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the means of its supply, has established a system of numbers, and of proportions, between the man, the measure, and the objects measur ed. Linear measure requires only a change of direction to become a measure of circumference; but is not thereby, without calculation, a measure of surface. Itinerary measure, as it needs nothing more than the prolongation or repetition of linear measure, would seem at the first view to be the same. Yet this is evidently not the progress of nature. As the want of it originates in a different stage of human existence, it will not naturally occur to man, to use the same measure, or the same scale of proportions and numbers, to clothe his body, and to mark the distance of his walks. On the contrary, for the measurement of all objects which he can lift and handle, the fathom, the arm, the cubit, the hand's-breadth, the span, and the fingers, are the instruments proposed to him by nature; while the pace and the foot are those which she gives him for the measurement of itinerary distance. These natural standards are never, in any stage of society, lost to individual man. There are probably few persons living who do not occasionally use their own arms, hands, and fingers, to measure objects which they handle, and their own pace to measure a distance upon the ground.

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Here then is a source of diversity, to the standards even of linear measure, flowing from the difference of the relations between man and physical nature. It would be as inconvenient and unnatural to the organization of the human body to measure a bow and arrow for instance, the first furniture of solitary man, by his foot or pace, as to measure the distance of a day's journey, or a morning's walk to the hunting ground, by his arm or hand.

Measures of capacity are rendered necessary by the nature of fluids, which can be held together in definite quantities only by vessels of substance more compact than their own. They are also necessary for the admeasurement of those substances which nature produces in muttitudes too great for numeration, and too minute for linear measure. Of this character are all the grains and seeds, which, from the time when man becomes a tiller of the ground, furnish the principal materials of his subsistence. But nature has not furnished him with the means of supplying this want in his own person. For this measure he is obliged to look abroad into the nature of things; and his first measure of capacity will most probably be found in the egg of a large bird, the shell of a cetaceous fish, or the horn of a beast. The want of a comnion standard not being yet felt, these measures will be of various dimensions; nor is it to be expected that the thought will ever occur to the man of nature, of establishing a proportion between his cubit and his cup, of graduating his pitcher by the size of his foot, or equalizing its parts by the number of his fingers.

Measures of length, once acquired, may be, and naturally are, applied to the admeasurement of objects of surface and solidity; and hence arise new diversities from the nature of things. The connection of linear measure with numbers, necessarily, and in the first instance, imports only the first arithmetical rule of numeration, or ad

dition. The mensuration of surfaces, and of solids, requires the further aid of multiplication and division. Mere numbers, and mere linear measure, may be reckoned by addition alone; but their application to the surface can be computed only by multiplication. The elementary principle of decimal arithmetic is then supplied by nature to man within himself in the number of his fingers. Whatever standard of linear measure he may assume, in order to measure the surface or the solid, it will be natural to him to stop in the process of addition when he has counted the tale equal to that of his fingers. Then turning his line in the other direction, and stopping at the same term, he finds the square of his number a hundred: and, applying it again to the solid, he finds its cube a thousand.

But while decimal arithmetic thus, for the purposes of computation, shoots spontaneously from the nature of man and of things, it is not equally adapted to the numeration, the multiplication, or the division, of material substances, either in his own person, or in external nature. The proportions of the human body, and of its members, are in other than decimal numbers. The first unit of measures, for the use of the hand, is the cubit, or extent from the tip of the elbow to the end of the middle finger; the motives for choosing which, are, that it presents more definite terminations at both ends than any of the other superior limbs, and gives a measure easily handled and carried about the person. By doubling this measure is given the ell, or arm, including the hand, and half the width of the body, to the middle of the breast; and, by doubling that, the fathom, or extent from the extremity of one middle finger to that of the other, with expanded arms, an exact equivalent to the stature of man, or extension from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot. For subdivisions and smaller measures, the span is found equal to half the cubit, the palm to one third of the span, and the finger to one fourth of the palm. The cubit is thus, for the mensuration of matter, naturally divided into 24 equal parts, with subdivisions of which 2, 3, and 4, are the factors; while, for the mensuration of distance, the foot will be found at once equal to one fifth of the pace, and one sixth of the fathom.

