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EARLIEST COSMOLOGIES
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PARADISE FOUND
12th edition in preparation
THE UNIVERSE AS PICTURED
IN

MILTON'S PARADISE LOST

'

r
\-L
An Illustrated Study for Personal and Class Use

By WILLIAM FAIRFIELD WARREN

Professor of Religions and Religion in Boston University

THE ABINGDON PRESS

NEW YORK CINCINNATI
 Copyright, 1915, by
WILLIAM FAIRFIELD WARREN

3BU
W
 TO
PROFESSOR E. CHARLTON BLACK,
DOCTOR OF LAWS (GLASGOW UNIVERSITY)
In proof of my high esteem for your character,
and of my appreciation of your eminent services as
an interpreter in the vast field of English Literature,
permit me, my beloved colleague, to inscribe to you
this brief and imperfect attempt to promote on the
part of the public, and especially among young
teachers not possessed of your equipment, a better
understanding of the poem which many have called
immortal, and of which William Ellery Channing
writes, that of all monuments of human genius it is
perhaps the noblest. W. F. W.
 CONTENTS
PACE
FOREWORD .............................................. 9
INTRODUCTION ..................................... 13
ILLUSTRATIVE DIAGRAMS:
1. The Universe of the Opening Scenes of the Poem .... 23
2. The Universe after the Creation of the Earth and its
Heavens ................ ............. 27
3. The Universe as Pictured by the Ancient Babylonians. 31
ESSENTIAL FEATURES OF MILTON'S UNIVERSE ............. 35
SUBORDINATE QUESTIONS MORE OR LESS COSMOGRAPHICAL 43
. .

(jLX Place of Satan's Second Interview with Sin and Death Jfi
2. The Bridge, or Causey, constructed by Sin and Death. 44
3. The Quadrifurcate River of Eden ..................
cjjj|>-
4. The Circumfluous Waters .........................
C4JT)
5. The Opening through the ten Spheres for the Passage
of Angels ................................... 50
-6. The Cosmographical Location of Milton's Garden of
Eden ....................................... (Jp
A PRIME REQUISITE IN STUDIES LIKE THE PRESENT ....... 65
APPENDIX. A SELECTION OP DIAGRAMS FOR COMPARATIVE
STUDY ..................................... 71
1. Milton's Universe as interpreted by Djavid Masson ... 73
2. Milton's Universe as interpreted by GeoFge'Jp. Himes 74
3. Milton's'Universe as interpreted by Homer B. Sprague 75
4. An Alternative Interpretation by Homer B. Sprague. . 76
5. Milton's Universe as interpreted by Thomas N. Orchard 77
6. Milton's Universe as repictured by Thomas N. Orchard 78
-
7. A Portion of Milton's Hell according to Himes ...... 79
INDEX OF NAMES. . . 80
 FOREWORD
ALTHOUGH Copernicus had finished his life-

work sixty-eight years before the birth of

Milton, the traditional geocentric conception
of the universe was the only one generally held
and taught at the latter date. Newton was
as yet unborn, Bacon's Novum Organbn yet
unwritten. Kepler, illustrious improver and
promoter of the Copernican doctrine, was still
engaged upon his astronomic problems; but
even he to his dying day followed tradition
so far as to believe in the existence of a solid
sphere, two German miles in thickness, in
which all the nonplanetary im
stars were

movably "fixed." Milton was twenty-five years

of age when Galileo was obliged to make upon
his knees his historic abjuration of doctrine
at Rome. Eight years after this our poet
was in Florence and visited Galileo, but, so
far as known, without making profession of
faith in the new heliocentric teaching. In
that generation the mediaeval
conception of
the world was far more familiar to the peoples
of Europe than any later one is to-day. And
it was wonderfully complete and satisfying to

the reason. In it the world- whole had a known

center, and this being the Earth, it was one
9
10 THE UNIVERSE AS PICTURED
whose centrality seemed ocularly demonstrated
daily and nightly by the geocentric movements
of the heavenly bodies. In this same con
ception the world-whole had also a known
circumference within which all beings had
their appropriate This completeness
places.
and harmony of cosmographic thought we
have lost. To-day no astronomer can tell
us what is the center, or what the circum
ference of the world in which we are living.
No wonder that Hegel openly deplored the
loss ofa cosmology so true to appearances, so
venerable in age, and so dignifying to Man
as the chief of all creatures.
In Paradise Lost the poet has prefixed to
"
each of the twelve books a so-called Argu
ment/' in which he briefly states in plain and
serviceable prose the contents of the ensuing
division of the poem. We can but wish he
had also prefixed to the entire work an equally
clear account of the universe as lay in his
it

forecasting thought and as it was to find ex

pression, here a little and there a little, in his
rhythmic pages. In twenty lines he could no
doubt have outlined his Heaven and Earth
and Hell with a clearness and completeness
now by the most painstaking
unattainable
interpreter. In the lack of such an authentic
presentment we can only gather up the cos
mographic allusions scattered through the
twelve books and combine them as harmoni-
 IN MILTON'S PARADISE LOST 11

ously as possible, remembering that they re

late to the space-world viewed at three distant

epochs:,f(T)) a time prior to the creation of

the present heavens and Earth; (gjj) a time
after the creation of the present heavens and .

Earth, but before the establishment of the

present order of unequal days and diverse
seasons; and (3) the time since the establish
ment of the present order.

Fortunately, the universe of Paradise Lost

is no novelty invented by the author for the
'purpose of heightening the charm of his epic.
It is the universe of his teachers and of his
time. Its motionless Earth and homocentric
heavens are essentially the same that we find
in Plato and Ptolemy, in Aquinas and Dante.
For this very reason its mastery is all the
more important and interesting to every person
as yet unacquainted with it. The study has
been deplorably neglected for more than a
century, but there are signs of improvement
in various quarters, and as an introduction
thereto the English language has no master
piece so admirably adapted as Paradise Lost.
In proportion as the following pages shall
assist younger readers to think Milton's thoughts
after him, and to gain a realization of the
beauty and glory of the world in which the
stately epic moves, in that proportion will
the desire and aim of the writer be fulfilled.
 INTRODUCTION
THE geocentric world-view of ancient and
mediaeval thought has been so completely super
seded by the Copernican, that beginners in
the study of Dante and Milton, if unaided
by instructors of rare qualification, become
simply bewildered in their efforts to reproduce
in imagination the localities and dramatic move
ments set before them in the masterpieces of
these authors. One of the most eminent and
experienced of English professors of literature,
the late David Masson, well says, "To every
edition of the Divina Commedia there ought
to be prefixed a diagram, however vague and
crude, of the cosmological scheme adopted in
the poem, or invented for it." In his opinion,
students of Milton equally need a diagram of
the Miltonic universe. Accordingly, he prepared
and published one with careful explanations of
Milton's cosmological terms and references and ;

his example has been followed by Himes,

Sprague, and Orchard. The striking lack of
agreement, however, between these diagrams
and explanations shows that if any one of
them is true to Milton's thought, all the others
must have misled the students to whom they
were taught, and must be still misleading as
13
 14 THE UNIVERSE AS PICTURED
many readers as rest in them. That they
may be conveniently compared with each other,
and with the text of the poem, five are repro
duced in an appendix to the present essay.
The first of the series, that of Professor
Masson, was the earliest in publication, and
it has met with more general approval than

any of the others. To the present writer,

however, each of the five seems defective in
more than one particular. The author of
each has assumed without warrant that both
Heaven and Hell must be given a definite
boundary and shape. In each both regions
,
are inclosed on every side. It is true that in

vj-T)r. Orchard's picture Heaven

is not roofed in,

but in his text he twice describes it as "a hemi-

t
^ sphere," and copies Masson's diagram as cor
rectly representing it. I cannot think this
to have been the poet's idea. Like Plato,
Milton thinks of Heaven as extending illimitably
above the starry sphere. As if to protest in
advance against any inclosing or shaping of
the heavenly world, he expressly jyarns_Jiis
,
readernot to attempt to_cpnceiyg of_it_ as in
I
any ^determinate form^ "square or round"
(ii._1048). In_jike^nanner, as Heaven is sum-
1
mitless, so_HlHs_bpttomless. true Its
in the exercise of his
poetic_license, he once
speaks of a ^bottom.," and _once_ _of_a_^lowest
bottom," but elsewiiere_and more scripturally ,

