loS A DANGEROUS BELIEF. 



of the world whose inhabitants should have their feet directed 

 towards ours. It was one of the principal obstacles which 

 Columbus was called upon to surmount in the realisation 

 of his sublime idea. When cited before the Council of Sala- 

 manca, composed of prelates and men of science, he 

 had to meet the revived objection of Lactantius, a Chris- 

 tian apologist of the third century : * " Can there be any- 

 thing more absurd than a belief in the existence of Anti- 

 podes, of inhabitants with their feet opposite to our feet, 

 of people who walk with their feet in the air, and their 

 heads on the ground? that there is a part of the world 

 where everything is inverted, where trees throw out their 

 branches from top to bottom, while it rains, and hails, and 

 snows, from bottom to top ? " 



Columbus admirably demonstrated, from an artificial globe, 

 that flies walked as easily on the lower as on the upper sur- 

 face, and hence pointed out that men, compared with the 

 size of the earth, are much smaller still than flies. But his 

 judges persisted in their conviction, and did not fail to cast in 

 his face the jesting words of Plutarch : " Philosophers, rather 

 than renounce a favourite hypothesis, would make human 

 beings crawl on the lower face of the earth like worms or 

 lizards." But it was principally the authority of St Augus- 

 tine which they invoked to condemn a belief in the Anti- 

 podes. St Augustine had declared such a belief incompatible 

 with the dogmas of the faith ; for to admit the existence of 

 inhabitable lands, in the opposite hemisphere, would be to 



* Lactantius, " De Falsa Sapientia," iii. 24. 



