accordance with
the musical laws so discovered. Why may we not, why ought we not even to
expect, analogically, that the same thing will occur for speech?

Setting aside, however, for the present occasion, the profounder inquiry
into the inherent significance of sounds, and into all that flows
logically from that novel and recondite investigation, we propose at
present to treat in a more superficial way the subject indicated in the
title of this article--A Universal Language; its Possibility, Scientific
Necessity, and Appropriate Characteristics.

The expansion of the scope of science is at this day such that the
demand for discriminating technicalities exceeds absolutely the capacity
of all existing language for condensed and appropriate combinations and
derivations. Hence speech must soon fail to serve the new developments
of thought, unless the process of word-building can be itself
proportionately improved; unless, in other words, a new and
scientifically constructed Language can be devised adequate to all the
wants of science. It would seem that there should occur, in the range of
possibilities, the existence of the _Plan_ in _Nature_ of a _New_ and
_Universal Language_, copious, flexible, and expressive beyond measure;
competent to meet the highest demands of definition and classification;
and containing within itself a natural, compact, infinitely varied, and
inexhaustible terminology for each of the Sciences, as ordained by fixed
laws preexistent in the nature of things.

This language should not then be an arbitrary contrivance, but should be
elaborated from the fundamental laws of speech, existing in the
constitution of the universe and of man, and logically traced to this
special application. This knowledge of the underlying laws of speech
should determine the mode of the combination of _Elementary Sounds_ into
Syllables and Words, and of Words into Sentences naturally expressive of
given conceptions or ideas. Such a language would rest on discovery, in
that precise sense in which discovery differs from invention, and would
have in itself infinite capacities and powers of expression, and again
of suggesting thought; and might perhaps come to be recognized as the
most stupendous discovery to which the human intellect is capable of
attaining. 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.' The Word, or the _Logos_, is the underlying or
hidden _Wisdom_ of which _speech_ is the