JOHN WILKINS 41

The truth is that the complacent isolation of linguistic studies
from the pursuit of natural science tinder the influence of the
mediaeval foundations receives no support from the record of
subsequent progress. When the science of language received a
new impetus in Britain from the study of Sanskrit, the focus of
active scientific research directed to human use had shifted to
Edinburgh, where a new Royal Society had revived the social
pre-occupations of its predecessor. In 1802, Alexander Murray,
subsequently a fellow of the Edinburgh Society, published a
History of European Languages, in which he explored the parallel
between Gaelic and Sanskrit. Thus 'began a new chapter in the
natural history of human behaviour. The subsequent work of
Miiller, Bopp, and their followers is redolent with the explicit
influence of classificatory technique directly imported from con-
temporary naturalistic studies. The interest which their theories
excited was in no small measure a consequence of the impact of
evolutionary speculation on contemporary thought.

In our day and generation, when every imaginative person
must needs be haunted by the prostitution of science to purposes
of destruction, the Curse of the Confusion for which Wilkins
sought a remedy is tenfold more apparent. His failure will not
have been fruitless if at last the agony of war compels mankind
to perfect a new instrument of common understanding. Though
the remedy itself was ill-conceived, his diagnosis has lessons from
which many of our contemporaries can still profit. A common
medium of world citizenship must be easy to learn, and a language
which is easy to learn must among others incorporate the
principles which Wilkins already recognized. He stated explicitly
the necessity of the analytical structure based on operative use of
particles which dispense with grammatically redundant termina-
tions or mutations. He also recognized implicitly that the verb
is the least essential part of speech.

Ogden's Basic English, with its twelve operative verbs, com-
presses the minimum necessary non-technical vocabulary for
adequate self-expression into eight hundred and fifty items which
can be printed on a single sheet, because its simple grammar is