of Cosmas, who invented or worked out a theory
and scheme of the world, a "Christian topography," which required
nothing more than a complete disuse of human reason. His assurance was
equal to his science.

It may have been his voyage to India, or his monastic profession, or his
study of Scripture, or something unknown that made him take up the part
of a Christian Aristotle; in any case he felt himself called into the
field to support the cause of St. Augustine against infidelity, and to
refute the "anile fable" of the Antipodes. Cosmas referred men back to
Revelation on such matters, and his system was "demonstrated from
Scripture, concerning which a Christian is not allowed to doubt." Man by
himself could not understand the world, but in the Bible it was all
clear enough. And from the Bible this much was beyond dispute.

The universe is a flat parallelogram; and its length is exactly double
of its breadth. In the centre of the universe is our world surrounded by
the ocean, and by an outer world or ring where men lived before the
Flood. Noah and his Ark came over sea from this to the present earth.

To the north of our world is a great hill, like the later Moslem and
older Hindu "Cupola of the Earth," which perhaps was Cosmas' own
original. Round this the sun and moon revolve, making day and night as
they appear or disappear behind it.

The sky consists of four walls meeting in the "dome of heaven" over the
floor on which we live, and this sky is "glued" to the edges of the
outer world, the world of the Patriarchs.

But this heaven is also cut in two by the firmament, lying between our
atmosphere and that "New Heaven and New Earth wherein dwelleth
Righteousness"; and the floor of this upper world is covered by the
"waters that be above the firmament"; above this is Paradise, and below
the firmament live the angels, as "ministers" and "flaming fires" and
"servants of God to men."

The proofs of this are simple, mainly resting on some five texts from
the Old Testament and two passages of St. Paul.

First the Book of Genesis declared itself to be the "Book of the
Generation of the Heaven and the Earth"--that is, of everything in the
heavens, and the earth. But the "old wives' fable of the Antipodes"
would make the heaven surround and contain the earth, and God's word
would have to be changed "These are the generations of the sky." For the
same truth--the twofold and independent being of heaven and
earth--Cosmas qu