Read Ebook: The scrap book Volume 2 No. 2 by Various

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In this manner the Esperanto dictionary contains only about two thousand roots, yet they are sufficient to form, by means of derivation, a vocabulary large enough for all purposes.

But what makes matters simpler still, he chose his two thousand roots in such a manner that they appear familiar to all educated persons of European civilization, by selecting first those terms which are already in universal usage, like sport, toilet, train; then by taking words common to two or three leading languages, and finally by adding to these a small number of roots not international, but picked out judiciously from various idioms, so that any one, be he Slav, Teuton, or Latin, finds that Esperanto has a familiar appearance.

I should say that the most remarkable feature about Esperanto, and one which no natural idiom possesses to such a degree, is this power of forming new words once the key-word is given, and it should be remembered that in the majority of instances this key-word is already known.

Simplicity a Striking Feature.

The second striking feature is the simplicity and regularity of the whole grammatical scheme; thus are placed within easy reach two essential parts of a language--the vocabulary, and the very simple device whereby this vocabulary may be made to express all ideas clearly.

To take again the word "death" as an example: the key-word is "mort" . Remembering that in Esperanto all nouns end in "o," all adjectives in "a," adverbs in "e," infinitives in "i"; that contraries are formed by prefixing "mal"; that the prefix "sen" means without; that the suffix "ant" marks the agent , and that the suffix "ig" means to cause, we get from the above root: morto, death; morta, mortal; morti, to die; morte, mortally; mortano, the dying man; mortanta, dying; mortigi, to cause death, or kill; mortigo, murder; mortiganto, murderer; mortiga, death-dealing; malmorta, living; senmorta, Immortal; senmorto, immortality, etc.

The conjugation of verbs, which is the great stumbling-block in the study of all natural languages, presents no difficulty whatever in Esperanto. In the first place, there are no irregular verbs; secondly, there is only one ending for each tense; thirdly, the number of tenses is reduced to a strict minimum, mainly past, present, future, and conditionally.

The infinitive of all verbs ends in "t"; the present always in "as"; the past always in "is"; the conditional always in "us"; these endings are the same in the singular and the plural.

To sum up, Esperanto is the easiest of all languages; all that is needed to read and write it is a familiarity with the few grammatical principles, most of which have been explained above, a knowledge of the thirty-odd suffixes and the half-dozen prefixes alluded to, and a dictionary giving the two thousand roots, many of which most of us know already.

Any one with the merest smattering of Latin and German and a knowledge of English can write a letter in Esperanto practically from the start; in fact, a person with a knack for languages can do so without this previous knowledge if provided with a dictionary.

As for speaking it, that is, of course, a matter of practise. It is easy enough, yet practise for a couple of months is indispensable to become fluent. Those interested should form a club and meet for the purpose of conversing. The pronunciation is as easy as the rest of the language.

Is this artificial language to come into real use? Professor Borgerhoff shows us that it is at least spreading rapidly. In June, 1905, there was only a handful of Esperantists in America. One year later there were fifty clubs, mostly in colleges. Paris offers about twenty free public courses. All over Europe the language has hundreds of thousands of adherents. Three thousand Esperantists, representing fifteen different countries, attended the congress at Boulogne-sur-Mer, in August, 1905.

THE CASH COST OF CONVERTING A SOUL.

Mormons Figure That It Amounts to ,500, While Volunteers of America Find That Will Do.

Twenty-two years ago the cost of soul-saving was infinitesimal. A picture of heaven, a few passages from the Scripture, a prayer, and a request were sufficient--a few cents, in fact, and our task was accomplished. To-day people have no leisure. They have no time to listen to what preachers have to say. They read cheap literature, which, as a rule, is antagonistic to evangelization.

Present Facts in a Commercial Way.

Religious phraseology doesn't work. We have to present our facts in a commercial way. We don't relish it, but we have to move with the times. We content ourselves with the fact that, after all, true religion is transacting business with God and with heaven.

General education has made it much more difficult to convert the people and to conduct a campaign of evangelization. The people are provided with so many methods of occupying their time and thought that there is no longer any possibility of getting individuals to come to a church to fill in a spare hour as they used to do so readily.

This fact has been demonstrated to me again and again, and forced home when I find myself in places where I used to hold meetings with five or six hundred people in attendance and where now I find difficulty in getting together an audience of twenty or thirty people.

A minister of to-day is also familiar with the fact that the Bible no longer occupies the place of authority in the minds of the people that it used to. And when a preacher has to prove the truth of his only authority it is a bad tendency on the part of the people.

It is the same as if a lawyer, when he appeared in court to plead his case, were obliged to prove the truth of the Constitution, which is the fundamental law. On the other hand, the evangelist himself hasn't the slightest doubt of the authority of his message, while he knows his hearers have.

Education and Evangelism.

Asked whether, in his opinion, the education which had proved detrimental to evangelism was a bad thing for the people themselves, Mr. Soltau replied:

It is both good and bad. It is good in that it develops the minds and gives the people something to think about, and it is bad in that it diminishes their fear and reverence for the Scriptures.

Culture has undermined faith largely. It has destroyed the foundations on which faith used to rest; not that the foundations are one whit injured, but the building of character has been shifted to other foundations, namely, those of human opinion, research, discovery, and creed untested by what was supposed to be divine revelation.

