Harding. — Certain Decimal and Metrical Fallacies. 93 



answered every purpose of the metre, and have saved, in the 

 full literal sense of the words/a world of trouble? 



In a pamphlet published seventeen years ago Mr. Chris- 

 topher Giles, of Adelaide, thus summed up the "scientific" 

 foundation of the whole system : — 



Based on a curve — therefore unscientific in theory. 

 Arbitrary — therefore wanting in scientific significance. 

 Non-earth commensurable. 

 Devoid of universality, in origin, genius, and fact. 



It does not seem to be as generally known as it should be 

 that our own much-criticized scheme of lineal measurement — 

 the origin of whicli is too remote to be traced — is scientifically 

 sound on all the points where its modern rival is so con- 

 spicuously defective. 



Some may imagine that the yoke imposed on France was a 

 light one. On the contrary, it was not the least oppressive of 

 the many terrible sequela of the Eevolution, and it was im- 

 posed only against stout resistance and with much utterly un- 

 necessary agony. The system is permissive in the British do- 

 minions, and so long as it is only permissive and the national 

 standards are in free and general use no very active opposition 

 is likely to be offered. In India, though an Act was passed in 

 1870 substituting the metric for the national standard, and 

 the law still stands unrepealed, it is a dead letter. In the 

 United States a strong organization has been formed "for 

 preserving and protecting our Anglo-Saxon weights and 

 measures." It keeps the subject before the public by means 

 of literature and lectures, and sees that the metrist minority 

 are met with counter-agitation. Some such institution ap- 

 pears to be needed in New Zealand. 



In Great Britain, where Commission after Commission has 

 investigated the subject, expert and scientific testimony has 

 been strongly in opposition to the "reform." From astro- 

 nomers and mathematicians of the highest repute it has met 

 with unqualified opposition. I do not know of one who has 

 pronounced in its favour. These are men of unquestioned 

 scientific standing : men, moreover, trained to consider 

 realities rather than symbols, and the relations of things 

 rather than the mere notation by which such relations are 

 expressed. The leading British daily paper is a consistent 

 opponent of the metric change, and the Times, in dealing 

 editorially with a scientific question, may be trusted to have 

 the best scientific advice available. 



By whom is the change advocated ? Chiefly by computers, 

 who, as is well known, are not necessarily mathematicians. 

 Computation is not an intellectual but a mechanical operation. 

 There is no kind of computation that cannot be performed 

 more efficiently and quickly by a machine than by a human 



