THE "PROBLEM" OF THE 20th CENTURY.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2294, 12 January 1900, Page 5

THE "PROBLEM" OF THE 20th CENTURY.

TO THE EDITOR, L.W.M. Sir, —The controversy still existing on this subject induces me to desire the insertion of the following remarks in the almost forlorn hope of making the matter more clear by an attempt to explain the cause of the misconception which has arisen on the point. I feel that to the majority of your readers the very attempt to explain what to them is as obvious as the sun at noon, may appear absurd.

Neverthless when we find writers of the calibre of Andrew Lang and others under its influence as evidenced by their use of words implying that the 20th century commences with January 1900, it becomes equally clear such a misconception does exist.

Now, as every effect must have a cause my present object is to show what in the writer's opinion that cause is. Briefly stated, it is the failure to distinguish the difference of the signification of the unit when used as a simple numeral and the unit when used as a measure of time, as is the case when it is employed in the date of a year.

To illustrate my meaning let us suppose we have set ourselves the task of unstringing and counting the beads of a necklace. For this purpose we employ the unit, and pass on at once to eleven and so on to twenty and one hundred until 1900 is reached, when we forwith begin the 20th hundred.

We will now take the unit when used as a measure of time, as in secular dates. We will begin with the year one (1 omit the A.D. as it appears to have reference to ecclesiastical chronology only, a subject beyond my province) the unit so employed is divided into twelve parts or months, and we cannot at once go to the year two, as in counting our beads, because we have only reached the beginning of the measure of time which constitutes the year and must wait till 12 p.m. of the 31st December when the year we term the year one is finally completed, and we can then pass to the year two, and so on with each year and decade until we reach 12 p.m. of the 31st December, 1899, that it is to say we reach the beginning of the measure of time consisting of twelve months which constitutes the year 1900. Hence it follows that not until 12 p.m. on the 31st December of the year 1900 come we both to the end of the year, and to the end of the ten times ten years forming the 19th century. Sixty seconds later we arrived at the first perfected minute of 1901, in other words at the first minute of the 20th century.—l am Sir, yours etc., Senex. Queenstown, 30th Dec. 1899.