uty and strength? A
Frenchman, Emerie, suggests--"attendu la marche inegale et
vacillante de la flamme." Certainly fire, as compared with water
and air, is dependent on sustenance, as Heracleitus so well
realised, as also its consequent limitations in regard to free and
independent movement: but the sage solved this difficulty by
making the Fire-motion feed, as it were, upon itself. The god
was represented as puny at birth because flame, especially as
kindled artificially, so often starts from a tiny spark. His
marriage to Aphrodite typifies "the association of fire with the
life-giving forces of nature." So, remarks Max Mueller, the
Hindu Agni was the patron of marriage. How many lines of
thought open out before us here, bringing us face to face, by
pre-scientific modes of mental activity, with some of the
deepest mysteries of human life!

Vulcan, the Latin parallel of Hephaestus, suggests to us the
awe-inspiring phenomena of volcanoes, which, though not of
frequent occurrence, are calculated by virtue of their magnitude
and grandeur to stimulate emotion and intuition to an
exceptional degree. Fear would naturally predominate, but, even
for the primitive mind, would be one factor only in a complex
whole. Matthew Arnold has attempted to portray the soul-storm
raised by the sight of the molten crater of AEtna. He makes
Empedocles, the poet-philosopher, climb the summit of the
mountain, gaze for the last time on the realm of nature spread
around, and apostrophise the stars above and the volcanic fires
beneath his feet.

"And thou, fiery world,
That sapp'st the vitals of this terrible mount
Upon whose charred and quaking crust I stand--
Thou, too, brimmest with life."

Note here again the sense of life--of kinship, so fundamental to
Nature Mysticism. And so to the close.

"And therefore, O ye elements! I know--
Ye know it too--it hath been granted me
Not to die wholly, not to be all enslaved.
I feel it in this hour. The numbing cloud
Mounts off my soul; I feel it, I breathe free,
Is it but for a moment?
--Ah, boil up, ye vapours!
Leap and roar, thou sea of fire!
My soul glows to meet you.
Ere it flag, ere the mists
Of despondency and gloom
Rush over it again,
Receive me, save me!
[He plunges into the crater.]"

Out of the ancient beliefs and myths concerning subterranean
fires grew up the enormously important beliefs in Hell