9. _Popular Opinions._--That, even in the best intellects, something was wanting to fit them for scientific progress and discovery, is obvious from the fact that science was so long absolutely stationary. And I have endeavored to show that one part of this deficiency was the want of the requisite clearness and vigor of the fundamental scientific ideas. If these were wanting, even in the most powerful and most cultivated minds, we may easily conceive that still greater confusion and obscurity prevailed in the common class of mankind. They actually adopted the belief, however crude and inconsistent, that the form of the earth and heavens really is what at any place it appears to be; that the earth is flat, and the waters of the sky sustained above a material floor, through which in showers they descend. Yet the true doctrines of {200} astronomy appear to have had some popular circulation. For instance, a French poem of the time of Edward the Second, called _Ymage du Monde_, contains a metrical account of the earth and heavens, according to the Ptolemaic views; and in a manuscript of this poem, preserved in the library of the University of Cambridge, there are representations, in accordance with the text, of a spherical earth, with men standing upright upon it on every side; and by way of illustrating the tendency of all things to the centre, perforations of the earth, entirely through its mass, are described and depicted; and figures are exhibited dropping balls down each of these holes, so as to meet in the interior. And, as bearing upon the perplexity which attends the motions of _up_ and _down_, when applied to the globular earth, and the change of the direction of gravity which would occur in passing the centre, the readers of Dante will recollect the extraordinary manner in which the poet and his guide emerge from the bottom of the abyss; and the explanation which Virgil imparts to him of what he there sees. After they have crept through the aperture in which Lucifer is placed, the poet says, "Io levai gli occhi e credetti vedere Lucifero com' io l' avea lasciato, E vidile le gambe in su tenere." . . . . . "Questi come è fitto Si sottasopra!" . . . . . "Quando mi volsi, tu passast' il punto Al qual si traggon d' ogni parte i pesi." _Inferno_, xxxiv. . . . . . "I raised mine eyes, Believing that I Lucifer should see Where he was lately left, but saw him now With legs held upward." . . . . . "How standeth he in posture thus reversed?" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "Thou wast on the other side so long as I Descended; when I turned, thou didst o'erpass That point to which from every part is dragged All heavy substance." CARY.