the first germ of mind. This loving impulse
the Sages, seeking in their heart, recognised as the bond
between Being and Non-Being." How deep the plunge here into
the sphere of abstract thought! Yet so subtle and forceful had
been the mystic influence of the ocean on the primitive mind
that it declares itself as a working element in their abstrusest
speculations.

Nor has this mystic influence as suggesting the mysteries of
origin ceased to be operative. Here is Tennyson, addressing his
new-born son:

"Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep."

And again, when nearing the end of his own life, he strikes the
same old mystic chord:

"When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home."

Wordsworth, of course, felt the power of this ocean-born
intuition, and assures us that here and now:

"Tho' inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither."

And of intense interest as modernising the ancient concept of
"_Something_ which breathed without breath," is his appeal:

"Listen, the mighty Being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder--everlastingly."

It will not be possible to do more than draw attention to those
chief characteristics of the ocean which have given it so large a
place in the minds of men. And first would come the vastness of
the sea, which prompts vague intuitions of mystery and infinity.
The sight of its limitless expanse still has this power. "The sea
(says Holmes) belongs to eternity, and not to time, and of that it
sings for ever and ever." How natural, then, the trend of the
mythology just mentioned, and the belief in a primeval ocean--a
formless abyss--Tiamat--which, as Milton puts it in a splendid
line, is:

"The womb of nature and perhaps her grave."

But added to the mystic influence of sheer limitlessness are the
manifestations of power and majesty, which compel the awe
and wonder of those who "go down to the sea in ships and do
their business in great waters." In the minds of early navigators,
the experience of the terrors of the sea begot a sense of
relationship to hostile powers. One of the oldest Aryan words
for sea, the German _Meer_, Old English _Mere_, means death
or destruction; and the destructive action of the ocean's
untutored elementary force found personifications in the
Teutonic Oegir (Terror), with his dreaded daughter, and the
sea-goddess, Ran,