Esperantismo and the Interna Ideo: What the Movement Says It Is For

Most languages have no opinion about themselves. Esperanto has a written one, dated 9 August 1905, adopted by a vote, and still quoted in arguments today.

That is the useful thing and the awkward thing at once. It means the question what is this movement for has a documented answer. It also means the movement has spent 120 years arguing about a text, because the text says two things that pull in opposite directions: that Esperanto is a neutral tool anybody may use for anything, and, from the same author seven years later, that it exists to pull down the walls between peoples.

This article sets out both, from the primary documents, and does not take a side. That is not squeamishness. It is that the argument is genuinely unresolved, both positions have Zamenhof's own words behind them, and a reader who has read the actual texts is better off than one who has been handed a conclusion.

The Declaration of Boulogne: the official answer

Its full title is Deklaracio pri la Esenco de la Esperantismo, usually shortened to the Declaration of Boulogne. It was adopted at the closing working session of the first congress on 9 August 1905, on Zamenhof's proposal, and its preamble says exactly why it exists: ĉar pri la esenco de la Esperantismo multaj havas tre malveran ideon - because many people have a very false idea about what Esperantism is.

It has five points. Point 4, on the Fundamento, is the constitutional one and belongs to who decides what is correct Esperanto; the rest are here.

Point 1 is the definition.

La Esperantismo estas penado disvastigi en la tuta mondo la uzadon de lingvo neŭtrale homa, kiu "ne entrudante sin en la internan vivon de la popoloj kaj neniom celante elpuŝi la ekzistantajn lingvojn naciajn", donus al la homoj de malsamaj nacioj la eblon kompreniĝadi inter si, kiu povus servi kiel paciga lingvo de publikaj institucioj en tiuj landoj, kie diversaj nacioj batalas inter si pri la lingvo, kaj en kiu povus esti publikigataj tiuj verkoj, kiuj havas egalan intereson por ĉiuj popoloj.

Esperantism is an endeavour to spread throughout the world the use of a neutrally human language which, "not intruding itself into the internal life of peoples and in no way aiming to displace the existing national languages", would give the people of different nations the ability to understand one another, which could serve as a peace-making language of public institutions in those countries where different nations quarrel among themselves about language, and in which could be published those works which are of equal interest to all peoples.

Four claims, and every one of them defensive. It spreads a language; it does not enter anybody's internal life; it does not displace anything; and its uses are understanding, public administration where language is already a fight, and publication of what interests everyone. (The quotation marks inside are in the original: Zamenhof is quoting an earlier formulation of his own.)

Then the door closes. The last sentence of the same point is the one that made everything afterwards possible, and it is the sentence most people misremember:

Ĉiu alia ideo aŭ espero, kiun tiu aŭ alia Esperantisto ligas kun la Esperantismo, estos lia afero pure privata, por kiu la Esperantismo ne respondas.

Every other idea or hope which this or that Esperantist associates with Esperantism will be his purely private affair, for which Esperantism is not answerable.

Note where it sits. It is not a separate article about neutrality; it is a clause tacked to the end of the positive definition. The Declaration has no standalone what-this-is-not point. The famous disclaimer is an appendage, which is itself a fact about how the document was built.

Note also, because it is a small delight, that Zamenhof misquotes it a year later. Citing his own Declaration at Geneva in 1906 he gives it as ĉiu alia espero aŭ revo, kiun tiu aŭ alia persono ligas kun la esperantismo, estas lia afero pure privata - hope or dream for idea or hope, person for Esperantist, present tense for future. The man who wrote the constitution could not quote it exactly, which should calm anybody who has been shouted at in a forum for a misplaced comma.

Point 3 is the ownership clause, and it is a consequence rather than a slogan:

Ĉar la aŭtoro de la lingvo Esperanto tuj en la komenco rifuzis unu fojon por ĉiam ĉiujn personajn rajtojn kaj privilegiojn rilate tiun lingvon, tial Esperanto estas "nenies propraĵo", nek en rilato materiala, nek en rilato morala.

