Our creeds, which have ever pretended to explain everything in the physical as well as in the moral order, have here endeavoured to come to the assistance of the weakness of the human mind. And as each creed asserts itself to be the best, to the exclusion of every other, men began to imagine for the earth a navel, and placed it where it was supposed pleasing to the divinity. The Greek priests dismissed a couple of eagles, one towards the west, the other towards the east; the place where these favourite birds of Jove, of the "Father of gods and men," encountered each other, was to be considered the "navel" of the earth. It chanced to be Delphos, whose oracle was the most esteemed in the ancient world; the sacerdotal caste accumulated there immense wealth. The Greek priests prudently refrained from dealing with the difficult problem of the earth's solid support. * * * * * The Hebrew pontiffs, however, were not so reserved. After having made Jerusalem the "navel of the world," they allowed for the earth itself seven solid columns as a foundation. The question of the Antipodes, in which the greatest intellects of antiquity believed,--Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle,--was thus pontifically judged and condemned. And Christians who preferred to follow the Judaical observance of external ceremonies to a true comprehension of the spirit of the Gospels, exaggerated the application of this sentence. * * * * * The dogmatic condemnation of the existence of the Antipodes long arrested man in his search for that fourth quarter of the world whose inhabitants should have their feet directed towards ours. It was one of the principal obstacles which Columbus was called upon to surmount in the realisation of his sublime idea. When cited before the Council of Salamanca,--composed of prelates and men of science,--he had to meet the revived objection of Lactantius, a Christian apologist of the third century:[39]--"Can there be anything more absurd than a belief in the existence of Antipodes, of inhabitants with their feet opposite to our feet, of people who walk with their feet in the air, and their heads on the ground?--that there is a part of the world where everything is inverted, where trees throw out their branches from top to bottom, while it rains, and hails, and snows, from bottom to top?"