434 Transactions. — Chemistry and Physics. 



and retire to rest half an hour sooner. There seems to be 

 here some confusion of reasoning. If we wish as a com- 

 munity to make such an alteration in our actual times of 

 working and resting we can easily do so ; but there is no need 

 whatever for tampering with our clocks in the process, so as 

 to make them show that no change in our habits has taken 

 place. The proposal is surely a trifle otiose. If a man wants 

 to go to bed at 10 o'clock instead of at 11 he generally does 

 so without finding it essential to his peace of mind to put on 

 the clock an hour. 



Some of those, however, who advocate this modification of 

 our standard for hygienic reasons take rather different ground. 

 They admit that it is absurd to suppose that before we can 

 alter our ways we must gravely perform the ceremony of 

 moving forward the hands of the clock ; but they urge that, 

 as people are accustomed to fulfil all their engagements of 

 business and recreation at certain times by the clock, if we 

 can only get them to consent to alter the clock they will 

 continue to keep those engagements at the same nominal 

 clock-hours, thus making earlier by the amount of the change 

 their actual times of working and resting. The argument 

 does not seem to me to be convincing. It is far from evident 

 that our community is quite so subrational in its thinking as 

 the theory assumes. The real point is missed. The question 

 is not whether such a change in our habits is desirable, but 

 whether it is desired by those concerned. If it is desired it 

 will be made readily enough ; if it is not desired, depend upon 

 it that those who recommend it will have to wait until they 

 have converted their fellows to their way of looking at the 

 matter. Men presumably now consent to obey the indica- 

 tions of the clock because those indications bear a certain 

 convenient relation to the time realities by which they are 

 guided in arranging their lives. If those clock indications 

 are altered, and people do not otherwise seek a change, they 

 will cease to obey them to the extent of the alteration ; in 

 other words, they will amend their nominal hours of business 

 so as to make them continue to be the same in actual time as 

 they were before, unless, of course, the alteration in the clock 

 is so small as to pass unnoticed — and that cannot be con- 

 tended in the present case. It is the sun, and not the clock 

 (a mere measuring-machine), which really determines our 

 arrangements. As Sir Charles Todd, Government Astro- 

 nomer for South Australia, put it a few years ago : " The 

 name we give to an hour is not of very much consequence. 

 What we do in practical life is to adapt our movements to the 

 duration of daylight." 



I have referred above to the case of South Australia. The 

 people of South Australia (unlike, apparently, the people of 



