722 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



author of these letters, and this alone, compels those who are 

 advocates of metrological reform, to offer some reply to the propo- 

 sitions which he has advanced, and a brief analysis of them will 

 now be undertaken, with the hope of showing that they are either 

 fallacious or utterly inapplicable to the question under consid- 

 eration. 



As Mr. Spencer begins by declaring that the " advocates of the 

 metric system allege that all opposition to it results from igno- 

 rant prejudice," which he very properly declares is far from true, 

 it may be well to say that, in the opinion of the writer, there is 

 relatively little of that sort of thing to contend with in the United 

 States. "What is far more dangerous as an obstacle to human 

 progress, and often far more common, is what may be called " in- 

 telligent prejudice,'^ meaning thereby an obstinate conservatism 

 which makes people cling to what is or has been, merely because 

 it is or has been, not being willing to take the trouble to do 

 better, because already doing well, all the while knowing that do- 

 ing better is not only the easier, but is more in harmony with ex- 

 isting conditions. Such conservatism is highly developed among 

 English-speaking people on both sides of the Atlantic, and is 

 likely to turn up in the most unexpected places. It is often a 

 phase of ancestral or national pride, and finds its expression in 

 the feeling that whatever pertains to one's own race or country 

 is, on the whole, better than anything else of its kind. Those 

 who are under its influence are adepts in finding ingenious 

 reasons and excuses in defense of an attitude toward reform 

 which they must know to be founded on neither logic nor fact. 

 These people are numerous among opponents of reform in coinage, 

 weights, and measures, and, as already noted, it is with this class 

 that the most serious difficulty is encountered. " Ignorant preju- 

 dice " generally disappears when ignorance disappears, and fortu- 

 nately in the present instance the system which it is proposed to 

 substitute for that already in use is so extremely simple that it 

 can be learned and understood in a few minutes, while certainly 

 no one man has ever, in an entire lifetime, completely mastered 

 the " customary weights and measures " in use in England and 

 America. 



It will be convenient to consider the objections offered by Mr. 

 Spencer in the order in which he has presented them in the four 

 separate letters which go to make up his article. 



In the first he has reproduced in quotation a considerable part 

 of the well-known argument of Sir John Herschel, written and 

 widely published over thirty years ago. The inconsistency and 

 utter Avorthlessness of this have been so long recognized that one 

 has a curious feeling of fighting a straw man in attacking it at 

 this time. 



