The ancient pre-Asiatic civilizations were acquainted with a sun-worship having the idea of a God dying and rising again (Osiris, Tammuz, Attis-Adonis),[186] Christ, Mithra and his bull,[187] Phœnix and so on. The beneficent power as well as the destroying power was worshipped in fire. The forces of nature always have two sides, as we have already seen in the God of Job. This reciprocal bond brings us back once more to Miss Miller’s poem. Her reminiscences support our previous supposition, that the symbol of moth and sun is a condensation of two ideas, about one of which we have just spoken; the other is the moth and the flame. As the title of a play, about the contents of which the author tells us absolutely nothing, “Moth and Flame” may easily have the well-known erotic meaning of flying around the flame of passion until one’s wings are burned. The passionate longing, that is to say, the libido, has its two sides; it is power which beautifies everything, and which under other circumstances destroys everything. It often appears as if one could not accurately understand in what the destroying quality of the creative power consists. A woman who gives herself up to passion, particularly under the present-day condition of culture, experiences the destructive side only too soon. One has only to imagine one’s self a little away from the every-day moral conditions in order to understand what feelings of extreme insecurity overwhelm the individual who gives himself unconditionally over to Fate. To be fruitful means, indeed, to destroy one’s self, because with the rise of the succeeding generation the previous one has passed beyond its highest point; thus our descendants are our most dangerous enemies, whom we cannot overcome, for they will outlive us, and, therefore, without fail, will take the power from our enfeebled hands. The anxiety in the face of the erotic fate is wholly understandable, for there is something immeasurable therein. Fate usually hides unknown dangers, and the perpetual hesitation of the neurotic to venture upon life is easily explained by his desire to be allowed to stand still, so as not to take part in the dangerous battle of life.[188] _Whoever renounces the chance to experience must stifle in himself the wish for it, and, therefore, commits a sort of self-murder._ From this the death phantasies which readily accompany the renunciation of the erotic wish are made clear. In the poem _Miss Miller has voiced these phantasies_. She adds further to the material with the following: “I had been reading a selection from one of Byron’s poems which pleased me very much and made a deep and lasting impression. Moreover, the rhythm of my last two verses, ‘For I the source, etc.,’ and the two lines of Byron’s are very similar. ‘Now let me die as I have lived in faith, Nor tremble though the universe should quake.’”