II. HISTORY OF DISCOVERY. 



OPINIONS OF THE ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL WORLD 

 RESPECTING THE FAR SOUTH. AMERIGO VESPUCCI. 



It is a remarkable phenomenon that in most sciences the 

 history of discovery repeats itself, and that deductive 

 speculation presses forward far in advance of inductive 

 investigation — in as far of course as both can be applied 

 to a particular science — and often arrives at surprising" 

 conclusions, which frequently are entirely forgotten later 

 on until time has proved them to be correct ; on the other 

 hand perfectly mistaken conceptions petrify into dogma in 

 the course of centuries and are preserved intact until their 

 error is proved by overwhelming evidence to the contrary. 

 The history of geography forms no exception to this rule. 

 Like almost all other sciences it is firmly rooted in the 

 ground of ancient Greek speculations, and the opinions 

 on which it was based dominated the whole period of the 

 Middle Ages, partly through the medium of Arabic 

 learning ; and only a few choice spirits attempted to 

 develop it in any spirit of progress beyond the most 

 primitive conception. Just as Aristotle was the recognised 

 authority in natural science, so in geography was the re- 

 nowned physicist, astronomer and geographer, Claudius 

 Ptolemy. It is to him that we owe, perhaps not the 

 earliest, but certainly the most definite notion of an 

 extensive southern continent on our planet, with carto- 

 graphic representations of the union of south-eastern Asia 

 with Africa in such a manner that the Indian Ocean is 

 regarded as a closed inland sea like the Mediterranean. 



(6) 



