480 COSMOS. 



PRINCIPAL MOMENTA THAT HAVE INFLUENCED 

 THE HISTORY OF THE PHYSICAL CONTEM- 

 PLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 



THE MEDITERRANEAN CONSIDERED AS THE STARTING-POINT 

 FOR THE REPRESENTATION OF THE RELATIONS WHICH 

 HAVE LAID THE FOUNDATION OF THE GRADUAL EXTEN- 

 SION OF THE IDEA OF THE COSMOS. SUCCESSION OF 



THIS RELATION TO THE EARLIEST CULTIVATION 



AMONGST HELLENIC NATIONS. ATTEMPTS AT DISTANT 



MARITIME NAVIGATION TOWARDS THE NORTH-EAST 

 (BY THE ARGONAUTS); TOWARDS THE SOUTH (TO 

 OPHIR); TOWARDS THE WEST (BY COL^EUS OF SAMOS). 



PLATO, in his Phcedo, describes the narrow limits , of the 

 Mediterranean in a manner that accords with the spirit of 

 -enlarged cosmical views.* " We who inhabit the region 

 extending from Phasis to the Pillars of Hercules, occupy only 

 a small portion of the earth," he writes, "where we have 

 settled ourselves round the inner sea, like ants or frogs round 

 a swamp." This narrow basin, on the borders of which 

 Egyptian, Phoenician, and Hellenic nations, flourished and 

 attained to a high degree of civilisation, is the point from 

 which the most important historical events have proceeded, no 

 less than the colonisation of vast territories in Africa and 

 Asia, and those maritime expeditions which have led to the 

 discovery of the whole western hemisphere of the globe. 



The Mediterranean shows in its present configuration the 

 traces of an earlier subdivision into three contiguous smaller 

 closed basins. f 



* Plato, Phcedo, p. 109, B. (compare Herod, ii. 21). Cleomedes sup" 

 posed that the surface of the earth was depressed in the middle, in order 

 to receive the Mediterranean (Voss, Crit. Blatter, bd. ii. 1828., s. 144 

 and 150). 



t I first developed this idea in my Rel. hist, du voyage aux regions 

 Gquinoxiales, t. iii. p. 236; and in the Examen crit. de I' hist, de la Geogr. 



