Ancient traditions, when tested by the severe processes of modern investigations, commonly enough fade away into mere dreams: but it is singular how often the dream turns out to have been a half-waking one? presaging a reality. Ovid foreshadowed the discoveries of the geologist: the Atlantis was an imagination, but Columbus found a western world: and though the quaint forms of Centaurs and Satyrs have an existence only in the realms of art, creatures approaching man more nearly than they in essential structure, and yet as thoroughly brutal as the goat's or horse's half of the mythical compound, are now not only known, but notorious.
Plato's scheme was impossible even in his own day, as Bacon's "New Atlantis" in his day, as Calvin's reform in his day, as Goethe's "Academe" in his. Out of the good there was in all these men, the world gathered what it could find of evil, made its useless Platonism out of Plato, its graceless Calvinism out of Calvin, determined Bacon to be the meanest of mankind, and of Goethe gathered only a luscious story of seduction, and daintily singable devilry.
ANTILIA or ANTILLIA, sometimes called the Island of the Seven Cities (Portuguese _Isla das Sete Cidades_), a legendary island in the Atlantic ocean. The origin of the name is quite uncertain. The oldest suggested etymology (1455) fancifully connects it with the name of the Platonic Atlantis, while later writers have endeavoured to derive it from the Latin _anterior_ (i.e. the island that is reached "before" Cipango), or from the _Jezirat al Tennyn_, "Dragon's Isle," of the Arabian geographers. Antilia is marked in an anonymous map which is dated 1424 and preserved in the grand-ducal library at Weimar. It reappears in the maps of the Genoese B. Beccario or Beccaria (1435), and of the Venetian Andrea Bianco (1436), and again in 1455 and 1476. In most of these it is accompanied by the smaller and equally legendary islands of Royllo, St Atanagio, and Tanmar, the whole group being classified as _insulae de novo repertae_, "newly discovered islands." The Florentine Paul Toscanelli, in his letters to Columbus and the Portuguese court (1474), takes Antilia as the principal landmark for measuring the distance between Lisbon and the island of Cipango or Zipangu (Japan). One of the chief early descriptions of Antilia is that inscribed on the globe which the geographer Martin Behaim made at Nuremberg in 1492 (see MAP: _History_). Behaim relates that in 734--a date which is probably a misprint for 714--and after the Moors had conquered Spain and Portugal, the island of Antilia or "Septe Cidade" was colonized by Christian refugees under the archbishop of Oporto and six bishops. The inscription adds that a Spanish vessel sighted the island in 1414. According to an old Portuguese tradition each of the seven leaders founded and ruled a city, and the whole island became a Utopian commonwealth, free from the disorders of less favoured states. Later Portuguese tradition localized Antilia in the island of St Michael's, the largest of the Azores. It is impossible to estimate how far this legend commemorates some actual but imperfectly recorded discovery, and how far it is a reminiscence of the ancient idea of an elysium in the western seas which is embodied in the legends of the Isles of the Blest or Fortunate Islands. Entry: ANTILIA
ISLES OF THE BLEST, or FORTUNATE ISLANDS (Gr. [Greek: ai tôn makarôn nêsoi]: Lat., Fortunatae Insulae), in Greek mythology a group of islands near the edge of the Western Ocean, peopled not by the dead, but by mortals upon whom the gods had conferred immortality. Like the islands of the Phaeacians in Homer (_Od._ viii.) or the Celtic Avalon and St Brendan's island, the Isles of the Blest are represented as a land of perpetual summer and abundance of all good things. No reference is made to them by Homer, who speaks instead of the Elysian Plain (_Od._ iv. and ix.), but they are mentioned by Hesiod (_Works and Days_, 168) and Pindar (_Ol._ ii.). A very old tradition suggests that the idea of such an earthly paradise was a reminiscence of some unrecorded voyage to Madeira and the Canaries, which are sometimes named Fortunatae Insulae by medieval map-makers. (See ATLANTIS.) Entry: ISLES
