BABYLON AND PERSIA

96 MEDIA, BABYLON, AND PERSIA.misses his footing, and is dragged down into the"abode of Lie," which is Endless Darkness.2. ' ' Towards this loftiest and purest, while alsosimplest, of all the doctrines that the ancient worldhas taught, tended the evolution of , the primevalAryan Dualism of Nature,, as it was effected in theEranian spiritual consciousness, moulded and direct¬ed by the peculiar conditions of Eranian life. Thatthis evolution did not waste itself in vague andprofitless repinings and speculations, like the streamsof Eran in the barren sands, but culminated in apositive faith, fruitful in works, like cloud-fed springsthat are gathered to a head and flow forth, a mightyand life-giving river, into the haunts of men this isdue to the genius and preaching of Zarathushtra.He laid before his people their own thoughts in allthe pure transparency of crystal waters cleared frommuddiness and unwholesome admixtures in thefilter of his own transcendant and searching mind.Pie guided their groping hands, and made themgrasp the truth for which they were blindly reach¬ing. Such is the mission of every true prophet. Hadthe people not been ripe for his teaching, he couldnot have secured a hearing, or made himself under¬stood ; the people, on the other hand, could neverhave worked out unaided the ideal to which theywere vaguely and only half-consciously drawn.They listened and understood, and were won, be¬cause, to use the expression of a great writer,* they* Voltaire. He says of the hero of one of his stories, that he re¬flected profoundly on a certain idea, "of which he seemed to havethe seed in himself."