Here in reality modern democracy had its rise, striking its roots deep into the disintegrating soil of the old feudalism whence it was never to be plucked, and though at times it languished it was to remain ever alive until its luxuriant growth in recent times.
ANIMALS FROM BESTIARIUM, THIRTEENTH CENTURY MS.
XXV
GREAT EXPLORERS AND THE FOUNDATION OF GEOGRAPHY.
Geography is usually considered to be quite a modern subject. The idea that great contributions were made to it in the Thirteenth Century would ordinarily not be entertained. America was discovered at the end of the Fifteenth Century. Knowledge of the East was obtained during the Sixteenth Century. Africa was explored in the Nineteenth and a detailed knowledge of Asia came to us in such recent years that the books are still among the novelties of publication. Our knowledge of Persia, of Northern India, of Thibet, and of the interior of China are all triumphs of Nineteenth Century enterprise and exploration. As a matter of fact, however, all portions of the East were explored, the Capital and the dominions of Jenghis Khan described, Lhasa was entered and the greater part of China thoroughly explored by travelers of the Thirteenth Century, whose books still remain as convincing evidence of the great work that they accomplished. This chapter of Thirteenth Century accomplishment is, indeed, one of the most interesting and surprising in the whole story of the time.
It is usually considered that the teaching, supposed to have been more or less generally accepted, that the Antipodes did not exist, prevented any significant development of geography until comparatively modern times. While the question of the existence of antipodes was discussed in the schools of the Middle Ages, and especially of the Thirteenth Century when men's minds were occupied with practically all of the important problems even of physical science, and while many intelligent men accepted the idea that there could not be inhabitants on the other side of the world because of physical difficulties which supposedly made it impossible, it would be a mistake to think that this idea was universally accepted. We have already called attention to the fact in the chapter on "What was Taught at the [{393}] Universities," that Albertus Magnus, for instance, ridiculed the notion that men could not live with their heads down, as was urged against the doctrine of the existence of antipodes, by suggesting very simply that for those on the other side of the earth what we call down was really not down but up. This expresses, of course, the very heart of the solution of the supposed difficulty.
As a matter of fact it seems clear that many of the great travelers and explorers of the later Middle Ages harbored the notion that the earth was round. As we shall note a little later in mentioning Sir John Mandeville's work, the writer, whomever he was who took that pseudonym, believed thoroughly in the rotundity of the earth and did not hesitate to use some striking expressions—which have been often quoted—that he had heard of travelers who by traveling continually to the eastward had come back eventually to the point from which they started. While in the schools, then, the existence of antipodes may have been under discussion, there was a practical acceptance of their existence among those who were better informed with regard to countries and peoples and all the other topics which form the proper subject matter of geography.
It must be realized, moreover, that though the existence of the Antipodes is an important matter in geography, at this early period it was a mere theory, not a condition antecedent to progress. It was really a side issue as compared with many other questions relating to the earth's surface and its inhabitants with which the medieval mind was occupied. To consider that no knowledge of geography could be obtained until there was a definite acceptance of the right view of the earth's surface, would be to obliterate much precious knowledge. The argument as to the existence of antipodes, as it was carried on, was entirely outside of geography properly so-called. It never influenced in the slightest degree the men who were consciously and unconsciously laying deep and broad the foundations of modern geography. To consider such a matter as vital to the development of as many sided a subject as geography, illustrates very typically the narrowness of view of so many modern scholars, who apparently can see the value of nothing which does not entirely accord with modern knowledge. The really [{394}] interesting historian of knowledge, however, is he who can point out the beginnings of what we now know, in unexpected quarters in the medieval mind.
As the story of these travels and explorations is really a glorious chapter in the history of the encouragement of things intellectual, as well as an interesting phase of an important origin whose foundations were laid broad and deep in the Thirteenth Century, it must be told here in some detail. Our century was the great leader in exploration and geography as in so many other matters in which its true place is often unrecognized.