The Book of Earths

THIS BOOK OF EARTHS began years ago, with a single little figure of Earth taken from what old book I do not know. For a long time it lay by itself; then another, come upon by chance, was laid beside it; and still others as I happened on them, always by chance. Old odd maps joined the casual collection--maps of the Earth, the Moon, the heavens. It was never a collection in the usual sense of the word, because it was so casual; but, such as it was, it is the origin of this book. For it occurred to me, not long ago, that it would be "fun" to put them all together, and many others with them, chosen to fill in the gaps of the original group. Luckily for the fun of it, the search about to begin would not be limited to what we know about the Earth, else it would have ended before it began; for we live in a universe of which we know little, and on a planet of which we know perhaps less. It would include not only what we know, or think to-day we know, but also any-thing that has been believed or felt or no more than "guessed" to be the picture of the Earth and its place in the universe. It would include not only science, modern and ancient, but tradition, the older the better; diagrams or pictures based on little more than folk-lore; cosmogonies of religions great and small; cosmogonies of philosophers, of poets, and of savages. It would gather together pictured theories, guesses, hypotheses, or merely flights of pure imagination, whether "true" or "false" to-day; since history teaches us nothing if it does not teach us that one century's false doctrine is another century's truth, and that the mistakes of any age or race are quite as illuminating as any "truth" by which it lived.