APPENDIX II.
THE ROYAL SOCIETY, LONDON;
AND ITS PUBLISHED BASE-SIDE LENGTH OF THE GREAT PYRAMID.
From the New York Daily Tribune of Thursday, May 21st, 1874.
To the Editor of the Tribune.
Sir,—Hitherto anything published under the auspices of the Royal Society (London) has been considered worthy of utmost credence. Such trust can no longer be reposed in all its official statements. I cannot believe that the Fellows at large have consented to the perversions of truth lately issued in the name of the Society, but they are none the less responsible or free from blame in permitting officers who can lend themselves to such perversions to continue in their exalted positions. I have before me a pamphlet, published in London, March, 1874, containing the correspondence between the Astronomer-Royal for Scotland, Professor C. Piazzi Smyth, and the President of the Royal Society; and the Royal Society, as represented by its officers, appears in a very unenviable position. Differences in opinion from those who, at least in their own estimation, are the leaders in the world's progress, “the advanced thinkers,” cannot, it seems, be for a moment tolerated. The . . . has determined the Mutual 654Admiration Society (which can permit no discovery or improvement which originates outside the charmed circle, to be worth anything) to nip at once all interference in the bud. As for justice or truth, that is altogether a secondary question.
At the late meeting of the British Association at Bradford, Professor Clerk Maxwell, F.R.S., was unwittingly led into an error, in a statement as to the length of the Egyptian cubit, in the course of his eloquent and excellent lecture on Molecules. It is true that he used the erroneous statement in such a manner that no particular harm was done; but still he had all the authority of the published “Transactions” and “Proceedings of the Royal Society” to back him, and he thought these might be trusted. To correct the unfortunate blunder, published under their sanction, the Astronomer-Royal for Scotland addressed a communication to the Royal Society, of which he was a Member, and, after a very long interval, he was informed that a sub-committee, to whom the paper had been referred, had reported it was “not of a nature suited for public reading before the Society!” Now the paper itself, which is published in full in the pamphlet to which I have alluded, is a very short one, and it certainly does present General Sir Henry James, R.E., F.R.S., in no very enviable light; and as the said “Chief of the Ordnance Survey” is one of the members of the Mutual Admiration Society, of course the paper could not come before the Royal Society at large, to be publicly read, and thus given to the world. The errors in question, published under the sanction of the Royal Society, all come from the very ridiculous theories of this gallant Knight in reference to the Great Pyramid in Egypt. The first theory, enunciated in the Athenæum, in a communication dated “Ordnance Survey Office, Southampton, Nov. 9, 1867,” gave that the sole reason 655wherefore the Great Pyramid had been built of its actual basal size was to allow a side of the base to measure 360 cubits of 25.488 inches each, and so the base-side length was stated by Sir Henry James to be 764 feet = 9,168 inches—and as this was the actual measurement of Colonel Howard-Vyse, that most worthy pyramid explorer, the accord seemed perfect. It was afterwards pointed out to Sir Henry that amounts to 9,175.68 inches instead of exactly 764 feet, as he had stated—an arithmetical blunder of 7.68 inches. Moreover, he could find no authority for the ancient cubit of 25.488 inches long, and so he let that cubit drop.
The next attempt was in the classical line, and never was the old saw, “A little learning is a dangerous thing,” better illustrated. Finding somewhere—in a translation, I presume, and perhaps a quotation—the Egyptian cubit mentioned by the “Father of History” as equal in length to the Samian, he immediately jumped at the conclusion, “Samos? Why, that’s Grecian! here we have it—the Egyptian and Grecian cubits are identical!” And so forthwith the Egyptian cubit was pronounced to be 18.24 inches in length, to the confounding of all the time-honoured Egyptologists, Sir Gardner Wilkinson, for example, and that learned Babylonian scholar, Dr. Brandis of Berlin, of Sir Isaac Newton, and almost all other authorities, who have supposed it about 20.7 inches in length. He was in utter ignorance that when Herodotus wrote, Samos was regarded as Asian and Persian, and the first attack upon it by the Lacedæmonian Dorians, he terms their expedition into Asia. (Thalia, 56; see, also, 55.) All of which, long ago, was expounded by the Rev. Canon Rawlinson. Now in giving this new length of the common Egyptian cubit, requiring a base-side length of the Great Pyramid to be 9,120 inches, in order that it might contain 500 of them, he ignores Howard-Vyse, 656his great authority before, ignores all the splendid work of the French savants, and the laborious measurements of Professor Smyth, and selects two of the smallest measurements he can find. Even here he puts on a par with the work of his own pet engineers that of a young engineer, who performed the work in measuring single-handed, and all to get this cooked number, 9,120 inches (which is ten inches less than his own engineers obtained), and to suit his new Samo-Egyptian cubit. To their credit be it said that the measurement of the Royal Engineers taken by itself does come nearest to what is the best mean of all the best measurements hitherto made, though still much too small, if we accord any weight to Vyse and the French savants.
