網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

Jewish holiday for all time. But it so happens that if the Christians were to go by the regular astronomical calendar while the Jews continued (as they still do) to go by the old lunar, or Metonic, calendar, Easter would frequently fall on Passover in spite of such arrangement; hence the following of the ancient Ecclesiastical rule which pays little attention to the real moon in the sky. Notwithstanding all this care, the two festivals sometimes occur together. They will come on the same date in 1927, on the seventeenth of April. After that they will not come together again till 1981.

I think I have now said enough about the calendar to satisfy, or rather to dissatisfy, any rational reader. Certainly anyone must have come to the conclusion by this time that the calendar is in need of reform. And there is such a large element of human nature in it, rather than mere arithmetical error, that reform would seem to be the right word for what is needed.

II

But what man or body of men is going to decide what changes are advisable, among the many plans proposed, and then enforce observance upon the nations? Heretofore the Heretofore the sweeping changes of calendar correction have been accomplished only under some supreme mental or military authority of general acclaim. The Metonic calendar came in with Pericles; the solar calendar found its sponsor in Julius Cæsar; the corrected solar calendar was proclaimed by Gregory, a still powerful Pope. These names stand for the Golden Age of Greece, the Golden Age of Rome, and the great intellectual reawakening of the Renaissance. They are the high points in history. There seems, indeed, to be that in the nature of the calendar which

requires for its making and its adoption all the activities and forces of a people at their best. War, conquest, mental and material progress and then, at a point or pause in history when peace and prosperity give opportunity for intellectual stock-taking, and the times are dominated by some vigorous character or new racial spirit, a new calendar is born. But these are not the days of universal empire or of nations knit together by sentiment or religion. What would be needed now would be a congress of nations; or some body of men, not merely scientific or political, but of general prestige. Put in that way, the question suggests its own the League of Nations.

answer

That calendar reform should come under such jurisdiction would seem inevitable; and such is the case with the calendar at the present time. The League of Nations, acting through its Economic Section, which has been working in coöperation with the International Chamber of Commerce and taking advice from ecclesiastical authorities who are versed in the requirements of the church calendar, has been making progress toward some final recommendation in regard to calendar

reform.

The League began with a Calendar Inquiry Committee appointed in 1922; and this committee confined its activities in 1923 chiefly to consultation with officially appointed representatives of ecclesiastical authority Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Anglican. The year 1923 was made notable in calendar history by the decision of the Russo-Greek and other Eastern Orthodox authorities to forsake the old-style Julian calendar and adopt the one in general use in the rest of the world. Russia, clinging religiously to the Julian calendar, was thirteen days behind the rest of the world. Commercial transactions and

communications between Russia and other countries had to be carried on under a double set of dates. The official church sanction of the change came subsequent to the decision of the Russian (Soviet) Government to abolish the much-cherished old calendar, regardless of its effects on saints' days, and adopt the corrected form. Accordingly, September 30, old style, was immediately followed by October 14, new style. Thirteen uneventful days had brought themselves to pass in one night, and thirteen needless numbers were dropped quietly overboard upon 'the sea of time'! Thus was healed a great cleavage in chronology, and the Gregorian calendar, already adopted in China and Japan, has become almost universal. The Soviet Government, if it has nothing else to its credit, may be said to have put Russia in step with the sun.

The League invited proposals for calendar reform to reach Geneva by March 1, 1924. Of nearly one hundred proposed plans, from twenty nationalities, which were carefully grouped and analyzed in the following three months and largely rejected by the committee as being manifestly impractical, two seem to have taken the ascendancy; and these two are now making rival claims for final approval.

The so-called Astronomer's or Swiss Plan, taking account of the fact that our year consists of fifty-two weeks and one day, abolishes the one day, or keeps it out of the reckoning, by making it January 0. By this simple step the week days are kept from rotating through the year. The same day of the week occurs on the same day of the month every year, which at present it does not.

As the calendar now is, every year ends on the same day of the week that it began on. This is due to the one day over the fifty-two weeks. As a conse

quence, each regular year begins a day later in the week than the one before, and is, of course, different all the way through. And as every fourth year, or leap year, has still another day at the end, the days of the week rotate through the years in a still more complicate way. But if the year consisted of an unbroken number of weeks, each year would begin on the same day of the week and thus be the same all the way through; and the calendar in that regard would become perpetual. The extra day of leap year would be taken care of by inserting it to follow June 31 as a summer holiday. As such it would be given a name but no date.

