The year was
divided into thirteen months of four weeks each, and New Year's Day
and Leap Year's Day were made holidays, and did not count at all in
the ordinary week. So the weeks and the months were brought into
correspondence. And moreover, as the king put it to Firmin, it was
decided to 'nail down Easter.' . . . In these matters, as in so many
matters, the new civilisation came as a simplification of ancient
complications; the history of the calendar throughout the world is a
history of inadequate adjustments, of attempts to fix seed-time and
midwinter that go back into the very beginning of human society; and
this final rectification had a symbolic value quite beyond its practical
convenience. But the council would have no rash nor harsh innovations,
no strange names for the months, and no alteration in the numbering of
the years.
The world had already been put upon one universal monetary basis. For
some months after the accession of the council, the world's affairs had
been carried on without any sound currency at all. Over great regions
money was still in use, but with the most extravagant variations in
price and the most disconcerting fluctuations of public confidence. The
ancient rarity of gold upon which the entire system rested was gone.
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