io 4 THE EARTH-DISC. 



municated with the Phasis, in Colchis. Above this terrestrial 

 disc the outspread sky was arched like a vast dome ; a dome 

 supported by two massive pillars, resting on the shoulders of 

 the god Atlas. 



Surely the ancient poets must have evolved the earth-disc 

 from their own prolific imagination. Can they never have seen 

 a far-off vessel, showing, as it approached them, at first the 

 tops of its masts, then its swelling sails, and finally its hull ? 

 They might have made so simple an observation in any sea- 

 port ; if they did, why did it not suggest to them the idea 

 that the earth, instead of being level, must be round ? Be- 

 cause it is easier to let the imagination speak than the 

 reason. 



The fiction of the earth-disc remained long unshaken, with 

 the exception of a few modifications. Thales figured to him- 

 self the earth as floating on a humid element. And, six cen- 

 turies later, we find Seneca still adopting the opinion of the 

 Greek philosopher. " This humid element (humor}!' 1 he says, 

 " which sustains the disc of the earth like a ship, may be, 

 perhaps, the ocean, or a liquid of simpler nature than water."* 



But how, then, was the rising or setting of the stars ex- 

 plained ? The ancients supposed that they were extinguished 

 at sunset, and rekindled at sunrise. Thus, an unfounded 

 hypothesis has for its consequence a still more baseless 

 hypothesis ; and in this manner we glide down the slope of 

 fiction to fall eventually into an abyss of contradictions. 

 Such is the true punishment of error. 



* Seneca, "Qusestiones Naturales," vi. 6. 



