If these propositions can be proved, they will solve many problems which now perplex mankind; they will confirm in many respects the statements in the opening chapters of Genesis; they will widen the area of human history; they will explain the remarkable resemblances which exist between the ancient civilizations found upon the opposite shores of the Atlantic Ocean, in the old and new worlds; and they will aid us to rehabilitate the fathers of our civilization, our blood, and our fundamental ideas-the men who lived, loved, and labored ages before the Aryans descended upon India, or the Phoenician had settled in Syria, or the Goth had reached the shores of the Baltic.

The fact that the story of Atlantis was for thousands of years regarded as a fable proves nothing.  There is an unbelief which grows out of ignorance, as well as a scepticism which is born of intelligence.  The people nearest to the past are not always those who are best informed concerning the past.

For a thousand years it was believed that the legends of the buried cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were myths:  they were spoken of as “the fabulous cities.”  For a thousand years the educated world did not credit the accounts given by Herodotus of the wonders of the ancient civilizations of the Nile and of Chaldea.  He was called “the father of liars.”  Even Plutarch sneered at him.  Now, in the language of Frederick Schlegel, “the deeper and more comprehensive the researches of the moderns have been, the more their regard and esteem for Herodotus has increased.”  Buckle says, “His minute information about Egypt and Asia Minor is admitted by all geographers.”

There was a time when the expedition sent out by Pharaoh Necho to circumnavigate Africa was doubted, because the explorers stated that after they had progressed a certain distance the sun was north of them; this circumstance, which then aroused suspicion, now proves to us that the Egyptian navigators had really passed the equator, and anticipated by 2100 years Vasquez de Gama in his discovery of the Cape of Good Hope.

If I succeed in demonstrating the truth of the somewhat startling propositions with which I commenced this chapter, it will only be by bringing to bear upon the question of Atlantis a thousand converging lines of light from a multitude of researches made by scholars in different fields of modern thought.  Further investigations and discoveries will, I trust, confirm the correctness of the conclusions at which I have arrived.

CHAPTER II.

Plato’s history of Atlantis.

Plato has preserved for us the history of Atlantis.  If our views are correct, it is one of the most valuable records which have come down to us from antiquity.