The Sleepwalkers Read Free Page B

universe is no longer a closed box, but infinite in extension and duration. The raw material is none of the familiar forms of matter, but a substance without definite properties except for being indestructible and everlasting. Out of this stuff all things are developed, and into it they return; before this our world, infinite multitudes of other universes have already existed, and been dissolved again into the amorphous mass. The earth is a cylindrical column, surrounded by air; it floats upright in the centre of the universe without support or anything to stand on, yet it does not fall because, being in the centre, it has no preferred direction towards which to lean; if it did, this would disturb the symmetry and balance of the whole. The spherical heavens enclose the atmosphere "like the bark of a tree", and there are several layers of this enclosure to accommodate the various stellar objects. But these are not what they seem, and are not "objects" at all. The sun is merely a hole in the rim of a huge wheel. The rim is filled with fire, and as it turns round the earth, so does the hole in it – a puncture in a gigantic tyre filled with flames. For the moon we are given a similar explanation; its phases are due to recurrent partial stoppages of the puncture, and so are the eclipses. The stars are pin-holes in a dark fabric through which we glimpse the cosmic fire filling the space between two layers of "bark".
    It is not easy to see how the whole thing works, but it is the first approach to a mechanical model of the universe. The boat of the sun god is replaced by the wheels of a clockwork. Yet the machinery looks as if it had been dreamed up by a surrealist painter; the punctured fire-wheels are certainly closer to Picasso than to Newton. As we move along past other cosmologies, we shall get this impression over and again.
    The system of Anaximenes, who was an associate of Anaximander, is less inspired; but he seems to have been the originator of the important idea that the stars are attached "like nails" to a transparent sphere of crystalline material, which turns round the earth "like a hat round the head". It sounded so plausible and convincing, that the crystal spheres were to dominate cosmology until the beginning of modern times.
    The Ionian philosophers' home was Miletos in Asia Minor; but there existed rival schools in the Greek towns of Southern Italy, and rival theories within each school. The founder of the Eleatic school, Xenophanes of Kolophon, is a sceptic who wrote poetry to the age of ninety-two, and sounds as if he had served as a model for the author of Ecclesiastes:
    "From earth are all things and to earth all things return. From earth and water come all of us... No man hath certainly known, nor shall certainly know, that which he saith about the gods and about all things; for, be that which he saith ever so perfect, yet does he not know it; all things are matters of opinion... Men imagine gods to be born, and to have clothes and voices and shapes like theirs... Yea, the gods of the Ethiopians are black and flat-nosed, the gods of the Thracians are red-haired and blue-eyed... Yea, if oxen and horses and lions had hands, and could shape with their hands images as men do, horses would fashion their gods as horses, and oxen as oxen... Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all things that are a shame and a disgrace among men, theft, adultery, deceit, and other lawless acts..."
    As
against this:
    "There is one God ... neither in shape nor thought like unto mortals... He abideth ever in the same place motionless ... and without effort swayeth all things by his force of mind..." 5
    The Ionians were optimistic, heathenly materialists; Xenophanes was a pantheist of a sorrowful brand, to whom change was an illusion, and effort vanity. His cosmology reflects his philosophical temper; it is radically different from the Ionians'. His earth is not a floating disc, or column, but is "rooted in the infinite". The