The record-union., 1893-07-14
EVOLUTION OF THE FIREsIDE.
Great Races Spring From Places Where
the Family Hearth Exists.

Great Races Spring From Places Where
the Family Hearth Exists.
Somebody found that the friction of two
sticks would produce flame. And 10!
all the arts and sciences were born! This
discovery must have been made very,
very long ago, according to writer in
FeterSOn'S. for the earliest people of
whom we have any knowledge had for
gotten about it and were turning it into
myth and miracle. Agni, the ire, was
Worshiped by the Hindoos as one OF the
great gods, while among the Greeks the
Titan PrOmetheus was said to have stolen
the fire from heaven and brought it down
10 men hidden in a reed. This he did in
pity for the suffering race OF man, while
Tor the pity and help he, like so many
other of mans helpers and reformers,
was doomed to persecution and torture.
1t IS only within the present century and
since the discovery of the old Sanskrit
scriptures that we have found out that
Prometheus is Pramantha, the fire drill,
and that out of the wonder of the fire the
worshlping imagination of the people
| has created the wonder story OF the man
loving victim of Zeus.
The fire early became a symbol of the
! sun, and through a thousand changes
this primeval marvel of the fire has be-
come part of the poetry, the folklore,
the religion of all the world. The Parsis
were fire worshipers. Bael, the fire god,
ruled many a Semitic tribe. The beauti-
ful PersephOne is seized by the god of the
underworld and borne away to his sun
less kingdom. Her mother, Ceres,
mourns her and searches everywhere
over the desolate earth for her daughter.
By and by she is permitted to return and
spend SIX months in the upper world.
| The flowers bloom, the corn grows and
the birds sing at her approach. So grows
the larry story OF winter and summer.
But not only in pagan lands do these
traces of sun and ire worship appear.
| Our Lents and casters, our altar candles,
our Halloweens, our eastward positions
IN prayer-all these are poetic relics of
the age-long wonder of the fire.
In the first place, sunshine is the con-
dition of all life on earth, and the fire on
the hearth is only transformed sunshine.
ms sunshine was stored up ages ago in
the beds OF coal or in the growing trees
year by year. So, as we sit about the
hre, 1t IS the sunshine of other years or
other ages that dances in the flame or
gloWs in the red anthracite. And as it is
the sun that gives light, so it is this sun
shine IN the fire that makes man the free
inhabitant of all the earth, whatever the
natural climate may be. Wherever he is
able to live at all he creates for himself
artificial tropics, thus establishing once
/ more and permanently the essential con-
| dltiOnS of his primeval home Born in
| the tropics, he can live only in the trop-
| les, and with the wonder wand of ire he
creates for himself the tropics anywhere.
! In the next place it is sometimes said
that the great races are the ones who live
! IN the northlands.
This may be so to-day, but if we look
/ back and study the past we see that all
the greatest arts and lteratures and re-
/ llgions of the world grew and blossomed
and bore fruit in the lands Of the sun
la,a l,, 81 -
! Palestine OF Egypt, OF Greece, of Rome.
we speak of the homes of all the beauty
and truth and aspiration of man that
have eliminated in our modern civiliza-
ton. All? Not quite, for we must re-
member Germany and France and Eng
land. But these do not contradict our
statement, for the achievement of these
was not attained except as the fire eu-
abled the people to make for themselves
lands of the sun about their tiresides, and
III these artificial sunlights the great
works have been wrought out.