various passages in their sacred books, many of them most noble in conception, and most beautiful in form, regarding the "firmament," the "corners of the earth," the "pillars of heaven," the "waters above the firmament," and the "windows of heaven," point us back to these ancient springs of thought.[1]
But as civilization was developed, there were evolved, especially among the Greeks, ideas of the earth's sphericity. The Pythagoreans, Plato, and Aristotle especially cherished them. These ideas were vague, they were mixed with absurdities, but they were germ ideas, and even amid the luxuriant growth of theology in the early Christian Church these germs began struggling into life in the minds of a few thinking men, and these men renewed the suggestion that the earth is a globe.[2]
A few of the larger-minded fathers of the Church, influenced possibly by Pythagorean traditions, but certainly by Aristotle and Plato, were willing to accept this view, but the majority of them took fright at once. To them it seemed fraught with dangers to Scripture, by which, of course, they meant their inter-
- ↑ For survivals of the early idea, among the Eskimos, of the sky as supported by mountains, and, among sundry Pacific islanders, of the sky as a firmament or vault of stone, see Tylor, Early History of Mankind, second edition, London, 1870, chap, xi; Spencer, Sociology, vol. i, chap, viii; also Andrew Lang, La Mythologie, Paris, 1886, pp. 68-73. For the early view in India and Persia, see citations from the Vedas and the Zend-Avesta in Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth, chap. i. For the Egyptian view, see Champollion; also, Lenormant, Histoire Ancienne, Maspero, and others. As to the figures of the heavens upon the ceilings of Egyptian temples, see Maspero, Archéologie Egyptienne, Paris, 1890; and for engravings of them, see Lepsius, Denkmaler, vol. i, Bl. 41, and vol. ix, Abth. iv, Bl. 35; also the Description de l'Égypte published by order of Napoleon, tome ii, PI. 14; also Prisse'd'Avennes, Art Égyptien, Atlas, tome i, PI. 35; and especially for a survival at the Temple of Denderah, see Denon, Voyage en Egypte, Planches 129, 130. For the Egyptian idea of "pillars of heaven," as alluded to on the stele of Victory of Thotmes III, in the Cairo Museum, see Ebers, Uarda, ii, 175, note, Leipsic, 1877. For a similar Babylonion belief, see Sayce's Herodotus, Appendix, 403. For the belief of Hebrew scriptural writers in a solid "firmament," see especially Job, xxxviii, 18; also Smith's Bible Dictionary.
- ↑ The agency of the Pythagoreans in first spreading the doctrine of the earth's sphericity is generally acknowledged, but the first clear and full utterance of it to the world was by Aristotle. Very fruitful, too, was the statement of the new theory given by Plato in the Timseus; see Jowett's translation, New York edition, 62, c. Also Phædo, pp. 449 et seq. See also Grote on Plato's doctrine of the sphericity of the earth; also Sir G. C. Lewis's Astronomy of the Ancients, London, 1862, chap, iii, section i, and note. Cicero's mention of the antipodes, and his reference to the passage in the Timasus are even more remarkable than the original, in that they much more clearly foreshadow the modern doctrine. See his Academic Questions, ii; also Tusc. Quest, i and v, 24. For a very full summary of the views of the ancients on the sphericity of the earth, see Kretchmer, Die physische Erdkunde im christlichen Mittelalter, Wien, 1889, pp. 35 et seq.; also, Eicken, Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung, Stuttgart, 1887, Dritter Theil, chap. vi. For citations and summaries, see Whewell, Hist. Induct. Sciences, vol. i, p. 189, and St. Martin, Hist, de la Géog., Paris, 1873, p. 96; also, Leopardi, Saggio sopra gli errori popolari degli antichi, Firenze, 1851, chapter xii, pp. 184 et seq.
