38 DANGEROUS THOUGHTS

In some particulars they seem to' found their character upon
the Philosophy of Things, yet 'tis not so in others. The Character
for a precious stone must be used with additions to it for several
kinds of Gems, as Pearls, etc. So the Character for any kind of
Tree must have joined to it the Character for Wood, and the letter
that signifies Metals must be annexed to the Character of Iron,
Copper, Steel, etc. The meeting of which passage was no small
satisfaction to me in reference to that way which I had before
pitched upon for the most natural expression of things. But this
(saith he) is no constant Rule amongst them. It should seem to
be observed only in som$ few species of nature which are most
obvious, there being reason to doubt whether had any such
general Theory of Philosophy as might serve for all other things
and notions. In this it is to be acknowledged that they have a
great advantage above the Latin, because their words are not
declined by Terminations, but by Particles, which makes their
Grammar much more easie than that of Latin.

The Real Character as outlined in the preceding paragraphs
is a written language for direct translation from any variety of
speech by use of the Tables. To bring it to life as a means of
oral discourse, Wilkins assigns to each of the genera a syllable
consisting of a consonant followed by a vowel in the phonetic
script of Part IE. Differences are represented by consonants and
species by vowels, so that a typical name-word has the trisyllabic
somewhat Semitic form of Gestapo. Being rich in vowels, the
Philosophical Language has a characteristic which, though often
regarded as pleasing to the ear, certainly impedes ready recog-
nition of separate words in the initial stages of learning. That
ready recognition of individual words—the only special merit of
German—is a desideratum of a language selected or devised for
international use, is one of the few relevant considerations which
seem to have escaped the author's attention.

§3

There is no need to describe in detail the technique of oral
discourse in a tongue which never uttered an intelligible sound*