An Essay Towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language

An Essay Towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language (London, 1668) is the best-remembered of the numerous works of John Wilkins, in which he expounds a new universal language, meant primarily to facilitate international communication among scholars, but envisioned for use by diplomats, travelers, and merchants as well. Unlike many universal language schemes of the period, it was meant merely as an auxiliary to—not a replacement of—existing natural languages. One of the aims of the Essay was to provide a replacement for the Latin language, which had been the international language of scholars in Western Europe by then for 1000 years. Comenius and others interested in international languages had criticisms of the arbitrary features of Latin that made it harder to learn, and Wilkins also made such points. A scheme for a lingua franca based on numerical values had been published by John Pell (1630); and in his 1640 work Mercury or the Secret Messenger (1640) Wilkins had mentioned the possibility of developing a trade language. Seth Ward was author with Wilkins of Vindiciae academiarum (1654), a defence of the Commonwealth period of the Oxbridge university system against outsider reformers. In it Ward put forward a related language scheme, though differing from the Essay of Wilkins in some significant ways. Ward's ideas derived from a number of sources, such as Cyprian Kinner who was a follower of Comenius, Ramon Lull, and Georg Ritschel. They went on to influence George Dalgarno as well as Wilkins. There was immediate interest in the Essay; Wilkins is said to have regarded his work only in terms of a proof of concept. But in the medium term enthusiasm for this kind of constructed language declined. The problem of a universal language remained as a topic of debate. The stimulus for Wilkins to write the Essay came from the Council of the Royal Society, in 1662. The work was delayed by the Great Fire of London of 1666, which destroyed some of it in draft. The book was written by Wilkins, assisted by John Ray, Francis Willughby, and others.