Another advantage of this plan would be to make the year divisible into exact quarters, not only in days but in unbroken weeks. With 365 days in the year and our present distribution of thirty- and thirty-one-day months, this is not the case. A year consisting of fifty-two weeks is exactly divisible by four, giving quarter-years of thirteen weeks each. The fifty-two weeks contain 364 days, and this number of days is exactly divisible into quarters of ninety-one days. The next problem is to divide the months of the year into quarters that shall be equal. As this ninety-one-day period could be made up of two thirty-day months and one of thirty-one days, it is proposed to adopt such a uniform distribution of month-lengths and do away with our present illogical system. It is considered desirable to have the year begin on Monday, which it would do if it were inaugurated, for instance, in 1928. This calendar could be printed in such form as to be perpetual. The equal quarters would present a desirable mathematical ideal for the purposes of the business man, accountant, or renter, or whoever has to do with quarter-years.

An objection to the plan is that it

does not meet the ideal of having the month made up of a certain number of unbroken weeks. Like the present calendar it breaks up the weeks in relation to the beginning and end of the month. Another undesirable feature, especially from the religious standpoint, is that, by setting aside the extra days of the year and making a fiction of them, the continuity of the weeks, which has so long been kept inviolate, would be broken.

In this plan it is also proposed to revert January 1 to the time of the winter solstice. Beginning the year with December 22 would cause the seasons and the quarters to coincide more exactly than they do now. Julius Julius Cæsar, had he not been preoccupied with public sentiment toward the moon, would no doubt have given January 1 a different position with regard to the seasons, reverting the date to the time of the shortest day. This new beginning of the year would be ideal from the astronomer's standpoint, but it would have no practical advantages to recommend it very strongly to the business man or the general public; and it is doubtful whether this break with the past would not make it unwelcome to the nations. However, the rest of the plan does not necessarily include this. The other features may be considered upon their own merits.

The other plan, which has strong partisans in both America and Europe, is known as the International Fixed Calendar, or the Equal-Month Calendar. Here we have thirteen months of twenty-eight days each, accounting for 364 days of the year. The extra day of the regular year would be put down as January 0 or considered simply as an international Sabbath or stock-taking day. Leap year would have a midsummer holiday with no name; that is, it would come in between two regular week-days-like Capulet's daughter

it would 'stand in number, though in reckoning none.'

In this plan the calendar for each month would be the same as for every other month throughout the year. The whole nature of the plan, with its more apparent advantages, may be seen at once by looking at its model month:

S M T W T F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

The advantages claimed for it are as follows: (a) In every year, each of the 365 dates would recur on the same day of the week as in every other year. (b) Yearly, half-yearly, and quarterly events could be permanently fixed on recurring dates. (c) The year's fiftytwo weeks would be twenty-six in each half-year and thirteen each quarteryear. (d) Appreciable economy would be gained in printing and circulating calendars.

In explaining the Astronomer's Plan I pointed out that the dropping of one day from the regular year not only made the made the year divisible into quarters of equal length but also caused each year for all time to begin on some certain day of the week.

The present plan, by having months of equal length, and with no remainder of broken weeks to lap over from one month to another, carries this advantage even further. Supposing the year to begin on Monday, every week, every month, and every quarter-year would begin on Monday for all time. If the reformed year came in on some other day, a corresponding consistency would hold. As for the claim of economy in the printing of calendars, I think this needs no emphasis. It is likely that most of us would have the simple scheme of the month so thoroughly memorized that reference to a printed

calendar would be hardly necessary. For the consolation of the printing fraternity it is pointed out that diaries would continue to be used. But as no one keeps a diary very long, and a new one has to be bought every year under the old system, this consolation is of little avail. The same diary would do for any year.

The principal objection to this plan is that thirteenth month. Human nature does not take readily to such radical invasions upon long-established custom. And when it is found that a transposition table (which has already been worked out) will be needed to put the time into joint again and show us our true relation with any former date, the people might rebel. Furthermore it is feared by those who have this plan in mind that the world may not take kindly to the number thirteen! Whether this will be enough to stop the League of Nations I cannot say; but it would be enough to give a Cæsar pause.

