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FIRE IN THE EARTH
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While
she contemplated beauty she also planned horror. She saw in the future
sunsets and sunrises, a lonely tree on a hilltop, the glory of the
human image, the immensity of the mind, a child at sleep, pine trees
against the sky. But on the blueprint confronting her and Time were
also drawn the outlines of hate, fear, worry, war, despair, suffering.
Down
deep into the center of the earth Time and Nature went, drawing the
overwhelming heat and flame with them. The world above went on evolving
toward its destiny, creating living things, sounds and smells,
thoughts unspoken; but in the center of the earth the fires raged as
furiously as ever, creating terrific heat and pressure. And out of this
heat and pressure came what are known as igneous rocks and out of these
rocks—although of this no man is sure— came something else, the product
of Time and Nature, which kept crowding carbon atoms together in a
compact mass, trapping them in molten lava and then, through the same
relentless heat and pressure, forcing them to burst through the earth's
crust from enormous depths—cool crystals of unquenchable flame.
These crystallized pieces of carbon men today call diamonds.
The Greeks (and the Latins) had another word for them: adamas. In
fact, "diamond" is a corruption of the word which originally meant "the
invincible" and was later applied to the diamond because it was so
hard, so indestructible, seemingly. The old form of the name pops up
in an English translation of 1750 of the Speculum Lapidum (Venetia,
1502) by Gamillus Leonardus, whoever he was. Indeed, Pliny the Younger
had something to say on the same subject, originating most of the
superstitions. These things are noted here not to inject an air of
erudition but because it is interesting to find how superstition, as
well
(2)
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