesh is a little different,
And here and there the organism a nobler one,
And the idea bigger, broader, deeper,
Of a more divine quality and diapason.
He is included in us, as the lesser in the greater;
All our enactments are repetitions of his;
Enlarged and adorned;
And we pass through all his phases,
Some time or other, in our beginnings--
Through his, and an infinity of larger ones--
And we have the same inevitable endings.

A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE:

ITS POSSIBILITY, SCIENTIFIC NECESSITY, AND APPROPRIATE CHARACTERISTICS

The idea of the possibility and desirableness of a universal language,
scientifically constituted; a common form of speech for all the nations
of mankind; for the remedy of the confusion and the great evil of Babel,
is not wholly new. The celebrated Leibnitz entertained it. It was, we
believe, glanced at among the schemes of Lord Monboddo. Bishop Wilkins
devoted years of labor to the accomplishment of the task, and thought he
had accomplished it. He published the results of his labors in heavy
volumes, which have remained, as useless lumber, on the shelves of the
antiquarian, or of those who are curious in rare books. A young
gentleman of this city, of a rare genius, by the name of Fairbank, who
died by a tragical fate a few years since, labored assiduously to the
same end. A society of learned men has recently been organized in Spain,
with their headquarters at Barcelona, devoted to the same work. Numerous
other attempts have probably been made. In all these attempts, projects,
and labors, the design has never transcended the purpose of _Invention_.
The effort has been simply to _contrive_ a new form of speech, and to
persuade mankind to accept it;--a task herculean and hopeless in its
magnitude and impracticability; but looking still in the direction of
the supply of one of the greatest needs of human improvement. The
existence of no less than two or three thousand different languages and
idioms on the surface of the planet, in this age of railroad and
steamship communication, presents, obviously, one of the most serious
obstacles to that unification of humanity which so many concurrent
indications tend, on the other hand, to prognosticate.

Another and different outlook toward a unity of speech for the race
comes up from a growing p