ood, even the meat, would have to be eaten raw, and as knives
and forks would be unknown, it would have to be devoured with hands and
teeth. We read that the Tartar horseman will put a beefsteak under his
saddle, and supple and cook it in a ten-mile ride; but we cannot all
follow his example, and many would think the game was not worth the
candle. But not only should we be obliged to eat our food uncooked;
we should enjoy none of the blessings and comforts bestowed upon us by
science, which absolutely depends on fire. Nay, our houses would be too
cold to shelter us in the winter, and we should be compelled to burrow
in the ground. The whole human race would have to live in tropical
countries; all the temperate regions would be deserted; and as it is
in the temperate regions that civilisation reaches its highest and most
permanent developments, the world would be reduced to a condition of
barbarism if not of savagery.

No wonder, then, that this mighty civiliser has figured so extensively
in legend and mythology. "Next to the worship of the sun," says Max
Mueller, "there is probably no religious worship so widely diffused as
that of Fire." At bottom, indeed, the two were nearly identical. The
flame of burning wood was felt to be akin to the rays of the sun, and
its very upward motion seemed an aspiration to its source. Sun and fire
alike gave warmth, which meant life and joy; without them there
reigned sterility and death. Do we not still speak of the _sunshine_
of prosperity, and of basking in the _rays_ of fortune? Do we not still
speak of the _fire_ of life, of inspiration, of love, of heroism? And
thus when the tide of our being is at the flood, we instinctively think
of our father the Sun, in whom, far more than in invisible gods, we live
and move--for we are all his children.

Like everything else in civilised existence, fire was a human discovery.
But superstitious ages imagined that so precious a thing must
have descended from above. Accordingly the Greeks (to take but one
illustration) fabled that Prometheus stole Jove's fire from Heaven and
gave it to mankind. And as the gods of early ages are not too friendly
to human beings, it was also fabled that Prometheus incurred the fierce
anger of Jove, who fastened him to a rock on Mount Caucasus, where
he was blistered by day and frozen by night, while Jove's vulture
everlastingly preyed upon his vitals.

The sun himself, in oriental countries, shining down implaca