FIRE. Whether a tribe of men ignorant of fire and its uses has ever existed, is a question in dispute among historians and travelers. It will be enough to say that absolute proof of the existence of such a tribe has not been presented, though there are many well authenticated facts and circumstances that suggest its possibility. The uses and dangers of fire, and to a certain extent the means of controlling it, must have been generally understood at a very early age. At first it may have been simply an object of terror, but probably men soon discovered that it was a friend no less than an enemy: Concussion or friction was undoubtedly the earliest method employed for producing fire. In the process of chipping stone, sparks were elicited, which, falling upon com bustible substances, may have taught men how to produce a blaze at pleasure. The concussion of flint and steel was for ages doubtless the common method of kindling a fire, and it has not yet been entirely superseded. The Alaskans strike together two pieces of quartz, rubbed with sulphur, thereby setting the sulphur on fire, and then transfer the flame to a heap of dry grass. The Esquimaux use quartz and iron pyrites. In some countries sparks are produced by striking a piece of broken china upon bamboo; in Cochin China two pieces of bamboo are used, the silicious character of the outside layer of this wood rendering it as good as native flint. Numerous mechanical devices, for increasing by rapidity of motion the friction of different woods, were resorted to. In some cases a stick was rubbed backwards and forwards; in others it was made to rotate rapidly in a round hole in a stationary piece of wood. This method was used by the North American Indians, who improved it by applying the principle of the bow drill. The Iroquois used the still more ingenious pump-drill. The production of fire by concentrating the rays of the sun by means of a burning-glass was well known to the ancients. North American legends narrate how the great buffalo, careering through the plains, makes sparks flit in the night, and sets the prairie ablaze by his hoofs hitting the rocks. The same idea appears in the Hindu mythology. To save the labor required in these initial processes of procuring light, and to avoid the inconvenience of carrying it about continually, primitive men hit on the expedient of a fire which should burn night and day in a public building. The Egyptians had one in every temple, the Greeks, Latins, and Persians in all towns and villages. Of these the "eternal lamps" in the Byzantine and Catholic churches may be the survival. Even the functions of the state itself, according to sonic eminent writers, appear to have grown out of the care bestowed on the tribal fire. The first guardians of this fire, it is said, were the earliest public servants, who by degrees appropriated all important offices, as the itself developed into a vast aggregation of interests. The men who in the Roman empire took charge of the tribal fire were called the • prytanes. They were fed at the public expense, and they became magistrates, in whom were combined the powers of captain, priest, and king. When Augustus usurped the authority of imperator, he assumed the powers which belonged to a board of flamens, or of prytanes. He made himself pontifex maximus and assumed the charge of the public fire. The Hellenic nations, as well as the Aztecs, received their ambassadors in their temples of fire, where, as at the national hearth, they feasted the foreign guests. The prytaneion and the state were convertible terms. If by chance the fire in the Roman temple of Vesta was extinguished, all tribunals, all public or private business had to stop immediately. No Greek or Roman army crossed the frontier without carrying an altar where the fire taken from the pry taneion burned night and day. Greek colonies went not forth without living coals
from the altar of Hestia, to light in their new country a fire like that burning at the old home. Architecture, it is supposed, began with the creation of sacred sheds to protect the sacred fire, which was looked upon as a divinity. The fire that burned in the temple of Vesta was regarded as the very goddess herself. The hearth fire was kept holy, its flame was to remain bright and pure. According to the Zend Avesta nothing unclean was to be thrown into the fire, and no indecent actions are to be committed before it. To spit in one's time would be considered In some places an unpardonable offense. Some people were so reverent that they would not blow out a light lest they should render the flame impure with their breath. In the course of time, the same reasons which led to the provision for a tribal the induced every family to have its hearth. The family developed itself only after the married pair and their offspring had their own fire-place. This family fire was at first the privilege of only the aristocracy. The hearth was the very center of the house, as the regia was the sacred center of Rome and the Roman commonwealth.; around the regia the civic and politic institutions developed themselves; and around the hearth the family grew slowly into shape and power. Let us hope it may not decline under the influence of those "modern improve ments" which have superseded the hearth-stone and banished from sight the household fire. The Gentile hearth gave a recognized asylum—a right still in full vigor in some countries. The proud saying of the Englishman that his home is his castle is a remnant of this old feeling. According to the ancient belief the soul and the fire were identical. As the sun gave life to the earth, so the fire on the hearth radiated life within the house. It was the seat of the Lares and Penates, of the ancestors; a dwelling-place for the deceased; there also a stock of souls ready to enter into existence by new births was maintained. The Vedas taught that the hearth-fire was co-substantial with the cause of generation. Hence care was taken to preserve the purity of descent in the kin by pre serving the flame of the hearth pure and umningled with the fire taken from another house. The ancient Persians fed their fires, and especially their sacred fires, with only certain kinds of wood reputed to be cleaner than others, well dried and stripped of the bark. In all countries it was considered a fatal omen if the fire died out on the hearth, A new fire was to be lighted by the friction of two twigs, as to fetch some from a neighbor's would have been considered an adulterous union of hearths, an undue min gling of the blood of two families. The ancient naturalists supposed that the generation of fire by the friction of two woods, one of harder, the other of softer substance, was the exact counterpart of human generation. Life was compared to a flame, to a torch, and no comparison can be more true. A torch that was put out by throwing it violently on the ground symbolized in ecclesiastical rites excommunication, or the condemnation of a soul to eternal death. Sickness being identified with sin, fire became the first and most esteemed of curative agents. The mother, after delivery, walked through fires lighted on her right hand and on her left; the infants, especially the males, were fumi gated with great care. Among some populations none could approach mother and child without stepping over a brazier. Fiery ordeals heralded the attainment of the age of puberty by both sexes. Purification by fire led to the institution of baptism by fire, which in many places was thought vastly superior to baptism by water; and the idea obtained its furthest development in the notion of purgatorial fires.