es cut the circumference of the great circle, a
part of a smaller circle outside the great one united the points over
each other. And upon the east side, toward the altar, the great circle
was not joined, but open for a short distance.[5]

[Footnote 5: The Mazdayashnian Dakhma, or place of death. This
figure represents the ground-plan of the modern Parsi Tower of
Silence.]

When the figure was traced, Zoroaster came out from it and touched the
black rock whereon the fire burned; and then he turned back and entered
the circle, and with his fingers joined it where it was open on the east
side through which he had entered. And immediately, as the circle was
completed, there sprung up over the whole line he had traced a soft
light; like that of the fire, but less strong. Then Zoroaster lay down
upon his back, with his feet to the west and his head toward the altar,
and he folded his hands upon his breast and closed his eyes. As he lay,
his body became rigid and his face as the face of the dead; and his
spirit was loosed in the trance and freed from the bonds of earth, while
his limbs rested.

Lying there, separated from the world, cut off within the circle of a
symbolised death by the light of the universal agent,[6] Zoroaster
dreamed dreams and saw visions.

[Footnote 6: The term "universal agent" has been used in the
mysticism of ages, to designate that subtle and all-pervading
fluid, of which the phenomena of light, heat, electricity and
vitality are considered to be but the grosser and more palpable
manifestations.]

His mind was first opened to the understanding of those broader
conceptions of space and time of which he had read in the books of
Daniel, his master. He had understood the principles then, but he had
not realised their truth. He was too intimately connected with the life
around him, to be able to see in the clearer light which penetrates with
universal truth all the base forms of perishable matter.

Daniel had taught him the first great principles. All men, in their
ignorance, speak of the infinities of space and time as being those
ideas which man cannot of himself grasp or understand. Man, they say, is
limited in capacity; he can, therefore, not comprehend the infinite. A
greater fault than this could not be committed by a thinking being. For
infinity being unending, it is incapable of being limited; it rejects
definition, which belongs, by its nature, to fi