Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/404

388 hail fall upward toward the earth?... But if you inquire from those who defend these marvelous fictions, why all things do not fall into that lower part of the heaven, they reply that such is the nature of things, that heavy bodies are borne toward the middle, like the spokes of a wheel; while light bodies, such as clouds, smoke, and fire, tend from the centre toward the heavens on all sides. Now, I am at loss what to say of those who, when they have once erred, steadily persevere in their folly, and defend one vain thing by another."

Augustine seems inclined to yield a little in regard to the rotundity of the earth, but he fights the idea that men exist on the other side of the earth, saying that "Scripture speaks of no such descendants of Adam."

But this did not avail to check the idea. What may be called the flank movement, as represented by Eusebius, had failed. The direct battle given by Lactantius, Augustine, and others, had failed. In the sixth century, therefore, the opponents of the new ideas built a great fortress and retired into that. It was well built and well braced. It was nothing less than a complete theory of the world, based upon the literal interpretation of texts of Scripture, and its author was Cosmas Indicopleustes.

According to Cosmas, the earth is a parallelogram, flat, and surrounded by four great seas. At the outer edges of these seas rise immense walls closing in the whole structure. These walls support the vault of the heavens, whose edges are cemented to the walls; walls and vault shut in the earth and all the heavenly bodies. The whole of this theologic, scientific fortress was built most carefully, and, as was then thought, most scripturally.

Starting with the expression, To ἄγιον κοσμικόν, applied in the ninth chapter of Hebrews to the tabernacle in the desert, he insists, with other interpreters of his time, that it gives a key to the whole construction of the world. The universe is, therefore, made on the plan of the Jewish Tabernacle—box-like and oblong.

Coming to details, he quotes those grand words of Isaiah, "It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, . . . that stretcheth out the heavens like a curtain, and spreadeth them out like a tent to dwell in," and the passage in Job, which speaks of the "pillars of heaven." He turns all that splendid and precious poetry into a prosaic statement, and gathers therefrom, as he thinks, treasures for science.

This vast box is then divided into two compartments, one above the other. In the first of these, men live and stars move; and it