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national character would be written in it in the first instance.
The Chinese wall dividing literatures would disappear, and the works of other nations would be as readily intelligible to us as those of our own authors. Books being the same for everyone, education, ideals, convictions, aims, would be the same too, and all nations would be united in a common brotherhood. Being compelled, as we now are, to devote our time to the study of several different languages, we cannot study any of them sufficiently well, and there are but few persons who can even boast a complete mastery of their mother-tongue; on the other hand, languages cannot progress towards perfection, and we are often obliged, even in speaking our own language, to borrow words and expressions from foreigners, or to express our thoughts inexactly.
How different would the case be, had we but two languages to learn; we should know them infinitely better, and the languages themselves would grow richer, and reach a higher degree of perfection than is found in any of those now existing. And yet, though language is the prime motor of civilisation, and to it alone we owe the having raised ourselves above the level of other animals, difference of speech is a cause of antipathy, nay even of hatred, between people, as being the first thing to strike us on meeting. Not being understood we keep aloof, and the first notion that occurs to our minds is, not to find out whether the others are of our own political opinions, or whence
