82 A BOOK OF MORTALS 



nothing behind. The Phoenix did not rise to new life 

 changed in any way ; but from its own ashes it renewed 

 itself, losing nothing, gaining nothing. 



So truly it exists now. The "full fair Brid," multi- 

 coloured, crested, shining, is the invisible atom, the almost 

 inconceivable electron. 



Yes ! The Phoenix whatever its form, whatever its 

 symbolism, to whatever purpose turned — as it has been 

 turned — by priests and poets and painters in the past, 

 remains still the underlying marvel of life, since it holds 

 the secret of the cradle and the grave. 



What that is, who knows ? 



" It Cometh to deathe of its own free will and from 

 deathe it cometh of its own free will to life." 



So writes one of the olden time, and we of later years 

 have come but little closer to clear comprehension of that 

 great law of Life through Sacrifice of Life which lives in 

 the word of the Master. 



" He that loveth his life shall lose it." 



In those old days, however, when the veil of the 

 Temple of Nature hung as a pall between the human 

 race and its environment, the effect of this widespread 

 legend of immortal self-immolation, self-creation, must 

 have been stupendous for mental evolution. 



It was, as it were, man's first effort at raising that veil, 

 his first half-incredulous glance at the Land of Promise 

 behind it ; for the legend of the Phoenix is to be found 

 in his earliest records. 



Thousands of years before Christianity gathered its 

 symbolism into her creed, the Phoenix in Egypt, in Greece, 

 in Babylonia, in Rome, preached the defeat of death, the 