Because the author of the language Esperanto at the very outset renounced, once and for all, every personal right and privilege in respect of that language, therefore Esperanto is "nobody's property", neither materially nor morally.

The ĉar... tial... matters. The language is nobody's property because the author gave up his rights, not as an abstract principle. The point goes on to say who does hold it: materiala mastro de tiu ĉi lingvo estas la tuta mondo, the whole world is its material master, and its spiritual masters are whoever the Esperantist world acknowledges as its best writers. Quoted bare, "nenies propraĵo" sounds like a mission statement. In context it is a property settlement, and it is the single clearest difference between Esperanto and Volapük, whose author kept his rights and watched his movement fork.

Point 5 defines the member, and defines it as loosely as it is possible to define anything:

Esperantisto estas nomata ĉiu persono, kiu scias kaj uzas la lingvon Esperanto tute egale por kiaj celoj li ĝin uzas.

Anyone is called an Esperantist who knows and uses the language Esperanto, quite regardless of the purposes for which he uses it.

It adds that belonging to an active Esperanto society is rekomendinda, sed ne deviga - recommendable, but not obligatory. There is no oath, no register and no belief requirement. Someone who learned Esperanto to read the detective novels is an Esperantist in the fullest constitutional sense the language possesses.

Neŭtraleco, and what it is not

The neutrality doctrine has three layers, and they are usually mashed together.

The language layer. Esperanto is neŭtrale homa, neutrally human: it belongs to no nation, so no speaker has a home advantage. The image is Zamenhof's own, from La Espero, written in 1890 and now sung to Menu de Ménil's 1909 setting at every congress:

Sur neŭtrala lingva fundamento,komprenante unu la alian,La popoloj faros en konsentounu grandan rondon familian.

On a neutral linguistic foundation, understanding one another, the peoples will make in concord one great family circle.

That phrase, neŭtrala lingva fundamento, is the one Zamenhof reaches for again twenty-two years later when he finally defines the internal idea. He is quoting himself, and the word page for neŭtrala carries the same line. (A small irony worth having: some speakers object to calling La Espero a himno at all, on the grounds that the word carries religious and nationalist freight, and that the poem uses sankta three times. Even the anthem has a neutrality problem.)

The ownership layer. Point 3, above. Nobody owns it.

The institutional layer, which is the one people actually mean, and which is much narrower than the slogan. Article 5 of the UEA statute:

UEA estas neŭtrala rilate al nacieco, raso, sekso, religio, kaj sociaj kaj politikaj problemoj, kun escepto de la lingva problemo en internaciaj rilatoj. Tiu neŭtraleco signifas, ke UEA ne prenas starpunkton pri la koncernaj problemoj.

UEA is neutral in respect of nationality, race, sex, religion, and social and political problems, with the exception of the language problem in international relations. That neutrality means that UEA does not take a position on the problems concerned.

Read the exception clause. The association is explicitly not neutral about the language question - that is the one thing it exists to have a position on. And the same article makes respect for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights an esenca kondiĉo of its work. So the neutrality is carved out at one end and bounded at the other. It is not neutrality all the way down, and it never claimed to be.

The vocabulary for talking about peoples without taking sides is its own small discipline, and countries and peoples sets out the lando / ŝtato / nacio / popolo / gento distinctions this whole subject leans on.

La interna ideo

Here is the thing nobody tells learners: the internal idea is not in the Declaration. The phrase does not appear there, or in any speech Zamenhof gave before 1906. It appears first at the second congress, in Geneva, in August 1906, and Zamenhof introduces it as something everybody had been gesturing at without naming:

Sed por ke nia laborado estu fruktoporta, ni devas antaŭ ĉio bone klarigi al ni la internan ideon de la esperantismo. Ni ĉiuj senkonscie ofte aludadis tiun ĉi ideon en niaj paroloj kaj verkoj, sed ni neniam parolis pri ĝi pli klare.