Nor are the diversities of nature, in the organization of external matter, better suited to the exclusive use of decimal arithmetic. In the three modes of its extension, to which the same linear measure may be applied, length, breadth, and thickness, the proportions of surface and solidity are not the same with those of length: that which is decimal to the line, is centesimal to the surface, and millesimal to the cube. Geometrical progression forms the rule of numbers for the surface and the solid, and their adaptation to decimal numbers is among the profoundest mysteries of mathematical science, a mystery which had been impenetrable to Pythagoras, Archimedes, and Ptolemy; which remained unrevealed even to Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler, and the discovery and exposition of which was reserved to immortalize the name of Napier. To the mensuration of the surface and the solid, the number ten is of little more use than any other. The numbers of each of the two or three modes of extension must be

multiplied together to yield the surface or the solid contents: and, unless the object to be measured is a perfect square or cube of equal dimensions at all its sides, decimal arithmetic is utterly incompetent to the purpose of their admeasurement.

Linear measure, to whatever modification of matter applied, extends in a straight line; but the modifications of matter, as produced by nature, are in forms innumerable, of which the defining outward line is almost invariably a curve. If decimal arithmetic is incompetent even to give the dimensions of those artificial forms, the square and the cube, still more incompetent is it to give the circumference, the area, and the contents, of the circle and the sphere.

There are three several modes by which the quantities of material substances may be estimated and compared; by number, by the space which they occupy, and by their apparent specific gravity. We have seen the origin and character of mensuration by space and number, and that, in the order of human existence, one is the result of a necessity incidental to individual man preceding the social union, and the other immediately springing from that union. The union of the sexes constitutes natural society: their permanent cohabitation is the foundation of domestic society, and leads to that of government, arising from the relations between the parents and the offspring which their union produces. The relations between husband and wife import domestic society, consent, and the sacred obligation of promises. Those between parent and child, import subordination and government; on the one side authority, on the other obedience. In the first years of infancy, the authority of the parent is absolute; and has, therefore, in the laws of nature, been tempered by parental affection. As the child advances to mature age, the relations of power and subjection gradually subside, and, finally, are dissolved in that honor and reverence of the child for the parent, which can terminate only with life. When the child goes forth into the world to make a settlement for himself, and found a new family, civil society commences; government is instituted-the tillage of the ground, the discovery and use of metals, exchanges, traffic by barter, a common standard of measures, and mensuration by weight, or apparent specific gravity, all arise from the multiplying relations between man and man, now superadded to those between man and things.

The difference between the specific gravities of different substances is so great, that it could not, for any length of time, escape observation; but nature has not furnished man, within himself, with any standard for this mode of estimating equivalents. Specific gravity, as an object of mensuration, is in its nature proportional. It is not like measures of length and capacity, a comparison between different definite portions of space, but a comparison between different properties of matter. It is not the simple relation between the extension of one substance, and the extension of another; but the complicated relation of extension and gravitation in one substance to the extension and gravitation of another. This distinction is of great and insuperable influence upon the principle of uniformity, as applicable to a

system of weights and measures. Extension and gravitation neither have, nor admit of, one common standard. Diversity is the law of their nature, and the only uniformity which human ingenuity can establish between them is, an uniformity of proportion, and not an uniformity of identity.