BRAZIL, or BRASIL, a legendary island in the Atlantic Ocean. The name connects itself with the red dye-woods so called in the middle ages, possibly also applied to other vegetable dyes, and so descending from the _Insulae Purpurariae_ of Pliny. It first appears as the _I. de Brazi_ in the Venetian map of Andrea Bianco (1436), where it is found attached to one of the larger islands of the Azores. When this group became better known and was colonized, the island in question was renamed Terceira. It is probable that the familiar existence of "Brazil" as a geographical name led to its bestowal upon the vast region of South America, which was found to supply dye-woods kindred to those which the name properly denoted. The older memory survived also, and the Island of Brazil retained its place in mid-ocean, some hundred miles to the west of Ireland, both in the traditions of the forecastle and in charts. In J. Purdy's _General Chart of the Atlantic_, "corrected to 1830," the "Brazil Rock (high)" is marked with no indication of doubt, in 51° 10' N. and 15° 50' W. In a chart of currents by A.G. Findlay, dated 1853, these names appear again. But in his 12th edition of Purdy's _Memoir Descriptive and Explanatory of the N. Atlantic Ocean_ (1865), the existence of Brazil and some other legendary islands is briefly discussed and rejected. (See also ATLANTIS.) Entry: BRAZIL
The North American Indians have been the subject of numerous popular fallacies, some of which have gained world-wide currency. Here belongs a mass of pseudo-scientific and thoroughly unscientific literature embodying absurd and extravagant theories and speculations as to the origin of the aborigines and their "civilizations" which derive them (in most extraordinary ways sometimes), in recent or in remote antiquity, from all regions of the Old World--Egypt and Carthage, Phoenicia and Canaan, Asia Minor and the Caucasus, Assyria and Babylonia, Persia and India, Central Asia and Siberia, China and Tibet, Korea, Japan, the East Indies, Polynesia, Greece and ancient Celtic Europe and even medieval Ireland and Wales. Favourite theories of this sort have made the North American aborigines the descendants of refugees from sunken Atlantis, Tatar warriors, Malayo-Polynesian sea-farers, Hittite immigrants from Syria, the "Lost Ten Tribes of Israel," &c., or attributed their social, religious and political ideas and institutions to the advent of stray junks from Japan, Buddhist votaries from south-eastern Asia, missionaries from early Christian Europe, Norse vikings, Basque fishermen and the like. Entry: INDIANS
The circumstance which has given popular interest to the lemming is that certain districts of the cultivated lands of Norway and Sweden, where in ordinary circumstances they are unknown, are, at uncertain intervals varying from five to twenty or more years, overrun by an army of these little creatures, which steadily and slowly advance, always in the same direction, and regardless of all obstacles, swimming streams and even lakes of several miles in breadth, and committing considerable devastation on their line of march by the quantity of food they consume. In their turn they are pursued and harassed by crowds of beasts and birds of prey, as bears, wolves, foxes, dogs, wild cats, stoats, weasels, eagles, hawks and owls, and never spared by man; even domestic animals, as cattle, goats and reindeer, join in the destruction, stamping them to the ground with their feet, and even eating their bodies. Numbers also die from diseases produced apparently from overcrowding. None returns, and the onward march of the survivors never ceases until they reach the sea, into which they plunge, and swimming onwards in the same direction perish in the waves. These sudden appearances of vast bodies