FIGURE OF THE EARTH. 307 



day resppcting the form of the earth and its rchitions with the other bodies of our 

 system was known many ages before that in whieh we live ; granting, moreover, 

 that in view of the constant and great vicissitudes to which the world is sub- 

 ject, where the events of to-day so readily and radically eftace the most mo- 

 mentous memories of 3-esterday, we are left without any positive grounds for 

 roundly denying the above assertions, yet what imports it to us whether the 

 primitive people of Asia were more enlightened than those of modern Europe, 

 if there remain only incomplete traces of their knowledge — if their science has 

 disappeared or been transmitted only when the modern had secured new foun- 

 dations, assuredly not less solid than the ancient 1 If we concede at once that 

 those people had ascertained the roundness of the earth, whether from the ex- 

 perience acquired in their emigrations and their warlike and commercial expe- 

 ditions, or else from a species of intuition; that from the demonstrated fact they 

 ascended to the producing cause, and that, not content with a knowledge of the 

 form, they had sought and succeeded in determining the dimensions of the globe, 

 what advantage have the moderns derived from all this? In what respect have 

 these problematical antecedents served to enlighten us with reference to the 

 questions with which we are engaged? This is to us the point of interest, and 

 it is this which we should first of all endeavor to make plain. 



In his heroic poems Homer brings together all the cosmographic and geo- 

 graphic ideas of his age and of the people to whom he belonged — a people fitted, 

 beyond all then known, for the cultivation of the sciences, distinguished by 

 their lively and penetrating imagination, and inhabiting a country in all respects 

 the most favorably situated for observation. And yet Homer, minute and exact 

 as he is in the description of the scene on which his heroes moved, supposes the 

 earth to be a plane, and bounded in all directions by the waters of the ocean ; 

 places in the middle of it Greece, and particularly the Thessalian Olympus; estab- 

 lishes, on the mysterious limits of the horizon, pillows which serve as a support 

 for the skies; pictures Tartarus, the abode of the enemies of the gods, at a great 

 depth beneath the surface; and beyond the dim confines of earth imagines chaos, 

 or immensity, a confused mixture of life and vacuity, an abyss where exist, 

 Avithout ordex-, all the elements of Tartarus, earth, and heaven. Here we have 

 the point of departure for our existing knowledge respecting the form of the 

 earth and the constitution of the celestial vault ; and is there here anything 

 which reveals the profound research, whether certain or problematical, of the 

 pristine races ? Have Ave here, indeed, anything more than the primitive ideas, 

 Avhich the spectacle of nature wakens in the breast of every one moderately en- 

 dowed with an inquiring spirit, dressed in the colors of a gloAving imagination, 

 but betraying the incapacity to discover the truth through the mists which en- 

 velope it? 



The voyages of the Phenicians, though conducted with less timidity than 

 those of the cotemporary Greeks, yet with a prudence and caution indicative 

 of no transmitted knowledge, open the door to wider investigation, to juster 

 ideas of the figure of the earth, and lead, by a more certain, at least more ex- 

 peditious path, to the discovery of the truth. Till this epoch history presents 

 to us each people shut up within the narrow limits which nature had marked 

 for it, here separated from .the rest by mountain chains, there by tempestuous 

 seas. Tiie dwellers of Tyre and Sidon are the first to venture habitually on 

 distant voyages in search of new lands, of foreign productions, of the objects of' 

 luxury and affluence, Avhich were wanting at home. They visit, one by one, 

 all the islands of the Mediterranean, coast along the north of Africa, founding 

 colonies Avherever suitable ; and, without recoiling before the dreaded straits of 

 Gades, launch into the ocean and establish the principal seats of their com- 

 merce on the smiling shores of Betica. And while advancing on the west to 

 points never before reached, this commercial people unite the fleets of their 

 King Hiram with those of Solomon to explore the coasts of the Red and of the 