Andlor
 IN MILTON'S PARADISE LOST 15

this, one has given a profound reason. "Be

fore the creation of Hell and Earth," says
Chambers, following Masson, "Chaos occupied
the whole lower half of Infinity"; consequently,
as HelFs territory is simply the expropriated
undermost part of the original domain of

bounded and shut-in dungeQa,Jbut is_.in reality

1
dark unbottomed, infinite Abyss^ii, 405)
'the .

So" if should be represented in every picture

of Milton's cosmology.
Against diagram of Professor Himes
the
two further faults might be charged. First,
the panoplied angels falling from his Heaven-
gate could never have landed in a Hell so
far removed from the region directly beneath
Heaven; and, second, he places Hell's gates
in a perpendicular wall on a level with his

supposed floor of the region, while in the poem

these gates are "high in the fiery concave of
thejhorrid roof "(ii, 643; compare 635, and 437) .

Without further criticism of preceding inter

pretations, the effort will here be made to
present in ten clear and simple paragraphs
the essential features of Milton's universe.
One cannot hope to harmonize to a nicety
every detail, for the poet often studiously
is

vague, piling up incongruous terms in order

the better to suggest^ the_Jnexpressible, and ,

to get the psychological effects of ideas in

effable. Especially are diagram lines and angles
16 THE UNIVERSE AS PICTURED
and measurements and worse than
helpless
of beings and
helpless in the representation
movements essentially superspatial and super-
temporal. On the other hand, in the realm
of the strictly finite, no poet has ever given
us cleaner cut or more harmonious cosmical
conceptions. One is filled with admiration
when noting how preadjusted is environment
to action in every successive scene set before
us in the unfolding drama. Ages of patient
thought had prepared the stage. How effect

ively we may see in part in Plato. Wonder

ful is that cosmicwhole presented us in
Plato's Republic. Wonderful its eight geo
centric spheres revolving one within the other
and together producing the ravishing Music
of the Spheres. But in Milton's day, in view
{

of post-Platonic astronomical problems, two

additional spheres had been invented, the Crys
talline, and the Primum Mobile. The Crys
tallinewas believed to inclose the Earth-inclosing
eight, and the Primum Mobile to inclose the
thus resulting nine. So came to its completion
the so-called Alphonsine cosmology in which
Milton was instructed and which he taught
to his pupils. Its universe was one in which
his contemporaries were thoroughly at home.,
and one which comes to some degree of ex
pression in nearly every one of his poems.
Chaucer and Spenser and Shakespeare had lived
in it and beautified it; the Bible, as then in-
 IN MILTON'S PAKADISE LOST 17

terpreted, had made

it sacred. Earth was the
divinely appointed center of the creature-world,
the focus of vision for all intelligences. The
heavens declared the glory of God by revolving
around the home of man. Whenever the
souLof a dying saint was summoned to heaven,
availing itself of the polar passage described
in iii, 528, it mounted
the Earth-inclos
firstjto
ing lunar sphere,_then_lo the higher Earth-
inclosing ^sphere of Mercury, then to that of
Venus, then in its turn to that of the Sun,
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn; then on and up through
the sphere which bears the Fixed Stars; then
on and up through the Crystalline sphere;
then on and up through the Primum Mobile;
to and through a Celestial Gate which, im
movably fixed high above all ranges of perish
able creaturehood, gives entrance to the New
Jerusalem, the indescribably and unimaginably
glorious City of God (iii, 481fL). ,

Such the Universe which every new reader

is

of Paradise Lost must needs explore. 1 We

call it Milton's, but in every essential it ante
dates Milton by thousands of years. He is

simply the last of the long line of great masters

who wrought upon it. As he leaves it, it is
the consummate product of ages of constructive
scientific and poetic thinking. As such it

1
The oldest English setting forth of sixteenth-century cosmography
with which I am acquainted dates from 1549, and is found in the "Mono-
log Recreative" part of The Complaynte of Scotland, edited for the
Early English Texts Society by J. A. H. Murray. See pp. 47ff.
18 THE UNIVERSE AS PICTURED
should be studied, understood, appreciated;
then taught to each new generation as one
of the choicest treasures of the human race.
aid the reader in connecting and readily
To
understanding the offered theses two diagrams
are prefixed, neither of which has before been
published. Then to show how far the essen
tial features of Milton's Universe antedate the
age of Ptolemy, and even that of Plato, a
third diagram is added, in which the world-
view of the ancient Babylonians is presented.
This last was published in the Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society of London, in the year
1908, and respecting it Professor Sayce, of
Oxford University, wrote, "It entirely satisfies
all requirements of the Babylonian inscriptions,
which is not the case with any other that has

hitherto been brought forward."

In tracing the history of this remarkably
complete and harmonious world-view from age
to age, down to the time of Milton, the student
will find valuable aid in Dreyer's "Planetary

Systems from Thales to Kepler." But Dreyer

confines himself so strictly to European astron
omers and cosmologists that, in the lack of
recent English works of a more comprehensive
character, it has been necessary to refer in
the following pages with some frequency to
writings of my own in this field, namely, to
Earliest Cosmologies (New York, 1909), and
Paradise Found: The Cradle of the Human
 IN MILTON'S PARADISE LOST 19

Race at the North Pole (Boston, llth edition,

1898). This latter
temporarily out of print,
is

but a twelfth edition, with literature to date,

is in preparation. Meantime it is a gratifying
sign of growing interest in these studies that
in England Dr. Orchard's Astronomy of Milton's
Paradise Lost has lately reached its second
edition. No previous writer has presented
this branch of our subject in a form so scholarly
and attractive, and it is a pleasure to commend
it to all readers of our poet.
Kntbette Before tfje Creation of
tfje Cart!) anb 3ts
 HEAVEN
CULMINATING
IN THE MOUNT AND THRONE OF GOD

HELL, TERMINATING IN THE

BOTTOMLESS
P I T
 0fter tfjc Creation of
tfje Carti) anD 3ts
 HEAVEN
CULMINATING
IN THE MOUNT AND THRONE OF GOD

Chaos Chaos

See diagram of* the

Babylonian Universe
Chaos Chaos

HELL, TERMINATING IN THE

BOTTOMLESS
PIT

27
tfatoenfe as $ictwreb bp t&e
Ancient
 THE BABYLONIAN UNIVERSE
(The upper hemispheres cut away to show the interior)
The upright line is the polar axis of the heavens and earth. The two seven-staged pyramids repre-
t the earth, the upper being the abode of living men, the under one the abode of the dead. The sep
arating waters are the four seas. The seven inner homocentric globes are respectively the domains and
special abodes of Sin, Shamash, Nabu, Ishtar, Nergal, Marduk, and Ninib, each being a "world-ruler" in
his own planetary sphere. The outermost of the spheres, that of Anu and Ea, is the heaven of the fixed
In this world-view the spaces between the spheres widen rapidly at each remove from the Earth
so rapidly, in fact, that in a
diagram of this size they cannot be represented otherwise than as above.

