164 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



apparent rotation of the heavens had been observed ; and 

 not only this, but also that this revolving motion was 

 seemingly about an axis, the intersection of which with 

 the celestial vault marked the places of the poles of the 

 universe. The conception of such poles was of still more 

 ancient date. The story of Creation, deciphered from the 

 broken and scattered remains of Assyrian and Babylonian 

 tablets, recounts how "Maidtik embellished the heavens, 

 prepared places for the great gods, made the stars, set the 

 Zodiac * * * and fixed the poles." This carries the idea 

 of these points back fully to 3,000 B. C. ; but it probably 

 had its rise very much earlier in prehistoric times. The 

 Kushite-Semite race, who were the first imperial rulers of 

 the primeval world, called themselves "sons of the pole," 

 and substituted, for the reckoning of time by the Pleiades, 

 one founded on so purely a physical motion of the heavenly 

 pole, that they conceived the heavens to move about it 

 with friction ; a fact which they deemed proved by the ap- 

 parent movements of the fixed stars. They even believed 

 the pole to be an ever twirling fire-drill, the heat of which 

 influenced the stars. The race of Yakotas, the sons of 

 Jokshan, or Joktan, in Genesis, likewise believed that the 

 pole in its revolutions produced the burning heat of 

 summer. 1 



This material idea of the poles, of cours*e, has no place 

 in the mediaeval conception. They were simply the points 

 about which the concentric heavens revolved, and that one 

 which was visible to Europeans was marked by the pres- 

 ence of the Pole star. The progress of electrical knowl- 

 edge owes much to this mediaeval cosmic philosophy. It 

 was because of the belief in the rotary heavens that the 

 great discoveries now to be recounted were made, and, as I 

 shall show hereafter, it was because of a disbelief that the 

 earth stood still, that the even greater work which imme- 

 diately ushered in the present science was undertaken. 



1 Davis : Genesis and Semite Tradition, New York, 1894. Hewitt : The 

 Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times, London, 1894. 



