50 INDOOE STUDIES 



main secret of the matter. He said the ancients 

 hesitated to put out a fire because of the relation it 

 had to the sacred and eternal flame. "Nothing," 

 he says, "bears such a resemblance to an animal as 

 fire. It is moved and nourished by itself, and by 

 its brightness, like the soul, discovers and makes 

 everything apparent; but in its quenching it prin- 

 cipally shows some power that seems to proceed 

 from our vital principle, for it makes a noise and 

 resists like an animal dying or violently slaugh- 

 tered. " 



The feeling, too, with which the old philosophers 

 looked upon the starry heavens is less antagonistic 

 to science than it is welcome and suggestive to the 

 human heart. Says Plutarch in his "Sentiments 

 of Nature Philosophers delighted in: " "To men, the 

 heavenly bodies that are so visible did give the 

 knowledge of the Deity; when they contemplated 

 that they are the causes of so great an harmony, 

 that they regulate day and night, winter and sum- 

 mer, by their rising and setting, and likewise con- 

 sidered these things which by their influence in the 

 earth do receive a being and do likewise fructify. 

 It was manifest to men that the Heaven was the 

 father of those things, and the Earth the mother: 

 that the Heaven was the father is clear, since from 

 the heavens there is the pouring down of waters, 

 which have their spermatic faculty; the Earth the 

 mother because she receives them and brings forth. 

 Likewise men, considering that the stars are run- 

 ning in a perpetual motion, and that the sun and 



