FARGAD 4.  CIVIL AND CRIMINAL LAW.  Whoever refuses to restore property to one to whom he knows it belongs by right, is a thief.  Every day and night that he keeps this property he is guilty of theft.  “How many kinds of property are there?” asked Zarathustra.  “These six,” was the answer. “1.  That made by mere words. 2.  That made by striking hands. 3.  That made by depositing a sheep as security. 4, 5, 6.  Those cases in which the security is respectively an ox, a man’s value, and the value of a full field.”  Then there follow details of penalties for violating these several contracts:—­e.g., for breaking the first—­300 stripes of the rod, and so forth.

FARGADS 5-18, give the laws for the treatment of dead bodies.  The two determining principles are—­1.  That a dead body is impure. 2.  The elements earth, fire, and water, are absolutely pure and sacred.  Bodies are not, therefore, to be buried, or they would pollute the earth; nor are they to be burnt, or they would pollute fire, nor thrown into water of any kind.  They must be carried up to a lofty mountain, placed on stones, or iron plates, and exposed to dogs and vultures.  Impurity from contact with a dead body, etc., is removed by pure water (Cf. the water of baptism).  Then there follow laws prescribing the counter-charms to be used against evil spirits; the methods by which the sacred fire must be made and used, and so forth.

FARGAD 19, treats of the fate of the soul after death.

The Aprocryphal or Khorda Avesta

[The Yashts resemble closely the prayers of the Yasnas and the Vispereds, differing only in this, that each one of the twenty-four extant is devoted to the traits of a single deity, or at least of one class of divine beings (the bountiful immortals, and so forth).  The usual word in the Yashts for the superhuman beings at rest is Yazads.]

YASHT I. The names of Ahura-Mazda and their efficacy.

Asked Zarathustra, “What, O Most High, are the most effective counter-charms (mantras) against evil spirits?” He received for answer that the pronunciation of the twenty different names of Ahura-Mazda are the best and strongest spells.  These are the following:—­1.  The Revealer. 2.  The Herd-giver, etc., etc.  The twentieth and last is Mazda, the All-knowing One.

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PHILOSOPHY

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 ARISTOTLE

THE ETHICS OF ARISTOTLE

Aristotle was born at Stagira, a Greek colony on the Macedonian frontier, in 384 B.C., when Plato was forty-three, fifteen years after the death of Socrates.  Going to Athens, he became one of Plato’s pupils in philosophy at the age of twenty.  In 342 he became tutor to the future Alexander the Great, and some years later opened, again at Athens, his own school, whose