These blunders were published in the “Proceedings” of the learned “Royal Society of London” for June, 1873. In his communication to the Society correcting them, Professor Smyth claims that the new length was brought in by its author, General Sir Henry James, R.E., by means of (1) an unfair selection among the standard modern measured lengths of the base-side of the Great Pyramid; and (2) a meaning attributed to certain words in Herodotus, making them tell the very opposite story to what they were intended to do. No wonder the Admiration Club was ashamed to let the world know of these misstatements of facts and classic blunders, and determined to snuff out the light of Piazzi Smyth instantly. . . . And here comes the sorriest part of the whole business. On the 7th of February, 1874, Professor Piazzi Smyth addressed a letter to the President of the Royal Society as follows:—
“Sir,—With reference to my letter of last October 27, forwarding to the Secretary of the Royal Society a short paper *“On the length of a side of the base of the Great Pyramid,” intended to correct the errors on the same subject printed by the Society in 1873, first in their Proceedings, and subsequently in their Transactions, and with reference also to the rejection and return of the said paper to me on the 22nd ult., by the Secretary, on the plea, by a sub-committee, of its not being of a nature 657suited for a public reading before the Society, I beg to say that having thus failed in all that I can do to open the eyes of the Society as to whether they are seeking ‘accurate measuring, truth-stating, and justice-doing,’ or the exact opposite thereof, in researches concerning the most ancient and exalted monument of intellectual and religious man on the face of the earth, there is nothing now left me but to come out of the Royal Society, as I do hereby, resigning my Fellowship therein, and hoping that you, Sir, at least, will not consider my reasons for withdrawing ‘not suitable for a public reading before the Society.’—I have the honour to be, your obedient Servant, “ Piazzi Smyth.
“To the President of the Royal Society, London.”
Will it be believed that an honourable man, such as we have always hitherto supposed Dr. Hooker to be, under fear of the Admiration Club, probably under their instruction, simply announced the resignation from the chair, without reading the letter or giving the reasons? When Piazzi Smyth, suspecting him to have concealed from the open meeting of the Society that the truth of its statements about the Great Pyramid had been most seriously challenged, puts the question directly to him in a second letter, Dr. Hooker states that—
“As your letter giving your reasons for withdrawal is of the nature of a communication to the Society, and as it further appears to me to contain reflections on the motives as well as the actions of the Fellows generally, I have considered it to be my duty to lay it before the Council, with the view of taking its opinions as to the proper course to be adopted with regard to it, and of which course you shall be duly informed.”
In reply, Professor Smyth said that—
“Dr. Hooker was keeping back from the Fellows the part on which the withdrawal depended—out of which it originated—which it was most important for the Fellows to know of, and which I so pointedly requested of you as President, and when I was still F.R.S., to read to the meeting, and because you saw that that part of the letter was ‘of the nature of a communication to the Society!’ As for any subsequent efforts that you may only now be going to make, after I have ceased to be F.R.S., to bring the part of my old letter you were previously silent on before your Council, not for correcting your Pyramid errors, but under the odious charge against me that I reflected therein on the motives and actions of the Fellows generally (when you know perfectly well that it was the Executive only, and their refusing to let the Fellows know what was going on, that I was dealing with), the thing is so transparent that I shall take no other mode of answering you than that of laying your own words before all the Fellows and the world at the same time.”
There the matter stands just now. I do not blame Professor Smyth for withdrawing, and yet I am sure he 658could have done more for the cause of light and truth had he remained, unpleasant as it might have been for awhile. Still, it will stir up a breeze, and, I hope, expose the facts so thoroughly, that these men who are largely—some of them almost exclusively—supported by the people, but who scorn to recognise any rights outside themselves, may learn their true position, and that the world is not yet their exclusive possession. To use the glowing words of Professor Clerk Maxwell, closing the very lecture which seems to have been the turning-point in bringing about this sad state of affairs, I hope that they “may learn that those aspirations after accuracy in measurement, truth in statement, and justice in action, which we reckon among our noblest attributes as men, are ours because they are essential constituents of the image of Him who in the beginning created, not only the heaven and the earth, but the materials of which heaven and earth consist.”
H. L. S.
Hobart College, Geneva, New York. April 10th, 1874.