The Week 47 



With respect to the extent to which the Copernican or 

 Pythagorean system was received about the time of our era, 

 it will suffice to refer to St. Augustin (Be Givitate Dei, 

 lib. 16, ch. 9, vol. vii. Paris 1685) and Lactantius (Institu- 

 tiones Divince, lib. 3, ch. 24, vol. i. Deux Ponts 1786), 

 who both found the doctrine so prevalent as to require their 

 special and too successful opposition and condemnation.* 



I believe that M. Bailly,-}- the historian of astronomy, is 

 the author of the specific hypothesis of an antediluvian 

 highly civilised people, who, as he says, " brought the 

 sciences to perfection ; a people who in the great enterprise 

 of discovering the exact measurement of the earth, dwelt 

 under the 49th degree of latitude." He is often quoted 

 without specific references, and his works in our Public 

 Library are without that indispensable feature in the eyes of 

 inquirers — a good index. The cycles were special subjects of 

 investigation with Bailly. He held that the week was 

 certainly antediluvian, concluding that it was impossible that 

 the seven days composing it could have been dedicated to the 

 same planets in Egypt, India, and Chaldsea, in identical order 

 in these and in many other places beside, unless it had been 

 derived from some older common source. As regards the 

 prehistoric high civilisation his position seems impregnable. 

 But his theory that it was destroyed or scattered by the 

 traditionary flood seems irreconcileable with, facts. In the 

 first place the date assigned to Noah's flood, 1655 B.C., is 

 not nearly so old as the Chinese and the Brahminical eras, 

 which also imply a much older separate civilisation ; and 

 as Bailly remarks, they evidently exhibit the debris rather 

 than the elements of science. But if the careful labours of 

 Piazzi Smyth at the Great Pyramid have not been altogether 

 thrown away and misrepresented too, the construction of 

 that most ancient of monuments alone bears ample and 

 irrefragable testimony to the existence — when it was de- 

 signed — of astronomical and mathematical science, J far 

 excelling any which obtained for thousands of subsequent 



* See Patrice Larroque's Ex amen Critique des Doctrines de la Religion 

 ■Chretienne, 4th ed. Paris, 1870. Vol. ii. p. 68. See also Supernatural 

 Religion, p. 87, Australian Edition. 



f Maire de Paris, Garde honoraire des tableaux du Eoi. L'un des 

 quarante de l'Academie Eoyal des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, de celle des 

 Sciences, et de l'lnstitut de Bologne, des Academies de Stockholm, de 

 Harlem et de Padoue, et de la Societe des Antiquit6s de Cassel. 



| See Plates I., II., and III.,, pp. 27 and 28. I take Professor Smyth's 

 best attested facts, but do not accept his theories. 



