The poets gave the name Aditi to the dawn. Aditi is derived from _diti_, binding and bond, with the negative particle _a_; thus at first _Aditi_ meant that which is without bonds, not chained, not enclosed, infinite. But their imagination soon carried the poets beyond the dawn itself, that came and went, but there remained always behind the dawn that heaving sea of light or fire from which she springs; thus Aditi herself could not be grasped by the senses. Was not this the visible infinite? At this point the mind of the rishis conceived an original and striking idea, at the sight of the sun following his path and touching two opposite points of the horizon; they said that arrived at the centre of its course at the zenith, Indra from thence could see at the same time Diti and Aditi--“That is what is yonder and what is here, what is infinite and what is finite, what is mortal and what is immortal.”[77] Whilst searching increasingly for what he had not yet found, man had mastered two ideas, those of law, and the beyond or the infinite, though not understanding the accurate meaning of these words; on these two points his mind was at rest. These two possessions once acquired could not be taken from him; in Aditi--which is limitless--could be found a home for things which had no bounds, and it could furnish an answer to all questions; and Rita, the order which rules the movements of the celestial bodies, is at the same time an incentive and a promise. A violent convulsion of nature may have alarmed the hearts of men, but the thought occurs to them, “This cannot last always.”[78] “Sun and moon move in regular succession--that we may see, Indra, and believe.”[79] Without fear there could have been no hope, without hope there could have been no faith. Śraddhâ, an ancient Aryan word used before the dispersion of the various members of the family, is the same as the Latin Credo. Where the Romans said _credidi_ the Brahmans said _śraddadhau_; where the Romans said _creditum_, the Brahmans said _śraddhitam_. The germ of the faculty of faith, therefore, must have existed in the earliest strata of thought and language, since without the first glimpses of faith in the soul, there could have been no word for “to believe.” As auxiliary verbs were lacking at first, the early Aryans found it very difficult to say of a thing that it is or is not; but they possessed the root _as_, which originally meant _to breathe_, and its simplest derivation was _as-u_--breath. Man having discovered in all the natural phenomena an activity resembling his own, said of the moon that it measures, of the river that it runs, of the sun that it rises and sets; thus each of these had certain activities peculiar to itself. Was there nothing common to all? Doubtless, since an action can be found which is shared equally by man and all animals, the act of breathing is common to all, so that our fathers when wishing to affirm that something existed said that it breathed.