31
THE ESSENTIAL FEATURES OF THE
UNIVERSE AS PICTURED IN
PARADISE LOST
 /

THE ESSENTIAL FEATURES OF THE

UNIVERSE AS PICTURED IN
PARADISE LOST
I. THE opening scenes of the poem bring
to view three spatially distinct regions: (1)
Heaven, the angelic world culminating in the
Mount of God; (2) Hell, or the bottomless

pit, a place prepared and held in readiness

for the rebel angels; (3) an interlying region
filled with Chaos, and of such enormous depth

as to require nine days for a falling body to

drop through it (vi. B71).
II. The limitless space in which the three
regions coexist is represented as having a
center and poles (i, 74); it must therefore be
conceived of as orbicular, or spherelike. It
will be found convenient to call it Milton's

Macrocosm, in order to distinguish it from

the later-created solar and stellar system which
Milton sometimes calls "the World." To this
Macrocosm he once seems to apply the term,
"the hollow universal Orb" (vii, 257).
In the poetic descriptions the region of
III.
Chaos is always immediately above Hell, and
immediately below Heaven; accordingly, viewed
from the center of the spherelike whole, Heaven
is ever at the zenith, and Hell at the nadir
35
36 THE UNIVERSE AS PICTURED
of the observer. Accordingly the polar axis
of the sphere is absolutely perpendicular in
position.
Heaven is separated from the realm of
IV.
Chaos by the ethereal sky (i, 45), or by the
Empyrean (vi, 833; x, 380). Being skylike,
the Empyrean is most naturally conceived of
as a hollow sphere, or world-shell, the lower
half of which in like manner separates Hell
from the realm of Chaos. Even Masson in
the first of his diagrams represented the Empy
rean, not as a hemispherical vault, but as a
complete sphere (Life of Milton, vol. vi, p. 529).
V. The upper or northern, and the lower
or southern, halves of the universe are counter-^
parts with various answering features; for; ex
ample, a Heaven-gate and a Hell-gate; a mount
of God and a mount of Satan; summitless light
and bottomless darkness. In the world-whole,
however, the direction "downward" is not
toward the mathematical center of the Earth
(as invariably in Dante's world), but always
toward a point in or below the lowest hell.
VI. The "gap" through which the rebel
angels were driven out of Heaven is identical
in position, and in function, with the elsewhere
often mentioned Heaven-gate (vi, 861-879; ii,

990-997).
VII. Corresponding in purpose to the
Heaven-gate above is the Hell-gate beneath,
each giving in opposite directions the only
 IN MILTON'S PARADISE LOST 37

available passage from the domain of Chaos

to the space outside. By reason of their posi
tions in the world-shell they can be passed
through only in an upward or downward
direction. The language of the poem implies
that the Hell-gate is plumb-linearly2 beneath
the Gate of Heaven (x. 88-90; v. 253-270;
vii. 131-135; ii. 884-889).

VIII. The new "world," created within the

ancient realm of Chaos in the "six days"
mentioned in Genesis, may conveniently be
styled The Cosm, to distinguish it from the
vaster Macrocosm which on every side incloses it.
As represented by the poet, it consists of the \

ten homocentric spheres of mediaeval astronomy !

with the "sedentary" or "steadfast" Earth as 1

their center .__(yii,_ 192ff.). In all likelihood ;

The Cosm is to be pictured in thought as '

homocentric The Macrocosm, for this

with
supposition is in harmony with the geocentric
theories of the universe maintained by the
ancients, and any other adjustment seems to
destroy the symmetry of the total system.
IX. In the thirteenth stanza of his Hymn
of the Nativity, Milton speaks of the "Nine
fold harmony" of the "Crystal Spheres," and
in Arcades, line 64, he mentions the "nine
infolded spheres." These expressions seem to

2 The reader
must pardon the unfamiliar adverb derived from the
plumb line, for no other term can express the sense with equal accuracy.
38 THE UNIVERSE AS PICTURED
imply that his newly created world lacked the
tenth of the Alphonsine world-shells, the so-
called Primum Mobile. On the other hand,
in one of his Latin poems, the De Idea Platonica,
line 17, he speaks of the "Tenfold heaven"

(Coeli decempljcis). Furthermore, in Paradise

Lost (iii, 483, and 562) he expressly refers
to the Primum Mobile (the "first," counting
from heaven, but the tenth counting from the
Earth). This apparent discrepancy as to the
number of the geocentricheavens is probably
to be explained on the theory that in Milton's
thought the music of the spheres was produced
by "the motion of the divinely attuned material
spheres, and that the tenth was soundless
because by nature immaterial. Other thinkers
before him had thus conceived of the outer
most sphere as purely kinetic, and incessantly
in action to maintain the revolutions of the
material harmony-producing nine.
X. The center of the new creation was the
Earth; which, in its original perfection, was a
"terrestrial heaven danced round by other
heavens" (ix, 103). The question whether
this central orb itself revolved Raphael leaves
unsettled (viii, Above it on every
15ff., 70f.).
side was the firmament, which was simply an

Expanse of liquid, pure,

Transparent, elemental air, diffused
In circuit to the uttermost convex
Of this great round (vii, 264).
 IN MILTON'S PARADISE LOST 39

Above this transparent elemental air on

every
side were waters, the so-called "waters above
7 '
the firmament. As these did not hide the
stars from the view of men, they must be
thought of as usually vaporized to the point
of invisibility, though ever ready for recon-
densation and for descent in the form of rain
or snow. Viewed from a distance, these super-
aerial waters, being a complete Earth-inclosing

hydrosphere, would be as present below the

Earth as above it, and in this sense the Earth
could be said to be
Built on circumfluous waters calm, in wide
Crystalline ocean (vii, 270).

The polar axis of the Earth was originally

perpendicular to the plane of the Zodiac. As
a consequence, all days were equal in length,
and
Spring
Perpetual smiled on Earth with vernant flowers (x, 678).

At each pole the low sun daily "rounded the

horizon/
7
instead of rising and setting, the
motion being from left to right at the northern
pole, but from right to left at the southern.
At both
Day unbenighted shone (1, 681).