But for our work to be fruitful, we must above all make clear to ourselves the internal idea of Esperantism. We have all often alluded to this idea unconsciously in our speeches and writings, but we have never spoken of it more clearly.

The context is not a drawing room. Geneva was three months after the Białystok pogrom of June 1906, in Zamenhof's own home town, and he describes it from the platform: men with axes and iron bars throwing themselves on peaceful inhabitants like the cruellest of animals. Terure altaj kaj dikaj estas ankoraŭ la interpopolaj muroj, kontraŭ kiuj ni batalas - terribly high and thick are the walls between peoples that we fight against. Any account that treats the internal idea as woolly optimism has cut the speech off from what provoked it.

He also concedes the sceptics their ground before he argues, which is more than most of his successors manage:

Ni ne estas tiel naivaj, kiel pensas pri ni kelkaj personoj: ni ne kredas, ke neŭtrala fundamento faros el la homoj anĝelojn; ni scias tre bone, ke la homoj malbonaj ankaŭ poste restos malbonaj.

We are not so naive as some people think us: we do not believe that a neutral foundation will make angels out of men; we know very well that bad people will remain bad afterwards too.

And he concedes the neutralists their entitlement outright: ĉiu esperantisto havas plenan rajton, vidi en Esperanto nur lingvon, simplan, malvarman internacian kompreniĝilon, similan al la mara signaro, kvankam pli perfektan - every Esperantist has the full right to see in Esperanto only a language, a simple, cold international means of understanding, like maritime signalling, though more perfect.

Then he refuses to accept it as a rule for everybody, and this is the passage the movement has been quoting ever since:

El la timo, ke ni eble ne plaĉos al tiuj personoj, kiuj mem volas uzi Esperanton nur por aferoj praktikaj por ili, ni devas ĉiuj elŝiri el nia koro tiun parton de la esperantismo, kiu estas la plej grava, la plej sankta... Ho, ne, ne, neniam!

Out of fear that we may not please those people who themselves want to use Esperanto only for things practical to them, we must all tear out of our hearts that part of Esperantism which is the most important, the most sacred... Oh, no, no, never!

Privat, who was there, records that he said it standing pale in the Victoria Hall, and that the ovation told him the room was with him.

The definition everybody quotes is not from Geneva. It is from Kraków, six years later, and it is the single most useful sentence in this whole subject because it does four jobs at once:

La interna ideo de Esperanto, kiu havas absolute nenian devigon por ĉiu esperantisto aparta, sed kiu, kiel vi scias, plene regas kaj ĉiam devas regi en la esperantaj kongresoj, estas: sur neŭtrala lingva fundamento forigi la murojn inter la gentoj kaj alkutimigadi la homojn, ke ĉiu el ili vidu en sia proksimulo nur homon kaj fraton.

The internal idea of Esperanto, which carries absolutely no obligation for any individual Esperantist, but which, as you know, fully reigns and must always reign at the Esperanto congresses, is: on a neutral linguistic foundation to remove the walls between the peoples, and to accustom people so that each of them sees in his neighbour only a human being and a brother.

It defines the idea. It denies the idea binds anybody. It asserts the idea governs the congresses anyway. And the next sentence firewalls it from everything beyond: ĉio, kio estas super tiu interna ideo de Esperanto, estas nur privataĵo.

If you want the 1906 formulation specifically, it is shorter and warmer: tiu ĉi ideo... estas frateco kaj justeco inter ĉiuj popoloj, brotherhood and justice among all peoples.

One quotation that should embarrass everybody equally. At Cambridge in 1907, Zamenhof explains why the Boulogne neutrality clause exists at all:

Ĉar la mondo ĉiam komprenis, ke la esperantismo estas forte ligita kun certa interna ideo, kaj tre multaj personoj ne volis lerni kaj uzi Esperanton nur tial, ĉar ili ne volis esti rigardataj kiel partianoj de la ideo, tial - por ne fortimigi de ni la grandajn amasojn - ni estis devigitaj klarigi per la Bulonja deklaracio...

