NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 451 



From this old conception of the universe as a sort of house, 

 with heaven as its upper story and the earth as its ground floor, 

 flowed important theological ideas into heathen, Jewish, and 

 Christian mythologies. Common to them all are legends regard- 

 ing attempts of mortals to invade the upper apartment from the 

 lower. Of such are the Greek legends of the Aloidae who sought 

 to reach heaven by piling up mountains, and were cast down ; 

 the Chaldean and Hebrew legends of the wicked who at Babylon 

 sought to build " a tower whose top may reach heaven," which 

 Jehovah went down from heaven to see, and which he brought to 

 naught by the "confusion of tongues"; the Hindoo legend of 

 the tree which sought to grow into heaven and which Brahma 

 blasted ; and the Mexican legend of the giants who sought to reach 

 heaven by building the Pyramid of Cholula, and who were over- 

 thrown by fire from above. 



Myths having this geographical idea as their germ developed 

 in luxuriance through thousands of years. Ascensions to heaven 

 and descents from it, " translations," " assumptions," " annuncia- 

 tions," mortals " caught up " into it and returning, angels flying 

 between it and the earth, thunderbolts hurled down from it, 

 mighty winds issuing from its corners, voices speaking from the 

 upper floor to men on the lower, temporary openings of the floor 

 of heaven to reveal the blessedness of the good, " signs and won- 

 ders" hung out from it to warn the wicked, interventions of 

 every kind, from the heathen gods coming down on every sort of 

 errand, and Jehovah coming down to walk in Eden in the cool of 

 the day, to St. Mark swooping down into the market-place of 

 Venice to break the shackles of a slave all these are but features 

 in a vast evolution of myths arising largely from this geographi- 

 cal germ. 



iSTor did this evolution end here. Naturally, in this view of 

 things, if heaven was a loft, hell was a cellar ; and if there were 

 ascensions into one, there were descents into the other. Hell be- 

 ing so near, interferences by its occupants with the dwellers of 

 the earth just above were constant and form a vast chapter in 

 medieval literature. Dante made this conception of the location 

 of hell still more vivid, and we find some forms of it serious 

 barriers to geographical investigation. Many a bold navigator, 

 who was quite ready to brave pirates and tempests, trembled at 

 the thought of tumbling with his ship into one of the openings 

 into hell which a wide-spread belief placed in the Atlantic at some 

 unknown distance from Europe. This terror of the sailors was 

 one of the main obstacles in the great voyage of Columbus. In an 



Collectio Nova Patrum, vol. ii, p. 255. For the Egyptian Trinitarian views, see Sharpe, 

 History of Egypt, vol. i, pp. 94, 102. 