After the fall of man, however, by divine

command, the angels "turned askance the
poles," and in consequence the path of the
sun was changed, days of unequal length pro-
40 THE UNIVERSE AS PICTURED
duced, and the alternations of summer and
winter. Tempests followed and all the dis
cords of the natural world. From line 692,
however, it would seem that view in the poet's
these were "slow" changes, and not effected
all at once. 3

3
This suggestion of Milton's as to the origin of unequal days and
diverse seasons in a displacement of the Earth's poles is no fancy orig
inating in his poetic mind. It is a remarkable fact that nearly every
great thinker in the earliest period of Greek philosophy taught that in
the world's beginning the axis of the Earth was perpendicular to the
sun's orbit, and that its present inclination is due to some prehistoric
change. Meager as are our extant fragments of the writings of Em-
pedocles, Leukippos, Anaxagoras, Diogenes of Apollonia, and Archelaus,
said fragments yield evidence that all of these pioneer astronomers held
this view. See Dreyer, History of Planetary Systems from Thales to
Kepler, 1906, pp. 26, 27, 28, 31, 33, 34. Dreyer also shows that the
sphericity of the Earth was as well known to the ancient astronomers
and their successors as it was to Columbus. Planetary Systems, pp. 20,
38, 39, 53, 55, 117, 158, 172, 192, 220, 223, 225, 227, 229, 239, 242, 243,
249, 250. For a diagram of the Earth as conceived of and described by
Columbus, see Paradise Found, p. 307. In our day few are aware that
he felt himself called upon to correct the error of those who maintained
that the Earth is really a sphere.
SUBORDINATE QUESTIONS MORE OR
LESS COSMOGRAPHICAL
 SUBORDINATE QUESTIONS MORE OR
LESS COSMOGRAPHICAL
To this point the recovery of the Miltonic
Universe has not been difficult. All state
ments in the ten numbered paragraphs seem
clearly set forth or implied in the poem. More
over, with the resulting picture of Milton's
world in mind, any reader of Paradise Lost
can follow the rapidly succeeding movements
of the Dramatis Persons celestial, terrestrial,
and infernal without losing at any time his
spatial bearings. There remain, however, a
few minor questions of a more or less cosmo-
graphical nature for whose solution the data
presented in the text of the poem seem in

adequate. To elicit fresh investigations a few

of thesemay here be mentioned.
1. THE LOCALITY OF SATAN'S SECOND INTER

VIEW WITH SIN AND DEATH. When we ask

where Satan issupposed to be at the time
of his second interview with Sin and Death
we encounter a peculiar textual difficulty. Just
at the moment of the meeting Satan is repre
sented as "now returned to Hell" (x, 346);
and as being "near the foot" of the upright
structure built by Sin and Death from Hell-
gate to the level reached by the golden Heaven-
43
44 THE UNIVERSE AS PICTURED
stair. His location, therefore, as at or near
Hell-gate, seems doubly indicated; (1) he has
returned from Earth to his own infernal abode;
and (2) he is at the "foot" of a viaduct which
rises from that abode to the summit of the ten
homocentric heavens. But, strangely enough,
some lines further on, as Satan is closing his
speech, he is evidently, not at the bottom,
but at the top of the bridge. On it he pro
poses to "descend" to Hell (1, 394); on it he
does "descend" (1, 414); furthermore, to reach
the terrestrial Paradise Sin and Death must
"descend" (1, 398); all three of them are "near
Heaven's door" (1, 389). Has the poet in
closing the scene forgotten where he began it?
That seems incredible. Have we evidence
here, then, of inadvertence on the part of
some one of the poet's numerous amanuenses?
This also seems incredible, for there is no one
word or clause, failure to catch which would
account for the discrepancy.
2. THE BRIDGE, OR CAUSEY, CONSTRUCTED
BY SIN AND DEATH. The viaduct built "with
petrific mace" from Hell through Chaos to
the realms of light has been differently located,
and differently shaped, by different interpreters.
Of the five diagrams in our Appendix but one,
Dr. Orchard's, represents it.
4
He starts the
4
This paragraph was written a few days before Doctor Orchard pub
lished his new diagram, the one in which, in form and in position, The
Bridge is represented as by Masson. To this our criticism does not
apply.
 IN MILTON'S PARADISE LOST 45

structure a point in Hell quite removed

at
from the ninefold Gate, and carries its head
in as straight a line as is well possible to the
foot of the Heaven-stair. Masson does not
picture it but tells us how it may be inserted
in his diagram. He says: "The bridge not only
followed the track which Satan had taken
across Chaos, but it terminated, in adamantine
fastenings, exactly at the spot ('the selfsame
place') on the bare outside shell or Primum
Mobile of the Cosmos where Satan had alighted
after histoilsome flight; i. e. on its upper
boss, near the orifice where the Cosmos was
suspended from the Empyrean. If the reader,
then, will take the diagram in the Introduction,
and draw with pen or pencil a curved line,
from the middle what is there the arched
of
roof of Hell, upwards on the left hand into
the angle made by the equatorial line and the
circumference of the little circle representing
the Cosmos, that line will mark the track of
the bridge built by Sin and Death. The some
what obscure five lines 320-324 will then be
perfectly intelligible; for it will then be seen
how 'in little space the confines met of Empy
rean Heaven, and of this World, and on the
left hand Hell with long reach interposed.'
But what are 'the three several ways' leading
'in sight to each of these three places'? The
bridge itself is one of them, leading to Hell;
the mystic stair, or golden passage of communi-
46 THE UNIVERSE AS PICTURED
cation, up from the orifice into the Empyrean,
described at iii, 501-522, is another; and the
downward shaft into the Cosmos from the
same orifice right to Earth, described in the
continuation of that passage (iii, 523-539), is
the third."
Here then, in place of Orchard's essentially

straight bridge, we have one curved from end

to end. Moreover, the two differ as to the
location of the foot of the structure, Orchard
erroneously carrying it far to the left of Hell-
gate. Stopford Brooke, in his Milton Primer,
page 87, agrees with Masson as to the location
of the foot, but carries its head only to "the
base" of Cosm.
the Apparently, he agrees
with Orchard, and differs from Masson, in
making the structure rectilinear. The parallel
ism of the Bridge to the Heaven-stair, in its
function, favors Brooke's interpretation, but the
reading of the text in its present state at x, 312ff.,
5
clearly bars it out.
3. THE QUADRIFURCATE RIVER OF EDEN,
AND THE QUADRIUNE RlVER OF HELL. In the
Biblical account of Eden, Gen. 2. 10, we read
of a Paradisaic stream, which was "parted"
and "became four" world-watering rivers. On
5
In The Dial, of Chicago, March 7, 1915, under the caption, "Did
Milton Nod?" I called attention to the textual difficulty in book ten,
and to its necessary bearing upon our conception of the Bridge, asking
at the same time for any suggestion that might be helpful. In response,
an Iowa correspondent printed in the same organ, issue of March 18, a
communication which I find difficult to understand, but to which I am
glad to refer any reader in search of further light.
 IN MILTON'S PARADISE LOST 47

the other hand, in Paradise Lost, ii, 575, we

read of four infernal rivers, which unite, and
become one, as they together disgorge their
baleful streams into a burning lake. 6 Does
Milton desire the reader to counterpose these
two pictures and so constitute a further in
verted parallelism between the Upper and the
Underworld?
Probably not. Had this been his wish, he
would naturally have made his Fountain by
the Tree of Life, ix, 73, one that sent four
streams to four opposing points of the com
pass. In iv, 433, he almost does this, yet not
quite. It starts many questions to discover,
outside of the book of Genesis, such a four-
faced Fountain; and to find it in most of the

great mythologies of antiquity. In not a few

it is regarded as the one headspring of all

the waters of the world. It clearly traceable

is

in the Rig Veda, in Homer's Iliad, in the

Puranas of India and Suttas of China. In
his Vorchristliche Unsterblichkeitslehre, vol. ii,

p. 6, Wolfgang Menzel affirms that the four

infernal rivers of Greek mythology are antipodal
counterparts to the four Paradise rivers of the
Upperworld. Dante teaches nearly the same
thing, for his one stream rising on the summit
of the terrestrial Paradise later feeds the four
rivers of Hell.

