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TRANSACTIONS OP THE 



8. That it would be much better for man if there could be about 

 sixteen hour's day to eight of night, corresponding to the normal 

 requirements of activity and rest, and saving an average of four 

 waking hours in darkness, with the accompanying cost of artificial 

 illumination. 



9. The misfortune was dwelt upon that all races should have been 

 condemned to the use of either the quinary, decimal, or vigesimal 

 system of notation, when either nine, twelve, or sixteen, but es- 

 pecially eight, would have constituted a basis so much superior in 

 point of practical value. Genetically, it is easily explained as the 

 result of man's possession of twenty digits. 



10. That the human body should possess a specific gravity a trifle 

 greater than that of water, coupled with the fact that man is not 

 endowed with a natural instinct to swim ; and this on a planet of 

 whose superficial area two and four-fifths times as much is water as 

 land, and which he is obliged to traverse in all directions. His 

 supposed descent from purely terrestrial, or even partially arboreal 

 anthropoid apes, would be a satisfactory genetic explanation of 

 both these circustances ; but its admission would be no relief to 

 the optimist from explaining them teleologically. 



11. The brevity of human life was cited as an important barrier 

 to intellectual progress. So large a portion of every one's lifetime 

 is required to prepare for any useful work that little time is left for 

 its accomplishment, and many are deterred from undertaking 

 anything of real value. This, it was maintained, might as well 

 have been otherwise, as there is nothing necessarily impossible in 

 the limit of human life being two hundred years any more than in 

 its being one hundred. 



12. Living beings are so constituted that they multiply many 

 times, often many hundred times, faster than their conditions 

 would permit if the excess were not constantly kept down by the 

 friction of the environment manifesting itself in a variety of ways. 

 In the case of men, who form no exception to this law, disease, 

 accident, violence, war, pestilence, and famine are among the 



