Pliny has preserved an anecdote in geological history, which relates to this point, and which, not without reason, he calls exemplum vanitatis Græcæ maximum. It relates to a certain philosopher, Dionysiodorus by name, who was celebrated for his mathematical attainments, and who it seems retained his attachment to that science after death, and continued the pursuit of it. For having died in a good old age, and received all fitting sepulchral rites, he wrote a letter from Hades to the female relations who had succeeded to his property, and who probably were addicted to the same studies as himself, for otherwise he would not have communicated with them upon such a subject. They found the letter in his sepulchre, wherein he had deposited it as at a post-office “till called for;” and whither he knew they would repair for the due performance of certain ceremonies, among others that of pouring libations through the perforated floor of the Tomb-chamber upon the dust below. The purport of his writing was not to inform them of his condition in the Shades, nor to communicate any information concerning the World of Spirits, but simply to state the scientific fact, that having arrived in the depths of the earth, he had found the distance from the surface to be 42,000 stadia. The philosophers to whom this post-mortem communication was imparted, reasonably inferred that he had reached the very centre, and measured from that point; they calculated upon the data thus afforded them, and ascertained that the globe was exactly 250,000 stadia in circumference. Pliny however thought that this measurement was 12,000 stadia short of the true amount. Harmonica ratio, he says, quæ cogit rerum naturam sibi ipsam congruere, addit huic mensuræ stadia xii. millia; terramque nonagesimam sextam totius mundi partem facit.
“What is the centre of the earth?” says the melancholy Burton. “Is it pure element only as Aristotle decrees? Inhabited, as Paracelsus thinks, with creatures whose chaos is the earth? Or with Faeries, as the woods and waters, according to him, are with Nymphs? Or, as the air, with Spirits? Dionysiodorus,” he adds, “might have done well to have satisfied all these doubts?”
But the reason, according to Doña Oliva, wherefore the place of punishment for sinful souls has been appointed in the centre of this our habitable earth, is this; the soul being in its essence lighter than air, fire, or any of the ten spheres, has its natural place in the Empyreum or Heaven of Heavens, where the Celestial Court is fixed, and whither it would naturally ascend when set free from the body, as to its natural and proper place of rest. The punishment therefore is appropriately appointed in the place which is most remote from its native region, and most repugnant to its own nature, the pain therefore must needs be fort et dure which it endures when confined within that core of the earth, to which all things that are heaviest gravitate.
In these fancies she only followed or applied the received opinions of the middle ages. A more remarkable part of her works, considering the time and place in which they were composed, is a Colloquy1 upon the means by which the World and the Governments thereof might be improved. Having in her former treatises laid down a better system for treating the infirmities of the human microcosm, she enters nothing loth, and nothing doubting her own capacity, upon the maladies of the body politic.
1 Colloquio de las Cosas que mejoraran este Mundo y sus Republicas.
The first evils which occurred to her were those of the law, its uncertainty and its delays by which properties were wasted, families ruined and hearts broken. What barbarity it is, she says, that a cause should continue forty years in the Courts! that one Counsellor should tell you the right is on your side, and another should say the same thing to your adversary; that one decision should be given in one place, and another to revoke it in that; and in a third a different one from either, and all three perhaps equally wide of the truth and justice of the case, and yet each such as can be maintained by legal arguments, and supported by legal authorities! The cause of all this she ascribes to the multiplicity of laws and of legal books, which were more than enough to load twenty carts, and yet more were continually added, and all were in Latin. Could any folly exceed that of those lawgivers who presumed to prescribe laws for all possible contingencies, and for the whole course of future generations! She was therefore for reducing the written laws to a few fundamentals in the vernacular tongue, and leaving every thing else to be decided by men of good conscience and sincere understanding; by which the study of jurisprudence as a science would be abolished, and there might be an end to those numerous costly professorships for which so many chairs and universities had been founded. Ten short commandments comprised the law of God; but human laws by their number and by the manner in which they were administered occasioned more hurt to the souls of men than even to their lives and fortunes; for in courts of law it was customary, even if not openly permitted, to bear false witness against your neighbour, to calumniate him in writing, and to seek his destruction or his death. Laws which touched the life ought to be written, because in capital cases no man ought to be left to an uncertain sentence, nor to the will of a Judge, but all other cases should be left to the Judges, who ought always to be chosen from Monasteries, or some other course of retired life, and selected for their religious character. This she thought, with the imposition of a heavy fine for any direct falsehood, or false representation advanced either in evidence, or in pleading, and for denying the truth, or suppressing it, would produce the desired reformation.
Next she considered the condition of the agricultural labourers, a class which had greatly diminished and which it was most desirable to increase. Their condition was to be bettered by raising their wages and consequently the price of produce, and exempting their cattle, their stores and their persons from being taken in execution. She would also have them protected against their own imprudence, by preventing them from obtaining credit for wedding garments, that being one of the most prevalent and ruinous modes of extravagance in her days. In this rank of life it sometimes happened, that a shopkeeper not only seized the garments themselves, but the peasant's cattle also to make up the payment of a debt thus contracted.
She thought it a strange want of policy that in a country where the corn failed for want of rain, the waters with which all brooks and rivers were filled in winter should be allowed to run to waste. Therefore she advised that great tanks and reservoirs should be formed for the purposes of irrigation, and that they should be rendered doubly profitable by stocking them with fish, such as shad, tench and trout. She advised also that the seed should frequently be changed, and crops raised in succession, because the soil loved to embrace new products: and that new plants should be introduced from the Indies; where hitherto the Spaniards had been more intent upon introducing their own, than in bringing home from thence others to enrich their own country; the cacao in particular she recommended, noticing that this nut for its excellence had even been used as money.
Duels she thought the Christian Princes and the Pope might easily prevent, by erecting a Jurisdiction which should take cognizance of all affairs of honour. She would have had them also open the road to distinction for all who deserved it, so that no person should be debarred by his birth from attaining to any office or rank; this she said, was the way to have more Rolands and Cids, more Great Captains, more Hannibals and Tamerlanes.
Such were Doña Oliva's views of political reformation, the wretched state of law and of medicine explaining satisfactorily to her most of the evils with which Spain was afflicted in the reign of Philip II. She considered Law and Physic as the two great plagues of human life, according to the Spanish proverb,