The standards of measure in France and some other countries are, as is
well known, referred to divisions of arcs of the meridian, measured off
upon different points of the surface of the earth. These measures of
arcs of the meridian, as measurements of a known and selected portion of
the surface of the spheroidal globe of the earth, have, more or less,
fixed mathematical relations with the axis of the earth; as the
circumference of a sphere has an exact mathematical ratio to its
diameter. The difference in length of arcs of the meridian at different
parts of the earth's surface, in consequence of the spheroidal form of
the globe of the earth, has led to the idea that the polar diameter or
axis of the earth would form a more perfect and more universal standard
than measurements of the surface of the earth. In the last century,
Cassini[264] and Callet[265] proposed, on these grounds, that the polar
axis of the earth should be taken as the standard of measure. Without
having noticed these propositions of Cassini and Callet,[266] Professor
Smyth adopts the same idea, and avers that 4000 years ago it had been
adopted and used also by the builders of the Great Pyramid, who laid out
and measured off the basis of the pyramid as a multiple by the days of
the year of the Sacred Cubit, and hence of the Pyramidal Cubit while the
Sacred or Pyramidal Cubit were both the results of superhuman or divine
knowledge, and were both, or each, one ten-millionth of the semi-polar
axis of the earth. We have already seen, however, that the Sacred Cubit,
"_according_ to Sir Isaac Newton," is not a multiple by the days of the
year of the base line of the Great Pyramid; and is not one
twenty-millionth of the polar axis of the earth, when that polar axis is
laid down as measuring, according to the numbers elected by Professor
Smyth, 500,500,000 British inches.
* * * * *
But is there any valid reason whatever for fixing and determining, as an
ascertained mathematical fact, the polar axis of the earth to be this
very precise and exact measure, with its formidable tail of cyphers?
None, except the supposed requirements or necessities of Professor
Smyth's pyramid metrological theory. The latest and most exact
measurements are acknowledged to be those of Captain Clarke, who, on the
doctrine of the earth being a spheroid of revolution computes the polar
axis to be 500,522,904 British inches, calculating it from the results
of all the known arcs of meridian measures. If we grant that the Sacred
Cubit could be allowed to be exactly 25.025 inches, which Sir Isaac
Newton found it not to be; and if we grant that the polar axis is
exactly 500,500,000 British inches, which Captain Clarke did not find it
to be; then, certainly, as shown by Professor Smyth, there would be
20,000,000 of these supposititious pyramidal cubits, or 500,000,000 of
the supposititious pyramidal inches in this supposititious polar axis of
the earth. "In so far, then" (writes Professor Smyth), "we have in the
5, with the many 0's that follow, a pyramidally commensurable and
symbolically appropriate unit for the earth's axis of rotation." But
such adjustments have been made with as great apparent exactitude when
entirely different earth-axes and quantities were taken. Thus Mr. John
Taylor shows the inches, cubits, and axes to answer precisely, although
he took as his standard a totally different diameter of the earth from
Professor Smyth. The diameter of the earth at 30 deg. of latitude--the
geographical position of the Great Pyramid--is, he avers, some seventeen
miles, or more exactly 17.652 miles longer than at the poles.[267] But
Mr. Taylor fixed upon this diameter of the earth at latitude 30 deg.--and
not, like Professor Smyth, upon its polar diameter--as the standard for
the metrological linear measures of the Great Pyramid; and yet, though
the standard was so different, he found, like Mr. Smyth, 500,000,000 of
inches also in his axis, and 20,000,000 of cubits also.[268] The
resulting figures appear to fit equally as well for the one as for the
other. Perhaps they answer best on Mr. Taylor's scheme. For Mr. Taylor
maintained that the diameter of the earth before the Flood, at this
selected point of 30 deg., was less by nearly 37 miles than what it was
subsequently to the flood,[269] and is now; a point by which he
accounts for otherwise unaccountable circumstances in the metrological
doctrines which have been attempted to be connected with the Great
Pyramid. For while Mr. Taylor believes the Sacred Cubit to be 24.88, or
possibly 24.90 British inches, he holds the new Pyramidal cubit to be 25
inches in full; and the Sacred and Pyramidal cubits to be different
therefore from each other, though both inspired. In explanation of this
startling difference in two measures supposed to be equally of
sacred[270] origin, Mr. Taylor observes--"The smaller 24.88 is the
Sacred Cubit which measured the diameter of the Earth _before_ the
Flood; the one by which Noah measured the Ark, as tradition says; and
the one in accordance with which all the interior works of the Great
Pyramid were constructed.[271] The larger (25) is the Sacred Cubit of
the _present_ Earth, according to the standard of the Great Pyramid when
it was completed."
Surely such marked diversities and contradictions, and such strange
hypothetical adjustments and re-adjustments of the data and
calculations, entirely upset the groundless and extraordinary theory of
the base of the pyramid being a standard of linear measurement; or a
segment of any particular axis of the earth; or a standard for emitting
a system of new inches and new cubits;--seeing, on the one hand, more
particularly, that the basis line of the pyramid is still itself an
unknown and undetermined linear quantity, as is also the polar axis of
the earth of which it is declared and averred to be an ascertained,
determined, and measured segment.
M. Paucton, in 1780, wrote a work in which he laid down the base side of
the pyramid as 8754 inches; maintained, like Mr. Taylor and Mr. Smyth,
that this length was a standard of linear measures; found it to be the
measure of a portion of a degree of the meridian, such degree being
itself the 360th part of a circle;--and apparently the calculations and
figures answered as well as when the measurement was declared to be 9142
inches, and the line not a segment of an arc of the circumference of
the earth, but a segment of the polar axis of the earth; for De l'Isle
lauds Paucton's meridian degree theory as one of the wondrous efforts of
human genius, or (to use his own words) "as one of the chief works of
the human mind!" Yet the errors into which Paucton was seduced in
miscalculating the base line of the Pyramid as 8754 inches, and the
other ways he was misled, are enough--suggests Professor Smyth--"to make
poor Paucton turn in his grave."