“Between these and the middle [zone] two are granted to wretched mortals by the gift of the gods.”
Now, they who are next to the torrid circle are the Ethiopians, who are burnt by excessive heat.[61]
Fig. 1.
The explanation of the passage and of the figure which illustrates it seems to be that Isidore accepted the terminology of the spherical earth from Hyginus[62] without taking the time to understand it—if indeed he had the ability to do so—and applied it without compunction to the flat earth. He evidently thought that zona and circulus were interchangeable terms,[63] and his “circles” did not run around the circumference of a spherical earth, but lay flat on a flat earth, where they filled with sufficient completeness the orbis terrae or circle of the land.[64] The adjustment of the two conflicting theories was extremely crude, since it involved placing the arctic and antarctic circles side by side, and the two temperate circles one in the east and one in the west.
By such a blunder as this may be measured the stagnation of the secular thought of the time. Of Greek science only remnants were in existence, and these were regarded with indifference. Writers like Isidore might use them, but they did not hesitate to mangle and distort them. Moreover they were given only second place even in the science of the day; the first place was held by the notions of the natural world expressed in the Scriptures. Each one of these, no matter how primitive or how figurative, had to be taken seriously into account and given its proper weight in building up the general scheme. In this intellectual activity Isidore is more at home than when he is handling the ideas of the pagans, as may be perceived from his discussion of the shape of the firmament: “As to its shape, whether it covers the earth from above like a plate, or like an egg-shell shuts the whole creation in on every side, thinkers take opposite views. For the mention the Psalmist makes of this when he says: Extendas coelum sicut pellem,[65] does not conflict with either opinion, since when his own skin covers any animal, it envelopes equally every part all around, and when it is removed from the flesh and stretched out, there is no doubt that it can form a chamber either rectangular or curved.”[66]
The vastness of the physical universe is an idea not presented in Isidore’s writings. It was for his mind really a small universe, and one limited sharply by definite boundaries both in time and space. It had begun at the creation, its matter being constituted at that time out of nothing, and it was to have an end as sharply marked. It extended from the earth to the sphere of the heavens which revolved about the earth, and what was beyond scarcely appears even as a question. It was a universe in which high winds might, and sometimes did, dislodge particles from the fiery heavens;[67] and in which the sun approached so close to some of the inhabitants of the earth as to scorch them.[68] In truth, Isidore’s universe was reduced to rather stifling proportions.
A fundamental part of Isidore’s world-philosophy was his view of the constitution of matter. This is closely bound up with his conception of the form of the universe, and it is also the most important of his ideas in the field of natural science.
He believed in the existence of the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water,[69] and that they were the visible manifestations of one underlying matter.[70] They were not mutually exclusive but “all elements existed in all”, and it was possible for one element to be transmuted into another. Their properties were not invariable, but as a rule fire is spoken of as hot and dry; air, hot and wet; water, wet and cold; earth, cold and dry. It will be observed that each successive pair of elements had a common quality: thus fire and air shared the quality of ‘hot’; air and water, that of ‘wet’; water and earth, that of ‘cold’; earth and fire, that of ‘dry’. It was by the aid of these common qualities, which served as means, that the elements could be more easily thought of as passing into each other.[71]
It should be remarked that the general idea is the same as that of modern chemistry in so far as it assumes that there are elements and attributes properties to them. The difference is that the modern chemist insists that the properties shall be fixed for each element, while Isidore has no consciousness of such a necessity. For instance, in a chapter of De Natura Rerum he attributes two separate sets of properties to the four elements, without realizing at all the confusion of such a procedure. Again, from the point of view of the best ancient conception of the four elements, Isidore is equally at fault. For Aristotle the names given to them had been merely labels. He perceived in the natural world two significant sets of opposing qualities, namely, hot and cold, wet and dry. These sets of opposing qualities interpenetrated one another: the result was four possible combinations, namely, hot and dry, hot and wet, cold and wet, cold and dry. His elements designated merely these combinations and were nothing more than conventional names for them. Isidore, however, took the names of the elements in a literal sense.[72] The label itself had become important, while what stood behind it and gave it its value was regarded as almost meaningless. What has happened here is typical of the whole development of ancient thought down to Isidore’s time.