IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
BY JOHN DE' M ARIGNOLLI. 385
that these monsters are not men, although they may seem to have some of the properties of men, but are merely of the character of apes ;1 (indeed if we had never seen apes before we should be apt to look upon them, as men !) ; unless forsooth they be monsters such as I have been speaking of before, which come of Adam's race indeed, but are exceptional and unusual births.
Nor can we conceive (and so says St. Augustine likewise), that there be any antipodes, i.e. men having the soles of their feet opposite to ours. Certainly not.° For the earth is founded upon the waters. And I have learned by sure experience that if you suppose the ocean divided by two lines forming a cross, two of the quadrants so formed are navigable, and the two others not navigable at all. For God willed not that men should be able to sail round the whole world.
I have, however, seen an hermaphrodite, but it was not able to propagate others like itself. Nor indeed does a mule propagate. Now let us go back to our subject.
The next chapter is one Concerning the Multiplication of the Human Race, and the Division of the Earth, and the Tower of Babel. I extract the following :
And they came to the plain of Senaar in the Greater Asia, near to the great River Euphrates. There indeed we find a vast level of seemingly boundless extent, in which, as I have seen, there is abundance of all kinds of fruits, and especially
1 The argument of the cross would seem to cut the other way !
2 See De Civitate Dei, xvi, 9. Cosmas also rejects the notion of An-
tipodes with great scorn. Scripture says that God made of one (blood)
all nations of men for to dwell on the whole face of the earth, and not upon EVERY face of the earth" (not 44 iravT2 orpoo-c6Trcp, but erl lravTos apoo irov). But his clinching argument is, " How could rain at the Antipodes be said to fall ? Why it would come up instead of falling" (pp. 121, 157,191 of Montfaucon). I remember hearing that the Astronomer Royal on finding fault with an engraver who had prepared the plates for a treatise of his wrongside upward, was met by the argument, " Why, sir, I thought there was no up or down in space !"
)~ J
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