of lemmings, and their singular habit of persistently pursuing the same onward course of migration, have given rise to various speculations, from the ancient belief of the Norwegian peasants, shared by Olaus Magnus, that they fall down from the clouds, to the hypothesis that they are acting in obedience to an instinct inherited from ancient times, and still seeking the congenial home in the submerged Atlantis, to which their ancestors of the Miocene period were wont to resort when driven from their ordinary dwelling-places by crowding or scarcity of food. The principal facts regarding these migrations seem to be as follows. When any combination of circumstances has occasioned an increase of the numbers of the lemmings in their ordinary dwelling-places, impelled by the restless or migratory instinct possessed in a less developed degree by so many of their congeners, a movement takes place at the edge of the elevated plateau, and a migration towards the lower-lying land begins. The whole body moves forward slowly, always advancing in the same general direction in which they originally started, but following more or less the course of the great valleys. They only travel by night; and, staying in congenial places for considerable periods, with unaccustomed abundance of provender, notwithstanding the destructive influences to which they are exposed, they multiply excessively during their journey, having families more numerous and frequent than in their usual homes. The progress may last from one to three years, according to the route taken, and the distance to be traversed until the sea-coast is reached, which in a country so surrounded by water as the Scandinavian peninsula must be the ultimate goal of such a journey. This may be either the Atlantic or the Gulf of Bothnia, according as the migration has commenced from the west or the east side of the central elevated plateau. Those that finally perish in the sea, committing what appears to be a voluntary suicide, are only acting under the same blind impulse which has led them previously to cross shallower pieces of water with safety. In Eastern Europe, Northern Asia and North America the group is represented by the allied _L. obensis_, and in Alaska, by _L. nigripes_; while the circumpolar banded lemming, _Dicrostonyx torquatus_, which turns white in winter, represents a second genus taking its name from the double claws on one of the toes of the forefeet. Entry: LEMMING
ATHERSTONE, WILLIAM GUYBON AUDEBERT, JEAN BAPTISTE ATHERSTONE AUDEFROI LE BATARD ATHERTON AUDIENCE ATHETOSIS AUDIFFRET-PASQUIER, EDMÉ ARMAND GASTON ATHIAS, JOSEPH AUDIT and AUDITOR ATHLETE AUDLEY, SIR JAMES ATHLETIC SPORTS AUDLEY, THOMAS AUDLEY ATHLONE AUDOUIN, JEAN VICTOR ATHOL AUDRAN ATHOLL, EARLS AND DUKES OF AUDRAN, EDMOND ATHOLL AUDREHEM, ARNOUL D' ATHOS AUDUBON, JOHN JAMES ATHY AUE ATINA AUERBACH, BERTHOLD ATITLÁN AUERSPERG, ANTON ALEXANDER ATKINSON, EDWARD AUFIDENA ATKINSON, SIR HARRY ALBERT AUGEAS ATLANTA AUGER ATLANTIC AUGEREAU, PIERRE FRANÇOIS CHARLES ATLANTIC CITY AUGHRIM ATLANTIC OCEAN AUGIER, GUILLAUME VICTOR ÉMILE ATLANTIS AUGITE ATLAS AUGMENT ATLAS MOUNTAINS AUGMENTATION ATMOLYSIS AUGSBURG ATMOSPHERE AUGSBURG, CONFESSION OF ATMOSPHERIC ELECTRICITY AUGSBURG, WAR OF THE LEAGUE OF ATMOSPHERIC RAILWAY AUGURS ATOLL AUGUST ATOM AUGUSTA (Georgia, U.S.A.) ATONEMENT and DAY OF ATONEMENT AUGUSTA (Maine, U.S.A.) ATRATO AUGUSTA (Sicily) ATREK AUGUSTA BAGIENNORUM ATREUS AUGUSTAN HISTORY ATRI AUGUSTA PRAETORIA SALASSORUM ATRIUM AUGUSTI, JOHANN CHRISTIAN WILHELM ATROPHY AUGUSTINE, SAINT (354-430) ATROPOS AUGUSTINE, SAINT (archbishop) ATTA, TITUS QUINCTIUS AUGUSTINIAN CANONS ATTACAPA AUGUSTINIAN HERMITS ATTACHMENT AUGUSTINIANS ATTAINDER AUGUSTOWO ATTAINT, WRIT OF AUGUSTUS ATTALIA AUGUSTUS I ATTAR OF ROSES AUGUSTUS II ATTEMPT AUGUSTUS III ATTENTION AUGUSTUSBAD ATTERBOM, PER DANIEL AMADEUS AUK ATTERBURY, FRANCIS AULARD, FRANÇOIS VICTOR ALPHONSE ATTESTATION AULIC COUNCIL ATTHIS AULIE-ATA ATTIC AULIS ATTICA AULNOY, MARIE CATHERINE DE LA