92 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



complains of its lessons ; it begs for a less task. We propose to excuse 

 you from your Greek and your Latin, and from French forms, from 

 long words and hard names, from the queer pronunciations and the 

 wrong accents. We let you off from half the units, perhaps two-thirds, 

 and furnish you with familiar standards of comparison for those which 

 are left, and give you English names to boot Anglo-Saxon when pos- 

 sible, short, terse, and significant though we take care, on our part, 

 to have them properly related, not leaving that matter to you. 



What ! not yet satisfied ? Unreasonable mankind ! let us convince 

 you that this is the least cost you can pay, and insure the desired 

 benefit. 



Scarcely another so important reform awaits the human family. 

 But it will not take care of itself. We have referred to two aspects of 

 progress progress among governments, want of progress among the 

 people. The latter is incomparably the more important. The one is 

 semblance, the other substance. Until the metric system is used, it is 

 not a labor-saving machine for service, but a mere toy to look at an 

 anticipation, a dream, not a reality and a possession. And such it is 

 now. 



We must not rely on a change in human nature, but must adapt our 

 system to it ; otherwise, indeed, mankind may, perhaps, in the distant 

 future, wear out to the system, like a Chinese foot to a shoe. Should 

 we await this slow and painful process, or should we not rather adapt 

 the shoe to the foot ? 



Can we look forward to a time when these long foreign words shall 

 be as familiar to every child in Christendom as the words foot, yard, 

 bushel, pound, now are to English ears ? And yet this is the proper 

 standard of familiarity ; it must be absolute and unhesitating. Do the 

 long words, indeed, deserve to be as familiar ? Are they formed to be ? 

 No ; we must reach the mother-tongue of each people. 



Nor can we afford to wait, to bring the matter home. 



Can the English and American peoples the two most commercial 

 peoples on the globe be content, on the one hand, with permanent 

 isolation, founded on inferiority ? or, on the other, can they ask man- 

 kind to accept their system, forsooth, as worthy of universal use ? Will 

 England, for example, ask America to return to s. d. and qrs. ? Or 

 America, for very shame, present her compound reduction tables for 

 the admiration and universal adoption of all nations ? 



Let not the friends of metric reform be deceived with vain hopes. 

 Government work, and the work of colleges and schools and scientific 

 associations, all put together, are not equal to adaptation ! 



