4 SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE 
The speculations of the Pythagorean philosophers were 
not restrained by trammels of fact or experience, and rely- 
ing on general principles they contemplated the probability 
of the Earth being a sphere because the sphere was the 
most perfect form, and the abode of Man the perfection of 
creation ought also to be perfect of its kind. In this con- 
ception of ideal perfection and symmetry we find the first 
principle of geographical theory ; Herodotus himself had 
made large use of it in tracing out the course of the rivers 
of Africa by comparison with those of Europe. If the 
Earth were spherical the long narrow belt of the Habitable 
World could occupy only a small portion of its surface. 
Was the Ocean River to be extended into a huge continu- 
ous sheet enveloping all the rest? The idea was con- 
trary to Greek reason. Symmetry demanded other 
worlds breaking up the dreary voids of ocean on which 
the mind could not otherwise dwell in comfort. If the 
new form of the Earth could be entertained by reasonable 
people there was no reason why there should not be an- 
other Habitable World under the Antarctic pole of the 
heavens to balance that which lay under the Arctic pole. 
So with the possibility of a spherical Earth the Antarctic 
problem had its birth. 
It is a far cry from a poetical fancy to an established 
fact. Many minds could entertain the fancy, however 
novel it might be, but only one or two in all the ages of 
human history could test the fancy as to whether it was 
fact or not. Aristotle, the intellectual giant who founded 
so much of modern science, demonstrated the truth of 
the spherical form of the Earth and some of his proofs 
enunciated three and a half centuries before the begin- 
ning of our era still hold their place in the school-books 
of to-day. According to Aristotle the Earth was a sphere 