The necessity for the use of weights is not in the organization of individual man. It is not essential even to the condition or the comforts of domestic society. It presupposes the discovery of the properties of the balance; and originates in the exchanges of traffic, after the institution of civil society. It results from the experience that the comparison of the articles of exchange, which serve for the subsistence or the enjoyment of life, by their relative extension, is not sufficient as a criterion of their value. The first use of the balance, and of weights, implies two substances, each of which is the test and the standard of the other. It is natural that these substances should be the articles the most essential to subsistence. They will be borrowed from the harvest and the vintage: they will be corn and wine. The discovery of the metals, and their extraction from the bowels of the carth, must, in the annals of human nature, be subsequent, but proximate, to the first use of weights; and, when discovered, the only mode of ascertaining their definite quantities will be soon perceived to be their weight. That they should, themselves, immediately become the common standards of exchanges, or otherwise of value and of weights, is perfectly in the order of nature; but their proportions to one another, or to the other objects by which they are to be estimated, will not be the same as standards of weight, and as standards of value. Gold, silver, copper, and iron, when balanced each by the other in weight, will present masses very different from cach other in value. They give rise to another complication, and another diversity, of weights and measures, equally inaccessible to the uniformity of identity, and to the computations of decimal arith

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Of the metals, that which, by the adaptation of its properties to the various uses of society, and to the purposes of traffic, by the quantities in which nature has disclosed it to the possession of man, intermediate between her profuse bounties of the coarser, and her parsimonious dispensation of the finer, metals, holds a middle station between them, wins its way as the common, and at last as the only, standard of value. It becomes the universal medium of exchanges. Its quantities, ascertained by weight, become themselves the standards of weights. Civil government is called in as the guardian and voucher of its purity. The civil authority stamps its image, to authenticate its weight and alloy: and silver becomes at once a weight, money, and coin.

With civil society too originates the necessity for common and uniform standards of measures. Of the different measures of extension necessary for individual man, and for domestic society, although the want will be common to all, and frequently recurring, yet, the standards will not be uniform, either with reference to time or to persons.

The standard of linear measure for each individual being in himself, those of no two individuals will be the same. At different times, the same individual will use different measures, according to the several purposes for which they will be wanted. In domestic society, the measures adaptable to the persons of the husband, of the wife, and of the children, are not the same; nor will the idea of reducing them all to one common standard press itself upon their wants, until the multiplication of families gives rise to the intercourse, exchanges, and government, of civil society. Common standards will then be assumed from the person of some distinguished individual; but acci-. dental circumstances, rather than any law of nature, will determine whether identity or proportion will be the character of their uniformity. If, pursuing the first and original dictate of nature, the cubit should be assumed as the standard of linear measure for the use of the hand, and the pace for the measure of motion, or linear measure upon earth, there will be two units of long measure; one for the measure of matter, and another for the measure of motion. Nor will they be reducible to one; because neither the cubit nor the pace is an aliquot part or a multiple of the other. But, should the discovery have been made, that the foot is at once an aliquot part of the pace, for the mensuration of motion, and of the ell and fathom, for the mensuration of matter, the foot will be made the common standard measure for both and, thenceforth, there will be only one standard unit of long measure, and its uniformity will be that of identity.

Thus, in tracing the theoretic history of weights and measures to their original elements in the nature and the necessities of man, we have found linear measure with individual existence, superficial, capacious, itinerary measure, and decimal arithmetic, with domestic society; weights and common standards, with civil society; money, coins, and all the elements of uniform metrology, with civil government and law; arising in successive and parallel progression together.

When weights and measures present themselves to the contemplation of the legislator, and call for the interposition of law, the first and most prominent idea which occurs to him is that of uniformity: his first object is to embody them into a system, and his first wish, to reduce them to one universal common standard. His purposes are uniformity, permanency, universality; one standard to be the same for all persons and all purposes, and to continue the same forever. These purposes, however, require powers which no legislator has hitherto been found to possess. The power of the legislator is limited by the extent of his territories, and the numbers of his people. His principle of universality, therefore, cannot be made, by the mere agency of his power, to extend beyond the inhabitants of his own possessions. The power of the legislator is limited over time. He is liable to change his own purposes. He is not infallible: he is liable to mistake the means of effecting his own objects. He is not immortal: his successor accedes to his power, with different views, different opinions, and perhaps different principles. The legislator

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