Modern thought has infected universally the people with doubt upon all that was supposed to be established fact. And it has given nothing in its place except speculation and private opinion, so that every man is practically his own God to do and think as he chooses.

The production of literature--scientific, historical, and fictional--is so enormous as to demand the spare time of every one to read it. The pulpit and the pew, the magazine reader and the newspaper reader, have been infected with the German rationalism and philosophy, which has dared to assert itself as of higher authority than the Scriptures.

Authority has been destroyed, there is no court of appeal above human reason. That being so, there is nothing to correct human reason and bring it back to its old bearings. We have to evangelize people who have little or no substratum of Bible knowledge, and have no cultivated faith in any one but themselves.

The enormous wealth and rapid development of the material resources of the country have opened up innumerable outlets for the energies of mind and body, and the possibilities of getting rich have absorbed every one almost, so that the dollar has first and last place in the people's minds. It is almost impossible to dislodge it. The altered conditions of civilization have destroyed simplicity of living and of thinking, hence there is no room or time for spiritual things.

The Average Churchgoer.

The low level of spirituality attained by the average church member disgusts the man of the world, who sees no distinct advantage in religion beyond possibly a social one. The average Christian thinks only of his personal safety and has no concern for his neighbor. His is mainly a selfish religion, and such poor samples are abroad of what God is supposed to do that the successful business man, who knows how he feels about results, discounts such enormously, and looks upon the whole thing as beneath his notice.

Democracy has produced lawlessness enormously. It begins in the family, where parental control is at a big discount. The grown boy gets his way at any cost to others' business.

He has learned to ignore law and authority from the beginning. The laws of the community are evaded, then the laws of the State, then of the Federal government. He believes he is a law unto himself. There is no law of God to need his attention. There is no God to trouble about. The book of God is never read. The day of God is utterly ignored. The future life does not concern him, so he needs no Gospel, no mission, no Saviour, no prayer, and the whole thing is gone.

The dollar values everything. How much happiness, how much pleasure, how much for himself.

Mr. Soltau, however, does not think that the Bible has lost its power. None of the modern intellectual and worldly developments satisfy the secret cravings of the soul.

EDUCATION PRESCRIBED AS ANTIDOTE FOR WAR.

President Faunce Believes the Spirit of Perpetual Peace Is Lurking in Public Schools.

Since the majority of evils spring from ignorance, education is the surest safeguard of virtue. It is a strong perversity that continues against a real understanding of the truth.

If war is an evil--moral, economic--as both economists and moralists generally admit, the hope of universal peace rests upon education. For that reason the suggestions made by President H. P. Faunce, of Brown University, in a speech at New Haven, carry the greater weight. He said:

No great movement is permanent until placed on an educational basis. Whatever enters the public mind through the schools enters as sunshine and rain into the fiber of the oak. A world-wide movement is now in progress, having as its object not the reformation of human nature, not the disbanding of all armies and navies, but simply the establishment of a better means than war for the settling of the disputes that must occur as long as the nations endure.

Already great results have been accomplished. Arbitration has been substituted for war in the majority of the cases. War is now the exception, not the rule, in case of international quarrel. It is not true that "in time of peace we must prepare for war," but rather that in time of peace, we must prepare to make war impossible.

There is a growing appreciation throughout the world of the irrationality and futility of war. We have come to realize that the simultaneous discharge of pistols at fifty paces is no more likely to establish justice than the tossing of pennies or the throwing of the dice.

When the duelist became absurd, dueling was dead. The time is surely coming when the international duel will seem, in the face of international opinion, an utterly stupid way of settling differences.

What can we do in the public schools? We can inculcate the broad principle that rational men, when they differ, should appeal to reason and not to force. Already our schoolboys do this in athletics. They are accustomed to accept the decisions of umpires and referees without whining or complaint. The athletic field is a direct training for arbitration on a large scale.

We can teach in our schools that peace hath her victories no less renowned than war. We are learning to exalt a new type of heroism--the heroism of the social settlement of the city missionary, of the men and women who are devoting their lives to the uplifting of social conditions in the heart of our great cities. This newer heroism must be taught in our public schools.

We can inculcate the brotherhood of man in every class in our schools, and in every study that is taught. We can show that racial antagonisms are baseless and brutal. Each of the various races makes its own contribution to modern civilization. The last address of John Hay was an appeal for this point of view; for earnest endeavor on the part of all men and women in responsible positions to inculcate the method of arbitration as a substitute for the utilities of war.

GERMANY'S FIGHT FOR COMMERCIAL SUPREMACY.

Study of Other Nations' Needs and Mastery of Their Languages Give Her Advantages.

If I were asked to say what has contributed most to Germany's progress, I should unhesitatingly mention the development of patriotism in its best sense in the individual, and, though this historic fact cannot be proved by the usual methods of the statisticians, we know beyond doubt that the nation has come to work together as a firm and united organization.

His conclusions on the importance of education were:

There can no longer be any doubt that Germany's industrial advance is mainly due to the extent and thoroughness with which technical education is being conducted. Briefly stated, the secret of the pronounced success of the technical colleges in the Fatherland lies in the fact that they have kept pace with the ever-increasing scope of all branches of science in general, and, to the same extent, with the ever-increasing demands of the present-day industrial enterprises upon scientific investigation and research.

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