138 MY AMERICAN FRIENDS

would find on making the experiment that an
unstandardized language, which means a language
understood by nobody, was not a language at all,
not a means by which anything could be expressed>
whether original or not.

The matter might be endlessly elaborated but
enough has been said to suggest the principle
involved, which is nothing less than this—
standardization is a condition absolutely essential to all
forms of human originality. It is the rock on which
originality builds; the ground on which creative
genius plants its feet; the point of departure for
every voyage of discovery; the chart and compass
of the explorer; the armament of the conqueror;
the vocabulary of the prophet; the tool of the
artist; the business-like aspect of nature ; the
blue-print of the universe* Whence follows the
comforting hope for the world at large, and for
America in particular, that the present age of
standardization is but a station on the road to the
coming of surpassing splendours in the way of
originality and creativeness. And if America is
more standardized than other countries this only
means that she has a somewhat broader basis for
the originality of the future. However that may
bes this may confidently be said: all that America
has done by way of increasing the universal stand-
ardization which nature and society have imposed
on us all amounts to very little. Viewed in that vast
perspective her contribution may be compared to a
pea deposited on the summit of Mount Everest.