6
Professor Himes's interpretation of the relation of the four infernal
rivers to Lethe is given in our Appendix.
48 THE UNIVERSE AS PICTURED
On topic the interested reader may
this
find much curious and suggestive matter in
Paradise Found, particularly in the chapter on
"The Quadrifurcate River," pp. 250-261. See
also Earliest Cosmologies, pp. 74, 98, 116, 190,
195, 206.
4. THE CIRCUMFLUOUS WATERS. How Mil
ton intended us to picture the "circumfluous
waters in wide Crystalline ocean" (vii, 270),
is a problem not easy of solution. Dr. Orchard,
if I correctly understand him, describes them

as a "Jasper Sea," annular in shape, perpetually

in a horizontal motion around the northern

pole of the ninth sphere, close to the foot of

the Heaven-stair. So viewed, the waters are
a circular river without head-spring or em-
bouchment, like Lethe in Himes's diagram of
the Infernal Rivers. What purpose such a
river could there serve he does not explain,
and ithard to imagine any.
is Moreover,
the statement that the Cosm was built "on"
these circumfluous waters seems to bar out
such an interpretation. Is it not more likely
that Milton had in mind the "refluent Okeanos-
river" of the Greeks, "which Aristotle describes
as having itsorigin in the upper heavens,
descending thence in rain upon the earth,
Homer, and Euripides said,
feeding, as Hesiod,
allfountains and rivers, and every sea; then
branching out into the rivers of the Under
world, to be returned fire-purged and sublimated
 IN MILTON'S PARADISE LOST 49

to the upper heavens, there to recommence

its round"? (John O'Neill, "The Night of
the Gods," vol. ii, p. 866.) The Avestan
picture of the unitary water-circulation of the
universe as the Iranians conceived it presents
a most interesting parallel, as may be seen
in Paradise Found, pages 251-254. Verity, in
his edition of Milton,seems to make the ninth
sphere consist of water ("a vast expanse of
waters"), but says nothing as to the existence,
direction or purpose of any "flow." The
purpose of the so-conceived
water-envelope
above the eighth sphere is said by him to be
"to protect the Earth from the 'evil influences'
of Chaos; those 'fierce extremes' of temperature
which might penetrate through the outside
shell (the Primum Mobile), and 'distemper' the
whole fabric of the universe did not this wall
of water interpose (vii, 272-273)." Some of
the mediaeval writers assign the same regulative
function, especially a cooling one, to what are
called in the Bible "the waters above the
firmament." As in Paradise Lost, according to

Verity, the air extends all the way from the

Earth to the Crystalline sphere; his identifica
tion of the waters above the firmament with
a sphere of waters above the sphere of the
Fixed Stars involves no inconsistency. It

remains difficult, however, to understand how

the Primum Mobile could apply to the ninth
sphere the force necessary to give due rotary
50 THE UNIVERSE AS PICTURED
motion to and to the eight inferior spheres
it

in case the ninth was nothing more than a

vast bubblelike globe of water. In any case
Milton himself has not fully defined his thought
on this point.

Right here it is interesting to note that in

7
the "College Exercise/ lines 34-52, a poem
written in his nineteenth year, our poet recog
nizes with touches of rare beauty each of the
four subcelestial, concentric Elemental Spheres
of the ancient Greek tradition those of "Fire,
Air, Water and Earth' '; and all of them in
the orthodox order of their sequence, taking
"Heaven's Door" as one's starting point. Inas
much, however, as in line 41 he does not
sharply separate the aqueous stratum from the
aerial, it is difficult to say how far he would
have us separate his subaerial waters from the

superaerial, or waters above the firmament.

This obscurity, it must be added, is by no
means peculiar to Milton. The reader will
find a remarkable array of conflicting inter
.

pretations of this elusive term,

"firmament,"
set forth in Earliest Cosmologies, pp. 44, 45,
footnote.
5. THE AXIAL OPENING THROUGH THE TEN

SPHERES FOR THE PASSAGE OF THE ANGELS.

Some interpreters of Milton's universe have
missed the true conception of the geocentric
spheres by picturing at least nine of them as
nothing more than imaginary divisions of empty
 IN MILTON'S PARADISE LOST 51
7
space. They do not deny that the poet de
scribes the outermost as a substantial, space-
occupying world-shell, but they are fond of
calling all the others defined
"portions of
transpicuous space." A
sufficient refutation of
this view seems to me to be found in the "Pas

sage wide" mentioned in iii, 527ff. If the nine

spheres are not conceived of as entities which
occupy space, what call can there be for an
open passage to serve as a free highway be
tween Heaven and Earth? Furthermore, on
this interpretation, no passage could be called

"wide," for any passage, in any direction, on

any side of the Earth, would be as wide as
the whole interior diameter of the Primum
Mobile. As far up as the eighth the spheres
are, of course, transpicuous, since otherwise the
stars would never be visible to men, but in
the poet's thought they are ever present in
8
their proper places and motions. Milton's

doctrine_of the jtransmutability of_bodyLJnto

spirit and of sprritjLntcT body TV] 407ff.) sug

gests caution in applying to the spheres the

term ^'corporeal" or "material," but we are
as
surejywarranted in conceiving p^jthem
not less real and space-occupying than are the
ninefold gates of Hell, or the Archangel Michael

Verity, vol. i, p. 141. And yet on the preceding page, 140, he

7 gee

himself says of Milton's Earth, "It is encased by numerous shells,"

8
Dante does not hesitate to call even the ninth sphere a "corpo."
See the very valuable essay on "The Astronomy of Dante," in Edward
Moore's "Studies in Dante," Third Series, 1903, p. 15.
52 THE UNIVERSE AS PICTURED
and his jmnoplied host. Indeed, the concep
tion here criticized is absolutely unthinkable.
How can nine defined portions of the one
transpicuous space move one within the other
in the one unmoving transpicuous space that
includes them all? In vacuo there can be no
moving vacua.
The passage here provided for the angels
is a wide opening at the upper pole of each of
the ten geocentric globes (v. 269). Naturally,
it cannot be elsewhere, for the spheres are

revolving at different rates of speed, and any

perforation not near the axial line, even if
made, would instantly be closed by one or
another of the whirling heavens. At the pole,
and there only, can the opening remain open,
and so afford a permanent passageway for the
ascending and descending messengers of God
(see Orchard's diagram). Gazing down the
passage from the Heaven-gate, or the Heaven-
stair, eyes of angelic range would survey, not
successive an Earth which was
portions of

perpetually rolling over, but, on the contrary,

the complete perpetually present northern hemi
sphere of an Earth as stable as the throne
of the Almighty himself (v. 258ff.). Each
Earth-inclosing sphere was transpicuous, for
through them the stars adorning the eighth
were visible to men. 9 At the same time each
9
Aquinas, in a single sentence, expressly teaches us (1) the sub
stantiality of these heavens, (2) their transpicuousness, and (3) the
 IN MILTON'S PARADISE LOST 53

