CHAPTER I THE WORLD FABRIC

‘Tales of ages long forgotten Now the legends of creation Once familiar to the children.’—KALEVALA.

IF we erase from the mind absolutely all that science has laboriously spied out of the actual facts of the material universe, and ask ourselves what would have been the thoughts by which man attempted at first to explain and image forth the natural order, we may put ourselves in sympathy with notions that at first seem absurd. We may see that the progress of science is merely the framing and destruction one by one of a series of hypotheses, and that the early cosmogonies are one in kind with the widest generalisations of science—from certain appearances to frame a theory of explanation, from phenomena to generalise law.

In thus putting ourselves back into the early world, not only must we remember the limitations to the knowledge of phenomena, but also the inadequate means of expression. Not only must we ask ourselves what primitive man—to use the phrase for what it is worth, not letting it betray us—can have observed: we must ask at the same time; what images can he have had before him to which he might liken the wonder of the sky and the might of the sea? Or rather, these are two phases of the same question by which we may realise the early systems, for in these things at least concepts were immediately linked with words, words which were descriptive comparisons.

The unknown universe could then only be explained in terms of its known parts; the earth, shut in by the night sky, must have been thought of as a living creature, a tree, a tent, a building; and these each form the world system to peoples now living. ‘Given the data,’ says Herbert Spencer, as known to him, the inference drawn by the primitive man is the reasonable inference.’

A tree with wide over-arching branches must have formed an apt and satisfactory explanation, for legends of a world tree are so widely distributed; we meet with them at the dawn of record, and they still strike their roots where wild in woods’ the savage runs.

The Chaldean inscriptions describe such a tree as growing at the centre of the world; its branches of crystal formed the sky and drooped to the sea. The Phœnicians thought the world like a revolving tree, over which was spread a vast tapestry of blue embroidered with stars. Traces of this scheme linger late into times of culture, and would account for a story in ‘Apollonios of Tyana’ that the people of Sardis doubted if the trees were not created before the earth; an idea exactly parallel to the controversy in the Talmud, as to the priority in creation of the heavens or the earth; one side maintaining that the object was made first and then the pedestal; the other, that the foundation is laid before the building is erected.

All the East knew of such a tree; in Japan the gods broke their swords against it in vain; in Greece its memory seems long to have survived as the olive of the forest of Colonas.

In the Norse system a vast tree, the world-ash, rises in the centre of the earth, its branches forming the several heavens of the gods, its roots strike deep into hell, and there—

‘...... A serpent evermore

Lies deep asleep at the world’s dark core.’

Maori science still represents such a tree as rising to the heavens, ‘that dark nocturnal canopy which like a forest spreads its shade,’ its mighty growth first forced asunder Heaven and Earth. Such an idea is probably very uniform at a certain early stage of civilisation—’The fundamental conception of these myths,’ says Lenormant, which never appear in perfection except under their oldest forms, represents the universe as an enormous tree.’ Its trunk transfixes the earth, projecting upwards into heaven and below into the abyss, the heavens revolve on this axis, and may be reached by climbing the stem.

An extract from Dr Tylor’s ‘Early History of Mankind’ will lead us to a later point of view. Man now surrounded by his own works sees in the universe a larger ‘tent to dwell in,’ a chamber, and ultimately a most elaborate structure, a conception which lasts long even in the direct line of descent of science. This idea it is children find so difficult to shake off—that there must be a brick wall somewhere circumscribing the universe, and we still recognise it in the phrase to ‘make the welkin ring.’

‘There are,’ says Dr Tylor, ‘other mythological ways besides the heaven-tree by which, in different parts of the world, it is possible to go up and down between the surface of the ground and the sky or the regions below.... Such tales belong to a rude and primitive state of knowledge of the earth’s surface, and what lies above and below it. The earth is a flat plain surrounded by the sea, and the sky forms a roof on which the sun and moon and stars travel. The Polynesians who thought, like so many other people ancient and modern, that the sky descended at the horizon and enclosed the earth, still call foreigners “heaven bursters,” as having broken in from another world outside. The sky is to most savages, what it is called in the South American language, “the earth on high,” and we can quite understand the thought of some Paraguayans that at death their souls would go up to heaven by the tree which joins earth and sky. There are holes or windows through the sky-roof or firmament where the rain comes through; and if you climb high enough, you can get through and visit the dwellers above, who look and talk and live very much in the same way as the people upon earth. As above the flat earth, so below it, there are regions inhabited by men or manlike creatures, who sometimes come up to the surface, and sometimes are visited by the inhabitants of the upper earth. We live, as it were, upon the ground-floor of a great house, with upper storeys rising one over another above us, and cellars down below.’

This stage of thought lasted so long, embracing the great architectural ages in its span, that one cannot but see that there must have been a relation and reaction between such a world structure and the buildings of man, especially the sacred buildings set apart, as they mostly were, for a worship that thought it found its object in earth, sky, and stars.

It would appear generally that to the great civilising races a square formed universe preceded the hemispherical; indeed, we are much in the hemispherical age at present, it is just archaic enough to furnish the poet with his similes, but an old poet like Job found his comparisons in the chamber-form, a cubical box with a lid on. In the centre of this vast box whose lid is the sky rises the earth mountain, which is its prop and the pivot of its revolutions. It was seen that the centre of this revolution is at a point within the space guarded by the great bear, and that beyond this the stars dip under the earth of the northern horizon. Thus the earth mountain in the North furnishes a most adequate explanation of the apparent motions of the heavens; the crystal or metal heaven of the fixed stars revolves about it, and consequently the stars are hidden behind it in every revolution. The sun, moon, and planets issuing from a hole at the east, and sinking into another at the west, move overhead and find their way back by a subterranean path. The motive power was sometimes given by active beings, as in the Book of Enoch, or by the winds; thus the universe was like a great mill.

It is likely that the dome was the next step, although as yet they were hard put to it to convey the idea, so a skull or half an eggshell furnished the comparison for the whole canopy of heaven, as in the northern system of the Edda:—

Earth was not formed nor heaven above, a yawning gap there was, but grass nowhere. The earth is made fast in the midst, the sea round about it in a ring. The firmament in the form of a skull was set up over the earth with four sides, and under each corner they set dwarfs. The earth, called Midgard, is round without, and beyond is the deep sea; in the midst of the world was reared Asgard, where Odin is enthroned seeing over the whole world and each man’s doings. Without in the deep sea lies the Midgard-worm, tail in mouth. The holiest seat of the gods is at Yggdrasil’s ash, its boughs spread over the whole world. Three roots it has, one in heaven, one in hell, where is Nidhogg, one where before was Yawning-gap, and there is the Spring of Knowledge. A fair hall is there, and from it issue three maidens—Has-been, Being, and Will-be—who shape the lives of men. On the boughs of the ash sits an eagle, wise in much, and between his eyes a hawk, while a squirrel runs up and down the tree bearing words of hate betwixt the eagle and the worm.

The following may serve as a general description of what we may call the chamber type, either square or round, with a ceiling or a dome. The earth is a mountain, and around its base flows the ocean, or it floats on the ocean; beyond is a high range of mountains which form the walls of the enclosure, and on these is either laid the ceiling in one great slab, or it is domed (sometimes the system is a compromise, the earth square, the sky circular, and they do not seem to have realised the difficulty of the pendentives!). The firmament is sustained by the earth mountain in...