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CHAPTER XVI
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ORIGIN OF THE DIAMOND
IN
olden times little was known about the diamond beyond the superficial
facts that it was hard, brilliant, and crystallized in a certain
definite form. In India, where it was first found and used as a jewel,
imagination usually answered the questions of the curious, and if the
answers were adopted by those in authority, they were universally
received, for rulers did not tolerate differences of opinion. So it
was that diamonds were believed to be the gift of heaven, crystallized
in the earth by thunderbolts. The wise men of the day dutifully adduced
as proof, the assertion that diamonds were abundant in mines where
there were also thunderbolts.
As
in these days, but to a greater degree, people received the statements
emanating from high places without question, for it is easier to
believe than to think, and so it was that for centuries of bookless,
newspaperless years, these statements satisfied a world which had not
yet learned to trouble itself much about the antecedents of things.
Generation
repeated to generation- the explanation, and when the gem began to
drift from the old world of the Orient to the younger Occident, the
same old story went with it, and was received with the respectful
credulity to which such a grave and ancient source was entitled.
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