was conceived of as a substantial shell-like

creation, with strength to bear each its "officious
lamp" (ix, 104). The invisible lunar sphere
bore upon some part of its exterior surface
the visible moon; the invisible Mercurial sphere
the visible Mercury; the third sphere the
dazzling Sun; the fourth, lovely Venus, and
so on. Each of the inner eight had a distinctive
light and color; each a distinctive rate of
revolution; each a distinctive note in the
diapason of the resulting "ninefold harmony."
Small wonder that on his first view into such
a divinely and musical revolving
beautiful
kaleidoscope of almost infinite dimensions,
"wonder seized" the spirit malign (1. 552).
At this point the question may be raised
whether in flight precipitant down the
his

polar passage Satan alighted on the sun we

see, or upon the invisible Earth-inclosing "solar
sphere" at some other point. Probably ninety-
nine out of every hundred readers fail to re
member that the interview with Uriel could
have been elsewhere than on the visible sun.
Most likely it was so viewed in the poet's mind,
since the archangelic Regent of the sphere
would naturally be interviewed in the most
glorious of his palaces. Still, if one reads
lines 588-590 carefully, and strongly emphasizes
proof that these qualities cannot be mutually exclusive: "Sed guia corpus
firmamenti etsi sit solidum, est tamen diaphanum quod lumen non impedit,
ut patet per hoc quod lumen stellarum videmus non obstantibus mediis
caelis," etc. (Summa, I, Ixvi, 3).
54 THE UNIVERSE AS PICTURED
the word "lucent," it becomes plain that the
other interpretation is not ruled out. Here,
as everywhere in these studies, we cannot too
painstakingly watch the important distinction
between the Earth-inclosing sphere and the
"lamp" of service which it bears. (Compare
"Earliest Cosmologies," pp. 101, 118, 199.)
6. THE COSMOGRAPHICAL LOCATION OF MIL
TON'S PARADISE. For centuries the true site
of the biblical Garden of Eden was persistently
sought, not only by Jewish and Christian
theologians, but also by explorers and travelers
in various parts of the earth. Extraordinary
theories were proposed and defended. More
than two hundred years ago Bishop Huet
deplored the lack of certainty, and wrote:
"Some have placed it in the third heaven,
some in the fourth; some in the heaven of the
moon, in the moon itself, on a mountain near
the heaven, in the middle region of
lunar
the air, out of the earth, upon the earth, be
neath the earth, in a place that is hidden and
separated from man. It has been placed
under the northern pole, in Tartary, or in the
place now occupied by the Caspian Sea. Others
have placed it in the extreme south, in Terra
del Fuego; others in the Levant, or on the
shores of the Ganges, or in the island of Ceylon.
It has been placed
jn China,_or in an inacces
sible region [beyond the Black Jjjea) by others
in America, in Africa, and so on." The dis-
 IN MILTON'S PARADISE LOST 55

cussion has continued to the present

time,
and it interesting to learn from one of his
is

letters that Livingstone was sustained in his

tireless perambulations in the Dark Continent

by the firm belief that if he could once reach

the source of the Nile, he would stand
upon
the very site of the primeval Paradise.
Milton, like Dante, locates his Garden of
Eden with great definiteness. It is remarkable,
however, that the locality he indicates is
about as far removed from that indicated by
Dante as was anyway possible on the surface
of the same Earth. Milton's is at the summit
of an incomparably lofty mountain in Western
Asia, more exactly on the northernmost frontier
of Assyria (iv, 208ff.); Dante's, on the other

hand, on the summit of an incomparably lofty

mountain in the then unexplored South Pacific
Ocean, exactly antipodal to Jerusalem (Purg.
iv, 68; xxviii, 118-142). But these locations
are geographic merely, not cosmographic. In
other words, they leave us in each case un
certain as to the aboriginal, or even the later,
zenith of the Terrestrial Paradise in the thought
of the poet. As to Milton's conception, we' r U
learn from v, 258-260, that to Raphael,_ gazing KVUL \

down the polar passage throjigh the ten re- ji

volving spheres, the Garden was distinctly }'

visible; but as this was before man sinned and

^ 1

before the poles were turned askance, we can'

only infer that in the poet's mind the sacred
 56 THE UNIVEKSE AS PICTURED
site was at that time in the northern hemi
sphere, and its zenith north of the celestial
10
equator in the eighth sphere. Precisely at
the northern pole the Garden and its zenith
cannot then have been, for before Raphael's
interview with Adam was concluded the sun
was sinking toward its daily setting (vii, 98);
and, as we have
seen, Milton well understood
that in his primal adjustment of the spheres
there could be no sunsets or sunrisings at
the poles of the earth (x, 689).
But while our poet leaves so much of uncer
tainty with respect to the astronomic bearings
of his Paradise Mountain, he does not leave
us uninformed as to its destined translocation
into the deep sea. Among the things fore
shown by Michael to Adam is the coming of

the Universal Deluge, and here the Archangel

adds:
"Then shall this Mount
Of Paradise by might of waves be moved
Out of his place, pushed by the horned flood,
10
In reading Dante's grotesque suggestion in Inferno xxxiv, 121ff., one
wonders between which constellations of the eighth sphere the poet
imagined Lucifer to have passed in his headlong fall in line with Eden to
his fixed lodgment in the frozen center of the Earth. The poem gives
us no light upon the question, but it is some relief to know that its
author well understood the precession of the equinoxes and the neces
sary effect of the processional movement upon the zenith at every point
of the Earth's surface from century to century from the beginning to the
end of the thirty-six thousand years assigned by Ptolemy for the com
pletion of the Magnus Annus (Purg. xi, 108; also i, 24; xxxiv, 1-7, with
notes of Castrogiovanni). Even the Southern Cross, here associated
with pristine humanity, settles nothing, for the astronomers assure us
that ages ago, and still long after the beginnings of human history, the
Southern Cross was visible in Siberia.
 IN MILTON'S PARADISE LOST 57

With all his verdure spoiled, and trees adrift,

Down the great river to the op'ning gulf,
And there take root, an island salt and bare,
The haunt of seals, and ores, and sea-mews' clang;
To teach thee that God attributes to place
No sanctity, if none be thither brought
By men who there frequent, or therein dwell" (xi,
829).

What a subject for the pencil of a Gustave

Dore! I can recall no parallel picture in Homer,
Vergil, or Dante.
In Paradise Regained (iii. 251ff.), Milton
locates withsome definiteness the "exceeding
7 '

high mountain to which the devil conveyed

our Lord for his third and crowning tempta
tion; but whileits summit, like that of the

original Paradise Mountain, overlooked Assyria,

he nowhere tells us that the two mountains
are one and the same. On the contrary, he
distinguishes them (Paradise Lost, xi, 381) and
seems picture the former as something
to
almost, not quite, spectral and supernatural
if

(Paradise Regained, iv, 40-42). Of course he

could hardly do otherwise, if from its top
all the kingdoms of the Earth were to be

surveyed.
But while our poet has not located the
triumph of Jesus over the Tempter in the
which the Tempter triumphed
precise locality in
over Eve and Adam, the luring poetic fitness
of such a procedure is evident. And for cen
turies past the pilgrim to Jerusalem has been
58 THE UNIVERSE AS PICTURED
interested to find that local tradition at that
chief our holy places has identified the
of

place of Man's Fall with the place of Man's

Redemption by asserting that Primitive Eden
was where the Holy City now stands. Little
Gihon, he is told, is what now remains of the
original Paradise river of that name. For
further proof, the very tomb of Adam and
Eve pointed out to him. According to this
is

teaching, the Garden of Eden and the Garden

of Gethsemane consecrate the same soil and
are framed in the same horizon. As late as
1862 an Englishman, W. Henderson, published
in London a defense of this view, entitling
his tractate, "Identity of the Scenes of Man's
Creation, Fall, and Redemption" (see Paradise
Found, pp. 231-233). One can but wonder
what Dante would have said to such a point-
blank inversion of his cosmographical teaching!
In the immemorially ancient mythical geog
raphy of the East Aryans we have a picture
of the cradle of the human race which in several

respects surpasses that presented by Milton.

