In Avesta times the priests both married and toiled like the rest of the people. When their prosperity under the Sásánians tended to make them a class apart, they seem to have become less faithful to the ideals of their master, less stern in opposing evil in high places. It is a common experience of history. Originally they were true citizen-priests, mixing with the people as being of them. There was no life better or holier than the common life of duty and work. Isolation of any kind was contrary to the central Zoroastrian view of man as a social being. Among the wicked souls in hell, each one thinks itself utterly alone: it has no sight or knowledge of the host around it. Nothing could illustrate more powerfully than this the saying of a great French writer: “_Seul a un synonyme: mort!_” Solitude is the death of the soul. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ VII ZOROASTRIAN ZOOLOGY NO investigator of early Iran can afford to neglect the _Shahnameh_ of Firdusi, which was as good history as he could make it; that is to say, it was founded on extremely old legendary lore collected by him with a real wish to revive the memory of the past. Firdusi sang the glories of the “fire-worshippers” with such enthusiasm that one cannot be surprised if, when he died, the Sheikh of Tús doubted whether he ought receive orthodox Moslem burial: a doubt removed by an opportune dream in which the Sheikh saw the poet in Paradise. In Firdusi’s epic we are told that the earliest Persian king (who seems to have been not very far off the first man) lived in peace with all creation. Wild animals came round and knew him for their lord. He had a son who was killed by demons and a grandson named Húsheng, who, as soon as he was old enough, made war on the demons (Turanians?) to avenge his father’s murder. Every species of wild and tame beast obeyed Húsheng:— “The savage beasts, and those of gentler kind, Alike reposed before him and appeared To do him homage.”