MOTTE ATTIC BASE AULOS ATTICUS, TITUS POMPONIUS AUMALE, HENRI EUGÈNE D'ORLÉANS ATTICUS HERODES, CLAUDIUS AUMALE ATTILA AUMONT ATTIS AUNCEL ATTLEBOROUGH AUNDH ATTOCK AUNGERVYLE, RICHARD ATTORNEY AUNT SALLY ATTORNEY-GENERAL AURA ATTORNMENT AURANGABAD ATTRITION AURANGZEB ATTWOOD, THOMAS (composer) AURAY ATTWOOD, THOMAS (reformer) AURELIA, VIA ATWOOD, GEORGE AURELIAN AUBADE AURELIANUS, CAELIUS AUBAGNE AURELLE DE PALADINES, LOUIS JEAN D' AUBE AUREOLA AUBENAS AURICH AUBER, DANIEL FRANÇOIS ESPRIT AURICLE AUBERGINE AURICULA AUBERVILLIERS AURIFABER AUBIGNAC, FRANÇOIS HÉDELIN AURIGA AUBIGNÉ, CONSTANT D' AURILLAC AUBIGNÉ, JEAN HENRI MERLE D' AURISPA, GIOVANNI AUBIGNÉ, THÉODORE AGRIPPA D' AUROCHS AUBIN AURORA (Roman goddess) AUBREY, JOHN AURORA (Illinois, U.S.A.) AUBURN (Maine, U.S.A.) AURORA (Missouri, U.S.A.) AUBURN (New York, U.S.A.) AURORA (New York, U.S.A.) AUBURN (colour) AURORA POLARIS AUBUSSON, PIERRE D' AURUNCI AUBUSSON AUSCULTATION AUCH AUSONIUS, DECIMUS MAGNUS AUCHMUTY, SIR SAMUEL AUSSIG AUCHTERARDER AUSTEN, JANE AUCHTERMUCHTY AUSTERLITZ AUCKLAND, GEORGE EDEN AUSTIN, ALFRED AUCKLAND, WILLIAM EDEN AUSTIN, JOHN AUCKLAND AUSTIN, SARAH AUCKLAND ISLANDS AUSTIN, STEPHEN FULLER AUCTION PITCH AUSTIN (Minnesota, U.S.A.) AUCTIONS and AUCTIONEERS AUSTIN (Texas, U.S.A.) AUCUBA AUSTRALASIA AUDAEUS AUSTRALIA AUDE (river of France) AUSTRASIA AUDE (department of France) AUSTRIA Entry: ATHERSTONE
For the theory that Atlantis is to be identified with Crete in the Minoan period, see "The Lost Continent" in _The Times_ (London) for the 19th of February 1909. See also "Dissertation sur l'Atlantide" in T.H. Martin's _Études sur le Timée_ (1841). Entry: ATLANTIS
In many respects, however, More's views on the labour question were vastly in advance of his own time. He repeats the indignant protest of the _Republic_ that existing society is a warfare between rich and poor. "The rich," he says, "desire every means by which they may in the first place secure to themselves what they have amassed by wrong, and then take to their own use and profit, at the lowest possible price, the work and labour of the poor. And so soon as the rich decide on adopting these devices in the name of the public, then they become law." One might imagine these words had been quoted from the programme of The International (q.v.), so completely is their tone in sympathy with the hardships of the poor in all ages. More shared to the full the keen sympathy with the hopeless misery of the poor which has been the strong motive power of nearly all speculative communism. The life of the poor as he saw it was so wretched that he said, "Even a beast's life seems enviable!" Besides community of goods and equality of conditions, More advocated other means of ameliorating the condition of the people. Although the hours of labour were limited to six a day there was no scarcity, for in Utopia every one worked; there was no idle class, no idle individual even. The importance of this from an economic point of view is insisted on by More in a passage remarkable for the importance which he attaches to the industrial condition of women. "And this you will easily apprehend," he says, "if you consider how great a part of all other nations is quite idle. First, women generally do little, who are the half of mankind." Translated into modern language his proposals comprise universal compulsory education, a reduction of the hours of labour to six a day, the most modern principles of sanitary reform, a complete revision of criminal legislation, and the most absolute religious toleration. The romantic form which Sir Thomas More gave to his dream of a new social order found many imitators. The _Utopia_ may be regarded as the prototype of Campanella's _City of the Sun_, Harrington's _Oceana_, Bacon's _Nova Atlantis_, Defoe's _Essay on Projects_, Fénelon's _Voyage dans l'Île des Plaisirs_, and other works of minor importance. Entry: COMMUNISM