It includes one of the most striking of the
biblical features, the Quadrifurcate River. It
represents "Beautiful Meru" as the loftiest
mountain in the world, so high that its head
penetrates the lunar sphere, and there sup
ports the throne-city of Indra, one of the
gods. As it stands exactly at the north pole,
the sun, moon, and all the stars move ma-
 IN MILTON'S PARADISE LOST 59

jesticallyround it in horizontal orbits from

leftto right. In its immovable position it is
always directly under the northern pole of all
the higher heavens, even to that of Great
Brahma, the highest and most powerful of all
the gods. Here neither it, nor the sun, ever
really, or in appearance, goes under the Earth.
Its crest being a favorite resort of the gods,
the gardens and trees of life with which it
is adorned are more celestial than terrestrial.

From a higher-up heaven there descends upon

it a pure and life-giving stream which, descend
ing thence in four opposite directions as four
world-rivers, waters the whole Earth. Here
originated the first progenitors of the human
family, and from this polar center
they pro
ceeded to people the different varshas of the
habitable Earth. See diagram and exposition
in Paradise Found, pp. 148-154.
Exactly under Beautiful Meru, the Moun
tain of the Gods, stands at the south pole its
inverted counterpart, the Mountain of the
Demons. The one inexpressibly bright and
is

glorious, the other the abode of darkness and

of all that is evil. To pass from the upper
hemisphere to the lower one must pass the
River of Death. In the oldest traceable beliefs

of the ancient Iranians also we same

find the

conception of the figure of the Earth and

the same idea of the starting-point of the
earliest men (Paradise Found, p. 134). Indeed,
60 THE UNIVERSE AS PICTURED
according to Lenormant, the essential feature
of this central Earth with antipodal polar
mountains of incomparable magnitude, and of
antagonistic spiritual significance, dates back to
the earliest of all known Asiatic peoples, the
Sumero-Babylonians (Paradise Found, p. 123n).
The corresponding antipodality of Dante's Hell-
cavity and Mount for scaling the Heavens
leads one to wonder whether, even he had
not read of the old Asiatic conception of the
antipodal polar mountains, and whether he did
not deliberately invert the demonian one in
order to locate the embodying principle of
evil as far as possible beneath the soil on which
was committed the most diabolic of all his
toric, and of all conceivable deeds, the slaying
of the one Earth-tenant "who was born and
lived without sin" (Inf. xxxiv, 115). If such
11
was really the origin of Dante's cosmos in its
central feature, it reflects all the greater credit

11
A diagram of Dante's Earth and Hell is given in Paradise Found,
page 307. Others showing his Heavens, Earth and Hell, have been pub
lished by many scholars. The lack of agreement in these is sometimes
surprising. For example, in the one prefixed to Rossetti's "Shadow of
Dante," The Rose of the Blessed in the Heaven of Heavens is in the
zenith of Jerusalem, while in the Figura Universale designed by Duke
Caetani di Sermoneta, and reproduced in Dinsmore's "Aids to the
Study of Dante," the same Rose is placed at the opposite pole of the
Empyrean, and thus at a distance equal to the diameter of the total
universe. For comparative study, see diagrams in "Studies in Dante,"
by Edward Moore, Third Series, Oxford, 1903; "Dante," by Edward G.
Gardner, London, 1900; Paget Toynbee's "Dictionary of Dante," Ox
ford, 1898; "The Divine Comedy of Dante. Translated into English
Verse, by John A. Wilstach," Boston, 1888; "Dante's Divine Comedy."
A commentary by Denton J. Snider, 2 vols., 1893, and others.
 IN MILTON'S PARADISE LOST 61

upon his genius; for by this felicitous recon

struction of the Earth of the ancients he at
once and forever delocalized the Divine Pres
ence, and reduced to a vanishing point in
space and power the Malign Spirit which in
allpreceding ages had shadowed the thought
and the lives of men.
 A PRIME REQUISITE IN STUDIES
LIKE THE PRESENT
i
 A PRIME REQUISITE IN STUDIES
LIKE THE PRESENT
"All outward vision yields to that within,
Whereof nor creed nor canon holds the key."

Would one gain a correct view of the uni

verse as pictured in any literary masterpiece
the first requisite is a willingness, or, rather,
an eager readiness, to repicture
thought it in

according to the data supplied by the author.

Many fail to attain the desired end because
they fail to exercise their imagination upon
the problem. Especially do they fail when
they neglect to think out the implications of
a suggested cosmical feature or adjustment that
is unfamiliar. When Milton suggests that be
fore the fall of man the Earth's axis was not
inclined as now, but was perpendicular to the
plane of the sun's orbit, the reader should at
once imagine himself on such an Earth and
proceed to inquire into the extent of its un-
likeness to the Earth we know. A moment's
careful thought will, of course, convince him
that at both poles of such an upright sphere j

the sun would always be visible on the horizon,

and that in the lower latitudes all days and

nights would be equal. Of course, too, there

65
66 THE UNIVERSE AS PICTUEED
could be no alternation of summer's heat and
winter's cold. Milton takes pains to tell us
this much; but if we take time to think through
the implications of the suggested cosmical
adjustment more fully, we quickly make fur
ther discoveries. We find that owing to the
refraction of the sunbeams by the atmosphere
the lighted side of the supposed Earth would
always be several degrees more than half of
the total surface, and the unlighted side several
degrees less than half. Accordingly, the sun
would always be visible, not merely at the
poles, but also several degrees beyond each
pole. As a consequence, there would be at
each pole a considerable area where night
and its stars could never come. Stranger yet,
we would find that if in one of these illuminated
circumpolar areas two astronomers, A and B,
were stationed two miles apart, with the pole
exactly between them, and were to make a
solar observation at the same instant, A dating
his May 31, 11 P. M., and B his June 1, 11 A. M.,
the two dates would be equally correct. Surely,
discoveries like these amply repay the slight
effort ofthought needed for their making.
Myopic interpreters of the Odyssey, pos
sessed of no imagination, have for centuries
tried to find Homer's world within the narrow
limits of Hellas and the Levant. So doing,
they have not only done violence to a mul
titude of passages in detail, but have even
 IN MILTON'S PARADISE LOST 67

missed the author's prime claim

upon the
attention of moderns. Worse than
that, being
instructors of the young, they have been
blind leaders of the blind in all that
they have
written touching the figure of Homer's
Earth,
and the Earth of Homer's contemporaries. 12
The Maha-Bharata is the great epic of
India, one of the greatest in the world. Its
culminating scene, the ascension of Yudhish-
thira into the heaven of Indra, is at the summit
of Mount Meru, the incomparably lofty and
glorious Paradise Mount at the north pole.
But for this reason no reader who has not
exercised his imagination upon the heaven of
Indra, and upon the mythical relations of
this Mount
to the Varshas of the Earth on
the one hand, and to the heavens above Indra's
on the other, can possibly appreciate the sig
nificance of the time and place of this ascension,
'

and the congruence of the epic incidents and

speeches leading up thereto.
But Milton and the other epic-writers are
not the only persons to make upon the reader
demands of this kind. The scientist, not
less than the student of literature has need of
a constructive space-measuring and space-filling
imagination. An ancient Greek cosmologist
tells us that at the beginning of the world one