Because the world always understood that Esperantism is strongly bound up with a certain internal idea, and very many people did not want to learn and use Esperanto solely because they did not want to be seen as partisans of the idea, therefore - so as not to frighten the great masses away from us - we were obliged to explain by means of the Boulogne declaration...

That is the author of the neutrality clause describing it as a marketing decision. Neutralists can point out that it is nevertheless what the document says; idealists can point out that its own author called it a concession. Both are right, which is roughly the state of the argument.

Kraków, 1912: the founder resigns

The eighth congress, at Kraków in August 1912, was the language's twenty-fifth anniversary. Zamenhof used it to step down from a role he had never formally held.

Mi petas vin, ke de la nuna momento vi ĉesu vidi en mi "majstron", ke vi ĉesu honori min per tiu titolo.

I ask you that from this moment you cease to see in me a "master", that you cease to honour me with that title.

La nuna kongreso estas la lasta, en kiu vi vidas min antaŭ vi; poste, se mi povos veni al vi, vi ĉiam vidos min nur inter vi.

The present congress is the last at which you see me before you; afterwards, if I can come to you, you will always see me only among you.

The reason he gives is the whole subject of this article in one sentence:

Se al iu ne plaĉas mia persono aŭ miaj politike-religiaj principoj, li fariĝas malamiko de Esperanto.

If someone does not like my person or my political and religious principles, he becomes an enemy of Esperanto.

And so, he says, the world must know that any spiritual kinship between him and the movement is voluntary, and that anybody is entitled to say of anything he writes that it is tute privata ideo aŭ frenezaĵo de Zamenhof - an entirely private idea or crackpottery of Zamenhof's - with nothing to do with the Esperanto movement, in which he is now a purely private person. Frenezaĵo, about his own deepest convictions, from the platform, at his own jubilee.

Then he declines, explicitly, to say what those convictions are:

Mi ne deziras, ke mia privata kredo estu rigardata kiel deviga kredo de ĉiuj esperantistoj. Tial pardonu min, ke mi pli ne parolas.

I do not wish my private belief to be regarded as the obligatory belief of all Esperantists. Therefore forgive me that I say no more.

He closed by adding a word to the movement's old banner motto of espero, obstino kaj pacienco. The new word was konkordo, concord.

Do not read Kraków as a sudden reversal. Point 4 of the Declaration had already said, in 1905, that ĉiuj opinioj kaj verkoj de la kreinto de Esperanto havas... karakteron absolute privatan kaj por neniu devigan - all the creator's opinions and works have an absolutely private character, obligatory for nobody. He had written his own demotion into the constitution seven years earlier. Kraków was the completion of a move, not a rupture.

Homaranismo: the thing he would not attach

The private belief he would not discuss had a name, and a bibliography.

It began in 1901 as hilelismo, published in Russian under the pen name Unuel, addressed to educated Jewish readers, and named after the first-century rabbi Hillel. Zamenhof described it to Alfred Michaux in 1905 as la kreado de morala ponto, per kiu povus unuiĝi frate ĉiuj popoloj kaj religioj, sen la kreado de iaj nove elpensitaj dogmoj kaj sen la bezono, ke la popoloj forĵetu siajn religiojn ĝisnunajn - the creation of a moral bridge by which all peoples and religions could unite as brothers, without inventing new dogmas and without anybody having to throw away the religion they had.

In 1906 it was reissued anonymously as homaranismo, a rename that deliberately removed the Jewish framing and generalised the doctrine; he also used neŭtralismo as a synonym. In 1913 it appeared as a fourteen-page Deklaracio pri Homaranismo, published in Madrid. Its first article:

Mi estas homo, kaj la tutan homaron mi rigardas kiel unu familion; la dividitecon de la homaro en diversajn reciproke malamikajn gentojn kaj gentreligiajn komunumojn mi rigardas kiel unu el la plej grandaj malfeliĉoj.

I am a human being, and I regard the whole of humanity as one family; the division of humanity into various mutually hostile tribes and tribal-religious communities I regard as one of the greatest misfortunes.

