AmAJP0rnr;i?Marm-}  The  Metric  System.  175 
weights  and  measures,  or  a  decimal  monetary  system,  into  Great 
Britain,  his  objections  to  such  a  system  should  be  republished,  in 
pamphlet  form,  and  distributed  among  members  of  Parliament. 
As  noted  in  the  article  recently  published  in  this  Journal  (A.  J. 
P.,  1904,  page  125),  Mr.  Spencer's  objections  first  appeared  as  a 
series  of  anonymous  letters,  four  in  number,  in  the  London  Times. 
They  were  republished  in  this  country,  by  permission,  under  Mr. 
Spencer's  name,  in  the  June  (1896)  number  of  Appleton's  Popular 
Science  Monthly. 
The  same  Journal,  in  October,  1896,  published  an  article  by  Prof. 
J.  C.  Mendenhall,  President  of  the  Worcester  Polytechnic  Institute, 
in  which  the  latter  reviews  the  arguments  advanced  by  Mr.  Spencer 
and  refutes  many  of  the  statements  made  by  him,  particularly  those 
relating  to  the  accuracy  or  lack  of  accuracy  in  the  standard  units  of 
the  metric  system. 
In  Professor  Mendenhall's  paper  the  futility  of  many  of  the  argu- 
ments advanced  by  Mr.  Spencer  in  his  several  letters  is  gone  into 
at  some  length,  but  as  neither  the  arguments  nor  the  answers  are  of 
much  interest  to  us  as  pharmacists  they  need  not  be  repeated  here 
at  length.  » 
Some  exception,  however,  might  well  be  made  to  the  basic  or  real 
objection  advanced  by  Mr.  Spencer  to  the  metric  system.  This 
appears  first  in  the  second  letter  of  the  series,  where  it  develops 
that  his  objections  are  not  directed  so  much  against  the  standards 
of  the  metric  system  as  they  are  against  the  introduction  of  any 
system  that  is  decimal  in  character,  feeling,  as  Mr.  Spencer  did, 
that  our  system  of  numeration  by  ten,  and  multiples  of  ten,  was  not 
in  harmony  with  the  more  advanced  needs  of  modern  civilization. 
It  is  in  this  same  letter  that  he  suggests  the  great  advantage  of  a 
duodecimal  system  of  numeration  ;  largely  on  account  of  the  number 
of  factors  by  which  twelve  or  a  multiple  of  twelve  would  be  divisible. 
Singularly  enough  he  answers  his  own  argument  in  a  most  satis- 
factory way  when  he  says,  "  Do  I  think  this  system  will  be  adopted  ? 
Certainly  not  at  present — certainly  not  for  many  generations,"  and 
adds :  "  In  our  days  the  mass  of  people,  educated  as  well  as  unedu- 
cated, think  only  of  immediate  results;  their  imaginations  of  remote 
consequences  are  too  shadowy  to  influence  their  acts." 
That  Mr.  Spencer  had  a  proper  appreciation  of  the  inherent  ad- 
vantages of  a  rational  system  of  weights  and  measures  that  was,  or 
