This striking deva, Agni, manifested at first in the lightning and in the spark, became as time went on, the most popular, and most desired of all the powers; the fire on the hearth rendered winter bearable, cooked herbs and roots, and transformed the devourer of raw flesh into the eater of roast meat; caused the smoke of sacrifices offered to the higher Powers to ascend up to heaven. What precautions were necessary to prevent the capricious and uncertain fire from becoming extinct at an inopportune moment, or in its rage from destroying men and things. Fire was for the rishis a being more and more inexplicable. Becoming increasingly impressed by his beneficence, they seek to call him by some new name which shall express more perfectly this later impression; the name deva--bright, shining--no longer satisfies them; they use words such as invincible, almighty; even these do not suffice them; at last they find the word Amartya--immortal. “Immortal amongst Mortals.” This expression may be understood in more ways than one; it is enough for me that the Hindoos made use of it. It is possible to recognise in it the first attempt to bridge over the gulf which human language and human thought had themselves created between the visible and the invisible, between the mortal and the immortal, between the finite and the infinite. For the right appreciation of our intellectual organisation, it is important to discover and distinguish the coarse threads that form the woof of our most abstract thoughts. It must be noticed that the use of the word _immortal_ in this passage does not imply that Agni is considered otherwise than as natural fire. The Rig-Veda does not seem to acknowledge the presence of supernatural beings; all the names given to the striking aspects of nature, even those used to designate the unknown powers in general, such as Asura--a living thing; Deva-asura--the living gods; Amartya--the immortal, still retain physical elements in the most ancient hymns. Beings without definite attributes did not occur to the imagination of those who supplied these names, and believed in the existence of those which these names represented.