Mesrour

“ The mention of worshippers proves that the measuring is symbolical. To ‘measure’ is to separate for sacred purposes; what is excluded from the measurement is, accordingly, more or less mingled with evil. ”

“ And now we will look again at a verse in the Book of Job, which tells us something very wonderful about the inside of this great globe of ours, upon the fair outside of which we live and move. You would never have thought it possible that such a great ball could be weighed. But by weighing and measuring—not with scales and weights, you may be sure, but by clever ways which are known to learned philosophers—it has been found out that our earth is very, very heavy. ”

“ A scale might be formed, graduated according to the degrees of a combined ratio of intensity, duration, connexion, periods of recurrence, and utility, which would be the standard, according to which all ideas might be measured, and an uninterrupted chain of nicely shadowed distinctions would be observed, from the faintest impression on the senses, to the most distinct combination of those impressions; from the simplest of those combinations, to that mass of knowledge which, including our own nature, constitutes what we call the universe. ”

“ We may now divide this art of measurement into two parts; placing in the one part all the arts which measure the relative size or number of objects, and in the other all those which depend upon a mean or standard. Many accomplished men say that the art of measurement has to do with all things, but these persons, although in this notion of theirs they may very likely be right, are apt to fail in seeing the differences of classes--they jumble together in one the 'more' and the 'too much,' which are very different things. ”

“ A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE MÈTRE. The idea of an invariable and constant system of measurement, of which nature herself should furnish the exact value, may be said to have existed in the mind of man from the earliest ages. It was of the highest importance, however, that this measurement should be accurately determined, whatever had been the cataclysms of which our earth had been the scene, and it is certain that the ancients felt the same, though they failed in methods and appliances for carrying out the work with sufficient accuracy. ”

“ It is said in the Bible that God has ordered all things according to weight, number and measure. Omnia in pondere et numero et mensura disposuit Deus. Weight is equilibrium, number is quantity, measure is proportion—these three, and these are the eternal or divine basis of the science of Nature. Here now is the formula of equilibrium: Harmony results from the analogy of contraries. Number is the scale of analogies, the proportion of which is measure. The entire occult philosophy of the Zohar might be termed the science of equilibrium. ”

“ There are natural measures, nearly the same everywhere, such as a man's pace, the length of his arm, or his height. When the child is calculating the height of the story of a house, his tutor may serve as a unit of measure. In estimating the altitude of a steeple, he may compare it with that of the neighboring houses. If he wants to know how many leagues there are in a given journey, let him reckon the number of hours spent in making it on foot. ”

“ I suppose that the size of my world is the measure of myself, and that in my schoolmastering I am simply trying to enlarge the world of my pupils. I saw a gang-plough the other day that is drawn by a motor, and that set me to thinking of ploughs in general and their evolution; and, by tracing the plough backward, I saw that the original one must have been the forefinger of some cave-dweller. ”

“ What language was for the evolution of primitive man, measurement is for the advance of modern science. As a word selects similarities and ignores differences, so a measurement selects certain similarities from the concrete manifoldness of things. That such a great part of the world can be described in terms of a few units of measurement, and that this description should lead to such useful applications, is truly marvelous and admirable. ”

“ But age warns me to bring my work to a close, leaving its correction and completion to younger men. Yet I hope I have been able to show the principles of unity and of diversity; and apparent confusion becomes clear when the keys of metrology are at hand. The trend of the human mind is always the same; for weights and measures are a part of the daily life of every man and woman. ”

“ What is written in metre, or rhythm, is so called from metros— a measure, and arithmos— a number, because regulated by certain measures, or numbers of syllables, which please the ear with their smoothness and cadency, and so insinuate the matter the more movingly and powerfully into the fancy. ”

“ For some bodies we count, some we measure, and some we weigh; [8] those which are by nature continuous we apprehend by measure; to those which are divided we apply number (with the exception of those which on account of their fineness are measured) ; while heavy objects are distinguished by the inclination of the balance. ”

“ Why, the height of a man, in nine cases out of ten, can be told from the length of his stride. It is a simple calculation enough, though there is no use my boring you with figures. I had this fellow's stride both on the clay outside and on the dust within. Then I had a way of checking my calculation. When a man writes on a wall, his instinct leads him to write about the level of his own eyes. Now that writing was just over six feet from the ground. ”

“ Weigh not the Book of God with such standards and sciences as are current amongst you, for the Book itself is the unerring balance established amongst men. In this most perfect balance whatsoever the peoples and kindreds of the earth possess must be weighed, while the measure of its weight should be tested according to its own standard, did ye but know it. ”

“ Actual measurement, by whatever measure or name it may be called, is a delusion, for all so-called long or [115] short measures around the shoulders, neck and arms must be taken close over a body which we do not intend to fit as snugly as the measure itself. As a rule, said measures are seldom applied, or transferred to a flat pattern on the same line as they have been taken over the form itself. ”

“ If we do, we would want to keep an iron bedstead to measure every person according to our own measurement and dimensions; and if persons were too long we would cut them off, and if too short draw them out. ”

“ That for which it is the way to roughly measure, Yet it is measured in small amounts, It is of secondary importance to the rough amounts, And that for which it is the way to measure small, but was measured roughly, The rough amount is of secondary importance to the small. ”

