To this analogy Eddington adds the following even more drastic one: ‘Procrustes, you will remember,’ he says, ‘stretched or chopped down his guests to fit the bed he constructed. But perhaps you have not heard the rest of the story. He measured them up before they left the next morning, and wrote a learned paper On the Uniformity of Stature of Travellers for the Anthropological Society of Attica.’