196 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



as civilization has progressed, adopted, for purposes of measure- 

 ment and exchange, easily divisible groups of units ; and in a 

 recent case, where the 10-division of money has been imposed 

 upon them, they have, under pressure of business needs, aban- 

 doned it for the system of division into halves, quarters, eighths^ 

 sixteenths. On the other hand, the number 13 is unique in its 

 divisibility — yields two classes of aliquot parts — and for this 

 reason has been in so many cases adopted for weights, measures, 

 and values. At the same time it harmonizes with those chief di- 

 visions of time which Nature has imposed upon us and with the 

 artificial divisions of time by which men have supplemented 

 them ; while its sub-multiple, 4, harmonizes with certain unal- 

 terable divisions of space, and with those divisions into quarters 

 which men use in so many cases. Meanwhile, if two new digits 

 for 10 and 11 be used, there arises a system of calculation per- 

 fectly parallel to the system known as decimals, and yielding just 

 the same facilities for computation — sometimes, indeed, greater 

 facilities, for, as shown in the memoranda named in the above 

 letter, it is even better for certain arithmetical processes. 



Do I think this system will be adopted ? Certainly not at 

 present — certainly not for many generations. In our days the 

 mass of people, educated as well as uneducated, think only of im- 

 mediate results; their imaginations of remote consequences are 

 too shadowy to influence their acts. Little effect will be pro- 

 duced upon them by showing that, if the metric system should 

 be established universally, myriads of transactions every day will 

 for untold thousands of years be impeded by a very imperfect 

 system. But it is, I think, not an unreasonable belief that further 

 intellectual progress may bring the conviction that since a better 

 system would facilitate both the thoughts and actions of men, 

 and in so far diminish the friction of life throughout the future, 

 the task of establishing it should be undertaken. 



Hence I contend that adoption of the metric system, while it 

 would entail a long period of trouble and confusion, would in- 

 crease the obstacles to the adoption of a perfect system — perhaps 

 even rendering them insuperable — and that, therefore, it will be 

 far better to submit for a time to the evils which our present 

 mixed system entails. 



P. S. — A mathematician and astronomer, who writes — "I am 

 much interested in your letters and agree with almost everything," 

 makes some comments. He says : — " It has always been an aston- 

 ishing thing to me that the advocates of decimalization do not 

 perceive that its only advantage is in computation. In every 

 other process it is a detriment." Concerning the 13-notation, he 

 remarks that "the advantages are notorious to all mathemati- 

 cians." Apparently less impressed than I am with the advance 



