in it is found the solution of many of the problems that have disturbed the human mind."
It is this dominating fact that offers a key to the special history of precious stones.
Among
the grand false or mistaken ideas held by the ancients, there are two
that deserve alt the attention of the historian and the philosopher.
The first led them to consider man as a microcosm—a reduction in
miniature of the entire universe, a 'little world' in exact counterpart
of the 'great world.' Accordingly every part of man's body was believed
to have a corresponding part in the vast universe.
The
second was the conception of the soul of the world, according to which
the souls of animated beings were but parts of the universal soul. At
the moment of the dissolution of the body, said the philosophers of
India, the soul, âtmâ, very different from the merely vital principle, will unite itself, if it is pure, with the great universal soul, paramâtmâ, from
which it emanated. If it is impure it will be condemned to submit to a
certain number of transmigrations, that is to say, to animate
successively plants or animals, or even to be incarcerated in some mineral body until, purified of all imperfections, it is considered worthy of absorption, mukti, into the Divinity.
Thus minerals as well as animals and plants were to these philosophers living beings.