“ The rise of measurement, the naturalisation of weights and measures brought by commerce, even by conquest, when they are found convenient, the varieties caused by changes of circumstance, the deflections under the constraint of ill-advised rulers, the 309effect of long custom in reconciling to new standards if they can only be arranged conveniently, the shifts by which they can be made endurable, the tendency to resume the old trend along another path—all these traits of human nature are shown in this study. ”

“ Some would measure the earth with a carpenter’s rule, forgetting Him “Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and meted out Heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance.” ”

“ A yard-stick, pocket-rule, tape-measure and any measure or scales convenient.
Use the measures and scales for measuring the height and weight of the different children, and explain to them that if they continue to grow, they will eventually become full grown men and women. So God measures them to-day in moral things, and if they will learn what God requires and be obedient to their parents, they will increase in moral stature as well. ”

“ And since we are assured that the all-wise Creator has observed the most exact proportions of number, weight, and measure in the make of all things, the most likely way, therefore, to get any insight into the nature of those parts of the creation which come within our [Pg 30] observation must in all reason be to number, weigh, and measure. ”

“ The process, as a practical one, is familiar enough to almost everybody who has to work with measures of any kind. Suppose, for instance, that I am measuring any object with a brass rod which, as we know, expands and contracts according to the temperature. ”

“ But we must emphasize the fact once more that in deciding matters in this way we deal solely with questions of expediency, not with questions of the nature of our mental capacity.
36. Measurement. Measuring is in a certain way the opposite of counting. While, in counting, the things are regarded in advance as individual, and the group, therefore, is a body compounded of discontinuous elements, measuring, on the other hand, consists in co-ordinating numbers with continuous things, that is, in applying to continuous things a concept formed upon the hypothesis of discontinuity. ”

“ General Remarks In the various names of weights and measures there are many general-utility words which offer no difficulty in the sphere of those who use them habitually, yet which are sometimes puzzling to others, while they are interesting to the student of semantics. They form a chapter in the history of weights and measures, itself a volume in the history of the human mind. ”

“ The subject you have chosen is certainly an idol of the imagination. For if you had anything of universal interest to say about yourself, you could say it in a way natural to one of the metres, or metrical movements, established in the English language. What you call metre bears precisely the same relation to these universal laws of expression, as the Mormon church and the religion of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young bear to the doctrines of Catholic Christendom. ”

“ In this manner, we suppose the errours of observation to balance each other; some of our corrected measures being too great and others too small, but with no great preponderance either way. We draw our main regular curve, not through the points given by our observations, but among them: drawing it, as has been said by one of the philosophers30 who first systematically used this method, ‘with a bold but careful hand.’ 207 The regular curve which we thus obtain, thus freed from the casual errours of observation, is that in which we endeavour to discover the laws of change and succession. ”

“ As a measure of length, it is unknown to the mass of our citizens; and if retained for the purpose of superficial measure, the foot will supply its place, and fix the acre as in the fourth resolution. ”

“ In like manner, a farmer who is asked the weight of one of his oxen gives a figure which seems much too low, until he explains that he has omitted to estimate the bones! A servant who was asked his height mentioned a measure which was ridiculously inadequate to cover his length, and upon being questioned admitted that he had left out of account all above his shoulders! ”

“ Then we extend that measure, or some multiple of it, to another place more remote, and then to one still more distant; and thus by degrees we become able to grasp distances whose statement in figures had previously conveyed little or no meaning to our minds. So, in measuring a force, we get a better idea of its greatness if we work up to it in a similar manner. ”

“ The question of correct measurement is in immediate connexion with another, which will repay all the attention that can be given to it, and I think there is no subject that can be more profitably discussed amongst us;—I mean that of proper gradations of size in all the various branches of the mechanical arts. I think no estimate can be formed of our national loss from the over-multiplication of sizes. ”

“ Suppose that we measure the heights of a great many adult men in any town or country. These heights will of course lie between certain extremes in 24 each direction, and if we continue to accumulate our measures it will be found that they tend to lie continuously between these extremes; that is to say, that under those circumstances no intermediate height will be found to be permanently unrepresented in such a collection of measurements. Now suppose these heights to be marshalled in the order of their magnitude. ”

“ And with 215 such a collection of heavy bodies, or weights, we can readily measure all other forces; for the same principle of the equality of action and reaction leads at once to this maxim, that any statical force is measured by the weight which it would support. ”

“ The terms measure, measurer, and measurable are as negative in nature, as the privation of forest plants in the sky; and the words intellect, intellection and intelligible are as meaningless in themselves, as the absence of thorns and thistles in the garden of Paradise. ”

“ We may, for example, measure a length by reference to a rule, an interval of time by a clock, a mass or weight by comparison with standardised lumps of metal, and in all such cases—provided that our instruments are good ones and skilfully used—we have every confidence in the constancy and uniformity of our results. ”

“ When we approach to an accuracy of measurement beyond that of observation, adjustment is allowable. But within the limits of observation we know what we mean when we speak of measurements of space and measurements of time and uniformity of change. ”

“ By exercising the class in this manner, not to exceed half an hour a day, they would, at the end of the first quarter, judge of each other's height, of the height of persons generally, of the length of various objects, of the size of buildings, and of the dimensions of yards, gardens, and fields, with greater accuracy than the average of adult persons, as was tested by actual measurement in some instances where there was a disagreement in opinion. ”