The rest is a first-person profession rather than a programme: judge each person only by their own worth and deeds; use a neutrally human language and live by a neutrally human ethic when dealing with people of other origin; keep your inherited religion but hold it lightly; call your country by a neutral geographical name rather than a tribal one.

The separation from Esperanto was deliberate, and it ran in both directions. One of the stated reasons for publishing anonymously was that he did not want the two ideas confused, being, in his own framing, identical in aim but different in principle. That is the direction everybody knows about. The direction nobody mentions is in the ninth dogma's own note, which accepts Esperanto only because it happens to be the only neutral language going, and then says:

Tamen ili rezervas al si la rajton anstataŭigi iam poste tiun ĉi lingvon per ia alia lingvo, se tio ĉi montriĝos utila.

However they reserve the right to replace this language later with some other language, should that prove useful.

Zamenhof made Esperanto expendable to homaranismo. Whatever else the wall between the doctrine and the language was, it was not a wall built to protect the doctrine.

The pressure was real, and it has a name attached to it. Privat records that Louis de Beaufront disliked the internal idea, had already argued against it in his journal L'Espérantiste, took advantage of the homaranismo brochure's anonymity to ridicule it, and then presented it as a serious danger to Esperanto's success. He also records alarmed French Esperantists writing to Zamenhof directly to say Esperanto is only a language, and to warn that any associated idea would put people off. Privat hedges the ringleader carefully - sub influo de De Beaufront aŭ alia - and that hedge is worth keeping rather than sharpening. It is the same de Beaufront who two years later carried the Ido project into the Paris committee.

The pressure did not stop at Kraków either. Zamenhof planned to hold a homaranismo meeting alongside the 1914 Paris congress. The Paris organisers begged him not to convene it, even privately, and then declined to print his invitation in the programme. Privat's line on it is the honest verdict on the whole episode: sed je kio do utilis la Krakova eksiĝo? - but what then had the Kraków resignation been for?

Homaranismo never became a movement. It attracted sympathy mainly among pacifists, few even of the eastern European samideanoj who understood it actually signed the form, and the war finished it off. It survives as the answer to a question the Declaration deliberately left open.

Fina venko against Raŭmo

The modern form of the argument is a hundred years newer and, for once, has documents on both sides. Spoken Esperanto gives it in one neutral paragraph because the two words come up in any strategy discussion; this section is the longer version, and it is deliberately dry.

Finvenkismo is the position that Esperanto is on its way to becoming everybody's second language, and that the movement's job is to get it there. It is worth being honest about its documentary standing: there is no finvenkist manifesto, because for seventy-five years this was simply what the movement was, and the word is a retronym coined once there was something to contrast it with. The nearest thing to a doctrinal statement is UEA's Munich Declaration of 1951: la celo de la Esperanto-Movado estas plena apliko de la Internacia Lingvo Esperanto en ĉiuj sferoj de la internacia vivo kaj por ĉiuj internaciaj rilatoj. Within it, desubismo works from below through citizens and clubs, and desuprismo from above through governments and school ministries.

Raŭmismo comes from the Manifesto de Raŭmo, written at the 36th International Youth Congress at Rauma, Finland, between 25 July and 1 August 1980, on the congress theme "Esperanto in the 80s: aims and methods". Three procedural facts belong with it, because they are usually left out. It was the product of one of three working groups; it was never put to the other two or to the plenary, but taken straight to the participants; and it says of itself that it expresses only the view of those who signed it, not of TEJO. About a hundred people had signed by the end of that year. Its principal editors were Giorgio Silfer and Jouko Lindstedt.

Its diagnosis:

La subskribintoj konstatis kontraŭdiron en la sinteno de la esperantistaro, kvazaŭ konflikton inter idea superegoo kaj egoo... samtempe, inter ni, ni ĝuas kaj aplikas Esperanton laŭ tio kio ĝi efektive estas, sendepende de la pracelaj sloganoj.