That the calendar could be improved is a growing opinion among business men belonging to associations affiliated directly or indirectly with the Economic Section of the League. "The International Chamber is on record favoring reform of the calendar, including a fixed date for Easter.' So the secretary of the American section of that organization informs me. The matter has been given favorable consideration by the United States Chamber of Commerce. There are, societies in this country and Europe organized purely upon the basis of calendar reform.

too,

What, let us now ask, are the prospects that some final solution of this perplexing problem will be arrived at? Are we the generation of generations to whom future peoples will look back when they tell the story of the calendar?

VOL. 137-NO. 1

III

The question leads us to a reconsideration of certain fundamental facts. The history of the calendar is a struggle between human nature and arithmetic, the former not wanting to give in to the conclusions of the latter. This history, philosophically considered, not only serves to give us our bearings with regard to the problem of time measurement, but is a subject of considerable interest in itself.

A year consists of 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 45.51 seconds. From the standpoint of one who is trying to equip the universe with some practical system of time measurement, this sort of year is manifestly ridiculous. In a practical system of measurement each larger unit should be exactly divisible by the smaller unit next below it.

A month has a mean length of 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, and 2.7 seconds. This is equally absurd. We cannot very well deal with months and years which begin and end with such utter disregard of the smaller units that we have these fractions of a day on our hands.

What, then, is a day, let us ask. That it is not an acknowledged part of a month or a year is a fact which the above figures make sufficiently plain. Nature did not intend it to be such. A day is a day. It is sufficient unto itself, and it is wholly unconcerned about any other unit of time.

In a foot there are a certain number of inches of equal size; and in a bushel the pecks are of like content. But what is a month? There are said to be twelve months in a year, but this statement means little when you consider that the months do not fit into the year except by being altered to a variety of sizes!

As man did not make days, months, and years he is not, of course, to be

held accountable for them. But he did make hours, minutes, and seconds, and so it would seem that as a matter of convenience and common sense he would have chosen such smaller time units as would fit in with and be a common divisor of the units already established. And no doubt he would have done so if he could. But evidently there were difficulties in the way; for when we state the length of a year or of a month in fractions of a second we are simply saying that these larger units are not divisible into any sort of time that man has been able to discover or invent.

Doing as best he could, man divided the day into parts which were equal but which fitted nothing further; and while his work might seem careless, inconsistent, and entirely incompetent, it is not so bad by comparison. For neither do days fit into months, nor months into years, nor years into any astronomical cycle which the heavens exhibit. It is all as bad as our English system of weights and measures; and the whole world knows how illogical and inconsistent and altogether incompetent that is.

Contrary to what any mortal member of any Academy would expect, the heavens are not constructed on the metric system! They do not countenance or make possible any such mechanical notions of perfection upon the part of man. Consequently the time is out of joint; and as man is a measuring and record-keeping animal there has been constant challenge to his intellect to set it right.

The whole truth of the matter is that Nature has offered us three different standards of time measurement the day, the month, and the year. We have got to make a choice and abide by it. We may not accept them all as if they were harmonious facts and parts of a heavenly clockwork. That is just

what they are not. Sun and moon revolve and rotate as they please; each is true to its own appointments. But the sun takes no care that years shall be divisible into months; and neither does the sun or moon time its evolutions to fit in with that standard of measurement which we call a day.

And this is a fact which is totally unacceptable to the mind of man. There is something about it which is obnoxious to human nature. If man, instead of God, had made the universe he would surely have made months that were exactly divisible into the year. This is a safe assertion in view of the fact that for ages he stuck to the moon as a standard of measurement while at the same time he tried to drive the chariot of the sun. We like to think that the universe is all working together, cogged and clocklike, with wheels that are proper multiples of one another the whole acting as one big time system. If it is not so, then it ought to be so, and it is for us to bring the stars into harmony.

Of course there is but one way. That is to assume that they rotate and revolve thus and so. Consequently we have made the year a convenient length; and we have invented a system of leap years, leap months, and leap centuries to put us periodically into step with the facts. Finding ourselves compelled to deal in fractions of a day, we borrow from time, or extend credit to it, and then set things approximately right on a clearing-house system. We save up our scraps of time till we have enough to make a day, and we add it to a year; but as this is too liberal we pause once in a hundred years to take a day back; and as this is just a little too parsimonious we remember every four-hundredth year not to take the day that was coming to us. And for this temporizing with time we are hardly to be blamed. For the day and the

« 上一頁繼續 »