It is quite true that this symbology of Fire is not original with
Simon, but there is also no reason to suppose that the Samaritan
teacher plagiarized from Heracleitus when we know that the major part of
antiquity regarded fire and the sun as the most fitting symbols of
Deity. Of the manifested elements, fire was the most potent, and
therefore the most fitting symbol that could be selected in manifested
nature.

But what was the Fire of Heracleitus, the Obscure ([Greek: ho
skoteinos]), as Cicero, with the rest of the ancients, called him,
because of his difficult style? What was the Universal Principle of the
"weeping philosopher," the pessimist who valued so little the estimation
of the vulgar ([Greek: ochloloidoros])? It certainly was no common
"fire," certainly no puerile concept to be brushed away by the mere
hurling of an epithet.

Heracleitus of Ephesus (_flor. c._ 503 B.C.) was a sincerely religious
man in the highest sense of the word, a reformer who strongly opposed
the degenerate polytheism and idolatry of his age; he insisted on the
impermanence of the phenomenal universe, of human affairs, beliefs and
opinions, and declared the One Eternal Reality; teaching that the Self
of man was a portion of the Divine Intelligence. The object of his
enquiry was Wisdom, and he reproached his vain-glorious countrymen of
the city of Diana with the words: "Your _knowledge_ of many things does
not give you _wisdom_."

In his philosophy of nature he declared the One Thing to be Fire, but
Fire of a mystical nature, "self-kindled and self-extinguished," the
vital quickening power of the universe. It was that Universal Life, by
participation in which all things have their being, and apart from which