THE ORIGIN OF THE IDEA 3 
points into groups or constellations they named the most 
conspicuous of these which never set Arctos — the Bear — • 
and the point round which it, in common with the rest of 
the heavenly host, appeared to turn was called the Arctic 
pole. The natural antithesis of an antarctic pole of the 
heavens, that is, a fixed point opposite the arctic , must 
have occurred to many minds, for it was easy in imagi- 
nation to complete the sphere of the celestial vault, traced 
out in part by the unseen portion of the circuit of the 
stars, but the flat cake of the habitable world stretched 
between, separating the domain of light and possible 
knowledge from that of darkness and the unknowable. 
The dark and gloomy space under the Earth traversed 
only by the souls of the dead on their way to Hades, was 
known as Erebus , a place of terror, used ages later by 
Shakespeare as a fit metaphor for the man that had no 
music in his soul. 
We cannot attempt here to discuss all the modern views 
as to the growth and decay of the ancient theories to 
which we must refer, but from the immense literature 
which has flourished upon the resulting soil we will at- 
tempt to show how the mind of all ages has exercised 
itself upon this particular problem. The narrative is not 
critically exact, for it claims only to afford a basis on 
which the efforts of modern explorers may be seen in 
their relation to the gradual unfolding of human knowl- 
edge regarding the Earth. 
Herodotus made merry over the absurdity of the round 
disc of the habitable Earth put forth in the descriptions of 
Hecataeus. As a traveller and a lover of truth he knew 
that travellers had been able to get farther from west to 
east than from north to south about the Mediterranean as 
a centre, and he was content with this knowledge. 