12 For ample justification of the above statement, see Paradise Found,

pp. 117-122, 328-361, 467-487. Also "Earliest Cosmologies," pp. 70-78,
157-191.
68 THE UNIVERSE AS PICTURED
terrestrialday was equal to ten of our present
months. Had he said twelve months instead
of ten, he would have simplified his challenge
to our thought, and perhaps made it more
effective. In that case he would at once have
started us upon the inquiry as to the effects
of such a Year-day upon our sunrises and
sunsets. And here, again, but little thought
would be required to show us that to an ob
server at the pole under the supposed con
ditions, the inclination of the Earth's axis
remaining as at
present, would no sunrise
longer be in a spiral, as now, but would be in
an apparently straight line directly up from
the horizon toward the zenith; only so slow
that at the end of three months the sun would
have attained an altitude of but twenty-three
and a half degrees. Then portentous sign-
it would stop, and for the next three months

slowly sink along the line of its rising, and

then disappear, to rise and set in the same
deliberate and apparently futile manner at
the opposite pole. 13
Mental exercises of the kind just indulged
in are not to be lightly esteemed and dismissed
as merely entertaining; they often prove of
highest value. The great astronomers of his
tory would never have made the advances with
which they have enriched the world had they
13
For other anomalous experiences possible only in the circumpolar
regions, see Earliest Cosmologies, pp. 124ff.
 IN MILTON'S PARADISE LOST 69

not possessed and cultivated this

faculty of
seeing beyond the immediately visible, and of
making themselves thoroughly at home in
conceived-of environments utterly unfamiliar.
And it may be added that this Greek reminder
of the relativity of our most common chrono-
metric units, the day and the year, prepares
one in a unique manner for a readier grasp
of many a detail in the teachings of the an
cients relative to the World Periods, or Ages,
into which Creation's lifetime was by them
divided, and in which, in one ethnic form or
another, in one sseculum or another, about
every process in nature known to us as nor
mal is held to be precisely the reverse of what
once was, or in some coming age will be the
normal. For the Babylonian, Buddhist, Egyp
tian, Greek and Roman, Jewish, Mohammedan,
and Zoroastrian ideas on these mundane
recurrences, see "Encyclopaedia of Religion and
Ethics," vol. i, pp. 183-290. Here the time-
world and the space-world are curiously com
bined, and the history of human thought
respecting them illustrated in a manner which
neither science alone, nor literature alone,
could equal. And, strange to say, the latest
cosmic speculations of our astronomers and
physicists, with their alternating world-periods
of Evolution and Dissolution, seem little more
than revised editions of prehistoric teachings
touching the seonian life of the world.
APPENDIX
(See Reverse)
 The Diagrams here given first appeared in
the following publications, to wit:
No. I in the Bibliographical, Biographical, and Expository Introduc
tion to Masson's three-volumed Library edition of Milton's Poetical
Works, London, 1874.
Nos. II and VII in Study of Paradise Lost, by Professor John Andrew
Himes, Philadelphia, 1878.
Nos. Ill and IV in Milton's Paradise Lost, Books First and Second,
with Introduction, Notes, and Diagrams. By Homer B. Sprague, Ph.D.,
Boston, 1879.
No. V in The Astronomy of Milton's Paradise Lost, by Thomas N.
Orchard, M.D., 2d edition, London, 1913.
Masson reprinted his with a slightly modified text in his Life of John
Milton, Vol. VI, pp. 518-557.
Himes reprinted his in the slightly modified form given at the bottom
of this page, in an edition of Paradise Lost issued by him in the year
1898. It is here reproduced with the courteous consent of the author
and by arrangement with The American Book Company, his publishers.
Orchard's modification of No. V was given to the public in April,
1915, and is here reproduced by permission.

All of the above works have rendered valuable service, and may still
be used with profit by students and teachers.

A
HIMES'S KEVISED DIAGRAM OF MILTON*8 tTNIVEKSB

72
I. MILTON'S UNIVERSE AS INTERPRE
TED BY DAVID MASSON

HEAVEN
OR
THEEMPYHEAM

WAIL & FLOOR

/THE WORLO\
CHAOS. f CHAOS.
.jfcrtfcj

CHAOS.

73
 GQ
H
s
H-
1

W
W
w
r
~c

P
02
III. MILTON'S UNIVERSE AS INTER
PRETED BY HOMER B. SPRAGUE

VERTICAL SECTION,
our
Showing (conjecturally) Milton's cosmography, the Empyreal Heavens,
Starry Universe, Hell, and Chaoa.

75
IV. AN ALTERNATIVE INTERPRETA
TION BY HOMER B. SPRAGUE

VERTICAL SECTION
(Sprague thinks this "perhaps more satisfactory" than the preceding.)

76
V. MILTON'S UNIVERSE AS INTERPRETED
BY THOMAS N. ORCHARD
Diagram as published in 1913.

OR THE EMPYREAN
VI. MILTON'S UNIVERSE AS INTER
PRETED BY THOMAS N. ORCHARD
Diagram as modified in 1915.

rW.it ''< ?o^ f V-\\*'Y. V-V^ X

VII."THIRD CIRCLE" OF MILTON'S
HELL, ACCORDING TO HIKES
NORTH.

SOUTH.

79
 INDEX OF NAMES
Anaxagoras, 40 Lenonnant, F., 60
Anu, 31 Leukippos, 40
Archelaus, 40 Livingstone, 55

Bacon, 9 Marduk, 31
Brahma, 59 Masson, 13, et passim
Brooke, Stopford, 46 Menzel, W., 47
Caetani di Sermoneta, 60
Moore, E., 60
Murray, J. A. H., 17
Castrogiovanni, 56
Chambers, 15 Nabu, 31
Channing, 5 Nergal, 31
Chaucer, 16 Ninib, 31
Columbus, 40
Copernicus, 9 O'Neill, John, 49
Orchard, Thomas N. , 13, et passim
Dante, 11, 36, 55, 56, 60
Dinsmore, 60 Plato, 11, 14, 16, 18
Diogenes of Apollonia, 40 Ptolemy, 11, 18, 56
Dore, G., 57
Dreyer, J. L. E., 18, 40 Rossetti, 60

Ea, 31 Sayce, 18
Empedocles, 40 Shakespeare, 16
Shamash, 31
Galileo, 9
Sin, 31
Gardner, E. G., 60
Snider, D. J., 60
Hegel, 10 Spenser, Edmund, 16
Henderson, 58 Sprague, H. B., 13, et passim
Himes, 13, et passim
Homer, 66, 67 Toynbee, Paget, 60
Huet, Bishop, 54
Verity, 51
Indra, 58, 67
Ishtar, 31 Wilstach, J. A., 60

Kepler, 9 Yudhishthira, 67

G
PR Warren, William Fairfield
3562 The universe as pictured
W38 in Milton's Paradise lost

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