Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/180

 STEABO. BOOK ii. rise and set, and attain the meridian, but with- how this takes place. Such knowledge could Ibject he has in view, any more than to know the country he chances to be in may be under the same latitude as his own or not. Even should he bestow a slight attention to the subject, on all mathematical points he will adopt the opinions of the place ; and every country has certain mistaken views of these matters. But it is not for any particular nation, nor for the man of the world who cares nothing for abstract mathematics, still less is it for the reaper or ditcher, that the geographer labours ; but it is for him who is convinced that the earth is such as mathematicians declare it to be, and who admits every other fact resulting from this hypothesis. He requests that those who approach him shall have already settled this in their minds as a fact, that they may be able to lend their whole attention to other points. He will advance nothing which is not a consequence of these primary facts ; therefore those who hear him, if they have a knowledge of mathematics, will readily be able to turn his instructions to account ; for those who are destitute of this information he does not pretend to expound Geography. 2. Those^ffiJiQ write ,jon__the science^of Geography should trust entirely for the arrangement of the subject they^aTS engagecTon to the geometersTwho have measured the whole earth; they in thejr.jLurn to astrojiomersT~and these again to ^natural philosophers. Now natural philosophy iTpneoT the The "perfect sciences" they define in^onno external_Jiyj3othesi s, have the^^>rigi5^and the ^ _ evidence of^their propositions^ in themselves^ Here are a fe^Tof fhe faHifestablished by natural philosophers. 2 The^eurth arid heavens arespheroidal. The tendency of all bodies havingweight, is to a centre. Further, the earth being spheroidal, and having the same 1 fi Se QvffiKi} apiTf) rig. We learn from the work entitled De Placitis Philosophorum, commonly attributed to Plutarch, that the Stoics digni- fied with the name of dperou, the three sciences of Physics, Ethics, and Logic, QvaiKr), 'H0uc?}, Aoyiic/}. The exact meaning of dper?) in these instances it is impossible to give, and Strabo's own explanation is perhaps the best that can be had ; we have here rendered it, " perfect science," for want of a better phrase. 2 <&VfflKOt.