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 they are unsubstantial and unreal.  This is the “Tree of Life” spoken of by Simon.

In this Ocean of Fire or Life—­in every point or atom of it—­is inherent a longing to manifest itself in various forms, thus giving rise to the perpetual flux and change of the phenomenal world.  This Divine Desire, this “love for everything that lives and breathes,” is found in many systems, and especially in the Vedic and Phoenician Cosmogony.  In the Rig Veda (x. 129), it is that Kama or Desire “which first arose in It (the Unknown Deity),” elsewhere identified with Agni or Fire.  In the fragments of Phoenician Cosmogony, recovered from Sanchuniathon, it is called Pothos ([Greek:  pothos]) and Eros ([Greek:  eros]).

In its pure state, the Living and Rational Fire of Heracleitus resides in the highest conceivable Heaven, whence it descends stage by stage, gradually losing the velocity of its motion and vitality, until it finally reaches the Earth-stage, having previously passed through that of “Water.”  Thence it returns to its parent source.

In this eternal flux, the only repose was to be found in the harmony that occasionally resulted from one portion of the Fire in its descent meeting another in its ascent.  All this took place under Law and Order, and the Soul of man being a portion of the Fire in its pure state, and therefore an exile here on Earth, could only be at rest by cultivating as the highest good, contentment ([Greek:  euarestaesis]), or acquiescence to the Law.