The Greek Hephaestus personified the brightness of flame, and took shape as a god of ripe age, of muscular form, of serious countenance, but lame. Why lame? Why this physical defect as a drawback to so much physical beauty and strength? A Frenchman, Emérie, suggests--"attendu la marche inégale 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 Müller, 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.]"