CELESTIAL MEASURINGS AND WEIGHINGS. l8l 



ledge : though the stride is here too vast, as it may seem, 

 for the limited faculties of man ever to take. Nor can 

 it be said that man is dwarfed and humiliated by such 

 attempts : that they teach him nothing but his own in- 

 significance, and so are the reverse of ennobling. The 

 greatness of nature is not synonymous with the littleness 

 of man. That only is little which cannot rise to great 

 conceptions. 



(6.) Enough, perhaps, has been said to justify an 

 attempt to lay before our readers the actual state of our 

 positive knowledge of these subjects ; of the methods by 

 which it has been attained ; and of the history of their 

 development; and to give them a distinct conception 

 of the several links which connect the British standard 

 inch with the distances of the fixed stars, and of the sort 

 of intermediate units we have to deal with in the inquiry. 

 It fortunately happens that we shall not need for our pur- 

 pose any resort to abstruse considerations, or have occasion 

 for any illustrations which are not of the simplest kind. 



(7.) In every country having the slightest pretensions 

 to civilization there is preserved, with more or less care, 

 some rod, bar, ruler, or other standard, the material in- 

 corporation of the national idea of the most ordinary 

 unit of length ; and its representative, when it is required 

 to test the correctness of one in vulgar use, or to multiply 

 and disseminate copies of itself for purposes of ordinary 

 mensuration. Thus, among the Jews, we find (Exodus 

 xxx. 2) the cubit* identified as equal to either of the 



* This cubit is presumed to be identical with the Egyptian cubit, 

 still preserved, of the Nilometer. 



