the history of English orthografy, and of the difficulties to be overcome in simplifying it. It believs that these difficulties can best be met and overcome under the leadership of an association organized for the purpose, in order that every simplification proposed shal hav behind it a sufficient weight of educated opinion to commend its acceptance by the public.
Not Radical or Revolutionary
The Board, accordingly, mindful of the history of English spelling and the nature of its growth, does not propose any "radical" or "revolutionary" scheme of reform, or any sudden and violent changes. Far from desiring immediately to relax the existing rules and analogies of English spelling, it aims to make them more certain, to extend them, and to enforce them, so as to get rid of needless exceptions and to produce a greater regularity.
On the other hand, the Board makes no claim to "authority", and its proposals must stand on their own merits, each for itself. There is, in fact, no final standard of orthografy. Nowhere is there any authority to set up such a standard. Spelling is never stable. All that the accepted dictionaries can legitimately do is to record the varying usages. Their editors hav recievd no charter to decide finally between conflicting forms. Their function is fulfild when they hav stated the facts.
Gradual and Progressiv
The Simplified Spelling Board, however, as an independent body of men, who hav at hart only the interests of civilization, makes its appeal to the reason of mankind. It desires to establish a better and more
