as any other people; whereby, in conversation as well as in writing, they might make themselves perfectly understood by one another.
"The elements of this character and language are so few, and the combination of them so easy, that the Doctor (Wilkins) says he has no doubt, that a person of a good capacity and memory may, in one month's space, attain to a good readiness of expressing his mind this way, either in the character or language.
"As the names of individuals cannot be comprehended in tables of genuses and their differences, the Doctor (Wilkins) hath contrived an alphabet of all the simple articulations of the human voice; to which he hath assigned two sets of characters, to be used at pleasure: the one consists of short and plain strokes, the other is a kind of delineation of the position of the organs in forming the articulations."
This plan Dr. Priestley considers the most rational of all the plans of a universal and philosophical language. And he adds, whenever this noble project is resumed, it seems to be impossible to proceed upon a better plan than this. The principal thing that is wanting to the perfection of it is a more perfect distribution of things into classes than, perhaps, the present state of knowledge can enable us to make.