The signatories observed a contradiction in the attitude of the Esperanto community, like a conflict between an ideological superego and an ego... at the same time, among ourselves, we enjoy and use Esperanto for what it actually is, independently of the original-aim slogans.

Its two headline claims:

La oficialigo de Esperanto estas nek verŝajna nek esenca dum la 80aj jaroj.

The officialisation of Esperanto is neither likely nor essential during the eighties.

Lige kun la lasta valoro, ni emfazas ke la serĉado de propra identeco igis nin koncepti esperantistecon kvazaŭ la aparteno al mem elektita diaspora lingva minoritato.

In connection with the last value, we emphasise that the search for our own identity has led us to conceive Esperantist identity as, so to speak, belonging to a self-chosen diaspora linguistic minority.

And the correction that even-handedness requires, because it is the passage critics misread most: the Manifesto does not say the signatories have given up spreading the language. It says ni celas disvastigi Esperanton - we aim to spread Esperanto - in order to realise four positive values: propaedeutic benefit for language learning, contact between ordinary people, contact without discrimination, and a new kind of international culture. Its closing challenge is that the first century proved Esperanto could express anything, and the second must show that its speakers have something to say.

The Manifesto de Prago of 1996 is the reply, and it is UEA's public platform to this day. Its principal author was Mark Fettes. One correction worth making, because the mistake is everywhere: it was not adopted by the congress. UEA's Committee adopted it on 20 July 1996; participants were separately invited to sign as individuals, and only 550 of the 2,972 present did. Signature collection continued afterwards and passed 13,000 by 2005.

Its seven principles are framed as language policy rather than idealism, and each ends with the same two-beat formula, ni asertas... ni estas movado por...:

Notice what has happened. Prague is a finvenkist document - it explicitly denies that the speakers' aims have lost their currency, which is a direct answer to Rauma - but it argues in the vocabulary of rights, diversity and policy rather than of a coming victory. The critics were not kind: Ziko van Dijk called it forta kialo malesperi pri la t.n. esperanto-movado, a strong reason to despair of the so-called Esperanto movement, and noted that no reaction is on record from the outside world it addresses.

Where the argument stands. Largely absorbed. TEJO now describes its own position as raŭmisma finvenkismo: believing Esperanto could become everyone's second language does not stop you enjoying the community that exists now. Rauma's cultural emphasis is mainstream practice; its rejection of officialisation is not UEA policy, whose statute still commits it to working for a solution to the language problem. The organised raŭmist wing narrowed into the Esperanta Civito, which Lindstedt, who co-edited the Manifesto, regards as contrary to its spirit. As a partisan identity raŭmismo is largely historical. As an argument about what the movement is for, it substantially won.

What esperantismo means now

Three observations, and then the reader can decide.

It is still in the constitution, and nobody notices. Article 3 of UEA's statute lists four aims. The first two are what you would expect: spread the language, work on the language problem. The fourth is not:

Kreskigi inter siaj membroj fortikan senton de solidareco kaj disvolvi ĉe ili la komprenon kaj estimon por aliaj popoloj.

To foster among its members a robust sense of solidarity, and to develop in them understanding and esteem for other peoples.

That is the interna ideo, in a bylaw, in the present tense. It did not go away. It got constitutionalised, and thereby made unremarkable.

The word for a speaker is quietly changing. Esperantisto carries -ist-, which normally marks either a profession or an adherent of a doctrine, and neither is what most people mean; nobody who learns Spanish becomes a hispanisto. So Esperanto-parolanto, Esperanto speaker, is increasingly used in publicity work. The evidence that this is a real shift rather than a forum opinion is that UEA's own statute uses it: article 4 lists among the association's means servoj al la parolantoj de Esperanto. And samideano, fellow holder of the same idea, is Zamenhof's habitual vocative - the Kraków speech opens karaj samideanoj - but it presupposes exactly what Boulogne disclaimed, that fellow speakers share an idea. La kongreso takes the word apart morphologically; this article only notes that its morphology is an argument.

