We may close this account of the relations of man with his geographical environment with a few words about a strangely fatalistic theory which prevailed among certain thinkers and in particular among the mystics. It was a theory that civilization flows from the East to the West and that when it reaches the uttermost limits of the West the human race will meet its doom and extinction. Severian of Gabala had said in the fourth century:[1067] “God looked into the future and set the first man in that place [Paradise, in the East] in order to cause him to understand that, just as the light of heaven moves toward the west, so the human race hastens towards death; but that it is just as reasonable to expect a future resurrection from death as it is to expect that the stars will again rise in the east.” This idea appears in the writings of Hugh of St. Victor, who states in the _De arca Noë morali_[1068] that the order of places and the order of time run in series; that whatever happened in the beginning of time happened in the Orient and that henceforth the course of events has gradually been moving westward, until now it has reached the end of the earth and we must face the fact that we are approaching the end of the ages (_saeculi_). Shortly after the Deluge the most important kingdoms and the capitol of the world were in the East, in the lands of the Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Medes; then the supreme power passed to the Greeks; and finally, towards the end of the ages, to the Romans who dwell on the confines of the world. In the _De arca Noë mystica_ the front of the ark is said to face the east and the rear the west “in order that the position of places shall correspond with the order of time and the end of the world shall be at the end of the centuries.”[1069] The ark is here supposed to represent a map of the world, and the segment of the circle of the _orbis terrarum_ cut by the ark and facing the east is the location of Paradise; the segment facing the west will be the place of universal resurrection. Ideas very similar to this are also found in the _De vanitate mundi_ of Hugh of St. Victor.[1070]