Historically he appears to have been under the dominance of the Platonic metaphor of an alphabet of nature, with a consequent belief in the relatively small number of ultimate principles to be determined, and of Plato's conception of Division, cleared of its dialectical associations and used experientially in application to his own molecular physics. True it is that the rejection of all the cospecies is a long process, but what if therein their simultaneous or subsequent determination is helped forward? They, too, must fall to be determined sometime, and the ideal of science is fully to determine all the species of the genus. This will need co-operative effort as described in the account of Solomon's House in the _New Atlantis_.[98] But once introduce the conception of division of labour as between the collector of data on the one hand and the expert of method, the interpreter of nature at headquarters, on the other, and Bacon's attitude to hypothesis and to negative reasoning is at least in part explained. The hypothesis of the collector, the man who keeps a rain-gauge, or the missionary among savages, is to be discounted from as a source of error. The expert on the other hand may be supposed, in the case of facts over which he has not himself brooded in the course of their acquisition, to approach them without any presumption this way or that. He will, too, have no interest in the isolation of any one of several co-ordinate inquiries. That Bacon underestimates the importance of selective and of provisional explanatory hypotheses even in such fields as that of chemistry, and that technically he is open to some criticism from the point of view that negative judgment is derivate as necessarily resting on positive presuppositions, may be true enough. It seems, however, no less true that the greatness of his conception of organized common effort in science has but rarely met with due appreciation. Entry: C
(B) The second group consists of treatises on subjects connected with the _Instauratio_, but not forming part of it. The most interesting, and in many respects the most remarkable, is the philosophic romance, the _New Atlantis_, a description of an ideal state in which the principles of the new philosophy are carried out by political machinery and under state guidance, and where many of the results contemplated by Bacon are in imagination attained. The work was to have been completed by the addition of a second part, treating of the laws of a model commonwealth, which was never written. Another important tract is the _De Principiis atque Originibus secundum Fabulas Cupidinis et Caeli_, where, under the disguise of two old mythological stories, he (in the manner of the _Sapientia Veterum_) finds the deepest truths [v.03 p.0145] concealed. The tract is unusually interesting, for in it he discusses at some length the limits of science, the origin of things and the nature of primitive matter, giving at the same time full notices of Democritus among the ancient philosophers and of Telesio among the modern. Deserving of attention are also the _Cogitationes de Natura Rerum_, probably written early, perhaps in 1605, and the treatise on the theory of the tides, _De Fluxu et Refluxu Maris_, written probably about 1616. Entry: B
Of particular works there are numerous editions in all the chief languages. The following are the most important:--T. Fowler, _Novum Organum_ (Oxford, 1878; ed. 1889), with notes, full introduction on Bacon's philosophy in all its relations, and a most valuable bibliography. This superseded the edition of G. W. Kitchin (Oxford, 1855). The _Essays_ have been edited more than twenty times since 1870; the following editions may be mentioned:--Archbishop Whately (6th ed., 1864); W. Aldis Wright (Lond., 1862); F. Storr and Gibson (Lond., 1886); E. A. Abbott (Lond., 1879); John Buchan (Lond., 1879); A. S. West (Cambridge, 1897); W. Evans (Edinburgh, 1897). A facsimile reprint of the 1st edition was published in New York (1904). _Advancement of Learning_:--W. Aldis [v.03 p.0152] Wright (Camb., 1866; 5th ed., 1900); F. G. Selby (1892-1895); H. Morley (1905); and, with the _New Atlantis_, in the "World's Classics" series (introduction by Prof. T. Case, Lond., 1906). _Wisdom of the Ancients and New Atlantis_, in "Cassell's National Library" (1886 and 1903). G. C. M. Smith, _New Atlantis_ (1900). J. Fürstenhagen, _Kleinere Schriften_ (Leipzig, 1884). Entry: BIBLIOGRAPHY