For the maximalist reading, which is worth hearing at full strength, there is the line attributed to the Hungarian novelist Julio Baghy:

Esti esperantisto signifas ne nur lingvoscion. Ĝi estas destino. Misio. Sopiro al pli bona mondo. Vera esperantisto ne fariĝas, sed naskiĝas.

To be an Esperantist means not only knowledge of the language. It is a destiny. A mission. A longing for a better world. A true Esperantist is not made but born.

Set that beside point 5 of the Declaration - anyone who knows and uses the language, whatever for - and the gap is the whole subject.

And the institution is much smaller than the idea. UEA membership peaked in 1987 at 43,642 and stood at about 13,000 in 2016, of whom fewer than 4,400 were individual members. The collapse is almost entirely in affiliated members and is a story about 1989: the state-sponsored eastern European associations that reported most of that peak dissolved with the regimes that funded them. Individual membership actually rose through the collapse, from 7,291 in 1987 to 8,071 in 1991, and has since drifted down to 4,365. The full picture is in where the language lives now and in the last episode of the history.

So: a movement whose founding document says it demands nothing of you, whose founder resigned his own authority so that his beliefs could not be charged to it, whose most quoted ideal is explicitly non-binding, and whose association still writes solidarity into its rules. The honest answer to what esperantismo is for is that it is two answers, that both are in the primary texts, and that the language works either way. You can use it as maritime signalling. Zamenhof said you were entitled to.

What to take away

• The Declaration of Boulogne (Deklaracio pri la Esenco de la Esperantismo, 9 August 1905) defines esperantismo as an effort to spread a neutrally human language that does not intrude on peoples' internal life and does not aim to displace national languages.
• Its last sentence in point 1 makes every other idea attached to it afero pure privata - a purely private affair, for which esperantismo is not answerable.
• Point 3: Esperanto estas "nenies propraĵo", because the author renounced his rights. The world is its material master; its best writers are its spiritual ones.
• Point 5: an esperantisto is anyone who knows and uses the language, whatever for. Society membership is recommended, not required.
• La interna ideo is not in the Declaration. It is named at Geneva in 1906, three months after the Białystok pogrom, and defined at Kraków in 1912 as removing the walls between peoples on a neutral linguistic foundation.
• The same Kraków sentence says the idea binds no individual Esperantist and reigns at the congresses. Both halves are Zamenhof's.
• At Cambridge in 1907 he called the Declaration's neutrality clause a concession made so as not to frighten the masses away.
• At Kraków he refused the title majstro, because disliking his political and religious principles was turning people into enemies of Esperanto. Point 4 of the 1905 Declaration had already made his opinions non-binding.
• Homaranismo (hilelismo 1901, homaranismo 1906, Deklaracio Madrid 1913) was kept separate on purpose, and its ninth dogma reserves the right to swap Esperanto for another language.
• Finvenkismo has no manifesto and is a retronym; raŭmismo has the Manifesto de Raŭmo (1980), which was one working group's text, never put to its own congress's plenary.
• The Manifesto de Prago (1996) was adopted by UEA's Committee, not by the congress: 550 of 2,972 participants signed on the day.
• Article 3(ĉ) of UEA's statute still commits it to fostering solidarity and esteem for other peoples. The internal idea survives as a bylaw.

See also

• The history of Esperanto in ten episodes - the events this article's documents were written in response to.
• Who decides what is correct Esperanto - point 4 of the same Declaration, and the institutions it created.
• La kongreso - the congresses where the internal idea was declared sovereign, and where samideano is still heard.
• Spoken Esperanto - finvenkismo and raŭmismo in the register a speaker actually meets them.
• Countries and peoples - lando, ŝtato, nacio, popolo, gento, the vocabulary neutrality is argued in.
• Esperanto hodiaŭ - the associations, and what is left of the institutions.
• neŭtrala - the word page that carries the neŭtrala lingva fundamento line from La Espero.
• esperantismo - the word itself, and how -ism- builds it.