ch to lop, alter, correct, and radically to transform.
Words and forms, principles and postulates, jostled with and opposed
each other, whereas in theory, taken separately and not subjected to
extended tests, they had appeared to me perfectly good. Such things,
for instance, as the indeterminate preposition 'je,' the elastic verb
'meti,' the neutral termination 'aux,' etc, possibly would never have
entered into my head if I had proceeded only upon theory. Some forms
which had appeared to possess a wealth of advantage proved in
practice to be nothing but useless ballast, and on this account I
discarded several unnecessary suffixes.

"In 1878 it seemed to me that it was sufficient if my language
possessed a grammar and a dictionary; its heaviness and want of grace
I attributed only to the fact that I did not know the language
sufficiently well; but practice ever more and more convinced me that
a language requires in addition an indescribable something, a uniting
element, giving to it life and a defined and unmistakable spirit.

"I therefore began to avoid making literal translations, and made an
effort to _think_ in the neutral language.

"Later I noticed that the language with which I was occupied was
ceasing to be a shadowy reflection of the language from which I
happened to be translating, and was becoming imbued with its own life
and invested with a spirit of its own, and acquiring a physiognomy
properly defined, clearly expressed, and independent of any other
influence. My speech flowed of itself, flexibly, gracefully, and
totally untrammelled, just as my living native tongue.

"Yet another circumstance compelled me to postpone for a long time
the appearance of my language; for many years another problem of
immense importance to a neutral language had remained unsolved. I
knew that everyone would say 'Your language will be of no use to me
until the world at large accepts it, so I shall make no use of it
until everyone else does.' But since the world at large is composed
only of its units, my neutral language could have no future until it
was of use to each separate unit independently of whether the world
at large accepted it or not.

This problem I considered for a long while. At last the so-called
secret alphabets, which do not necessitate any prior knowledge of
them, and enable any person not in the secret to understand all that
is written if you but transmit the key, gave me an idea. I arranged
my language a