In the sphere of natural science, Bacon's importance is attested by references to his work in the writings of the principal scientists, not only English, but French, German and Italian. Fowler (_op. cit._) has collected from Descartes, Gassendi, S. Sorbière, Jean Baptiste du Hamel, quotations which show how highly Bacon was regarded by the leaders of the new scientific movement. Sorbière, who was by no means partial to things English, definitely speaks of him as "celuy qui a le plus puissamment solicité les interests de la physique, et excité le monde à faire des expériences" (_Relation d'un voyage en Angleterre_, Cologne, 1666, pp. 63-64). It was, however, Voltaire and the encyclopaedists who raised Bacon to the pinnacle of his fame in France, and hailed him as "le père de la philosophie expérimentale" (_Lettres sur les Anglois_). Condillac, in the same spirit, says of him, "personne n'a mieux connu que lui la cause de nos erreurs." So the _Encyclopédie_, besides giving a eulogistic article "Baconisme," speaks of him (in d'Alembert's preliminary discourse) as "le plus grand, le plus universel, et le plus éloquent des philosophes." Among other writers, Leibnitz and Huygens give testimony which is the more valuable as being critical. Leibnitz speaks of Bacon as "divini ingenii vir," and, like several other German authors, classes him with Campanella; Huygens refers to his "bonnes méthodes." If, however, we are to attach weight to English writers of the latter half of the 17th century, we shall find that one of Bacon's greatest achievements was the impetus given by his _New Atlantis_ to the foundation of the Royal Society (_q.v._). Dr Thomas Sprat (1635-1713), bishop of Rochester and first historian of the society, says that Bacon of all others "had the true imagination of the whole extent" of the enterprise, and that in his works are to be found the best arguments for the experimental method of natural philosophy (_Hist. of the Royal Society_, pp. 35-36, and Thomas Tenison's _Baconiana_, pp. 264-266). In this connexion reference should be made also to Cowley's _Ode to the Royal Society_, and to Dr John Wallis's remarks in Hearne's _Preface to P. Langtoft's Chronicle_ (appendix, num. xi.). Joseph Glanvill, in his _Scepsis Scientifica_ (dedication) says, "Solomon's house in the _New Atlantis_ was a prophetic scheme of the Royal Society"; and Henry Oldenburg (_c._ 1615-1677), one of the first secretaries of the society, speaks of the new eagerness to obtain scientific data as "a work begun by the single care and conduct of the excellent Lord Verulam." Boyle, in whose works there are frequent eulogistic references to Bacon, regarded himself as a disciple and was indeed known as a second Bacon. The predominating influence of Bacon's philosophy is thus clearly established in the generation which succeeded his own. There is abundant evidence to show that in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge (especially the latter) the new spirit had already modified the old curricula. Bacon has frequently been disparaged on the ground that his name is not mentioned by Sir Isaac Newton. It can be shown, however, that Newton was not ignorant of Bacon's works, and Dr Fowler explains his silence with regard to them on three grounds: (1) that Bacon's reputation was so well established that any definite mention was unnecessary, (2) that it was not customary at the time to acknowledge indebtedness to contemporary and recent writers, and (3) that Newton's genius was so strongly mathematical (whereas Bacon's great weakness was in mathematics) that he had no special reason to refer to Bacon's experimental principles. Entry: VI