“Nor Aught nor Nought existed; yon bright sky
  Was not, nor heaven’s broad woof outstretched above. 
  What covered all? what sheltered? what concealed? 
  Was it the water’s fathomless abyss? 
  There was not death—­yet was there nought immortal,
  There was no confine betwixt day and night;
  The only One breathed breathless by itself,
  Other than It there nothing since has been. 
  Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled
  In gloom profound—­an ocean without light—­
  The germ that still lay covered in the husk
  Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat. 
  Then first came love upon it, the new spring
  Of mind—­yea, poets in their hearts discerned,
  Pondering, this bond between created things
  And uncreated.  Comes this spark from earth,
  Piercing and all-pervading, or from heaven? 
  Then seeds were sown, and mighty powers arose—­
  Nature below, and power and will above—­
  Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here,
  Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang? 
  The gods themselves came later into being—­
  Who knows from whence this great creation sprang? 
  He from whom all this great creation came,
  Whether his will created or was mute,
  The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven,
  He knows it—­or perchance even He knows not.”

It is evident that in this hymn, the expression of the moment when human thought was partly freed from the earlier anthropomorphic ideas, the scientific faculty which attempts a rational explanation of the world is shown; and although this is an isolated inspiration of the prophet, yet it shadows forth the conclusions to which the primitive Hellenic speculation came when it was deliberately exerted to solve the problem of creation.  In fact, there is here an intimation of the waters, of the void or deep abyss, as the beginnings of the world; of the breath of the One, the hidden germ of things developed by means of heat; of productive powers as a lower, and energy as a higher form of nature; of conceptions found in the Ionic, the Pythagorean, and the Eleatic philosophies, which all converge into the one.  All belong to the same Aryan race.

The Vedic composition represents in Dyavaprthivi the close connection between the two divinities, Heaven and Earth, the one considered as the active and creative principle, the other as that which is passive and fertilized; the same ideas, more or less worked out, underlie not only the first philosophies, but successive theories and systems.  The worship of water, of fire, and of air involved their personification, and they then became exciting principles, in accordance with the law of evolution which we have laid down.  In the Rig-Veda, as well as in the Zendavesta, the waters are collectively invoked by their special name apas, and they are termed the mothers, the divine, which contain the amrta