NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 447 



various passages in their sacred books, many of them most noble 

 in conception, and most beautiful in form, regarding the " firma- 

 ment," 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.* 



But as civilization was developed, there were evolved, espe- 

 cially 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, f 



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, Arch6ologie 

 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'Egypte published by order of 

 Napoleon, tome ii, PI. 14 ; also Prisse d'Avennes, Art ^gyptien, 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. 



f The agency of the Pythagoreans in first spreading the doctrine of the earth's sphe- 

 ricity 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 Phajdo, 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 Geog., Paris, 1873, p. 96 ; also, Leopardi, Saggio sopra gli errori 

 popolari degli antichi, Firenze, 1851, chapter xii, pp. 184 et seq. 



