Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 09.djvu/797

* HELIOZOA. 737 HELL. pseudopodia. A widespread and familiar species is .Ictiiiophrus sol. HE'LIUM (Xeo-Lat., from Gk. tjXios, hflios, sun). A gaseous element, first isolated by Wil- liam Ramsay in 1895. Lockyer discovered it, spectroscopically, in the solar chroniosphere aa far back as 1868. Ramsay obtained it originally by heating the Norwegian niiuoral clovito; l)ut it has since been found in other uranium minerals, in mineral waters, in meteorites, and in small quan- tities in atmospheric air. Helium (symbol He, atomic weight 3.9G) is a colorless gas scarcely twice as heavy as hydrogen. It was liquefied in 1898. Like argon, it shows a disinclination to enter into chemical union, and therefore its com- pounds have not been studied. Its molecules, like those of argon, are assumed to be made up of single atoms. Its spectrum has been examined by Sir William Crookes. who found the line Dj, which corresponds to the yellow double line ob- served in the spectrum of the solar chromosphere by Lockyer. • HEOilX (Lat., from Gk, Ai|, spiral). (1) In architecture, a spiral farm, as when a liight of steps winds round a cylindrical space or centre post. The name is also given to the little volutes under the flowers of the Corinthian capital. The helical line is the central line of such a helix or spiral, and corresponds to the axis of the usual rectangular constructions. (2) A genus of land-snails. Fossil forms are often found in great abundance in both the fresh-water and marine limestones and marls of Tertiary age in America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. HELL (Icel. hel, AS. hrl, hell, OIIG. hclla, Ger. Holle; probabl.y connected with AS., OHG. helan, Ger. hehlen. to cover, and ultimately with Lat. celare. Gk. (taXi/TrTeiK, kali/ptein, to hide, Olr. celim. I hide: hence, the hidden, unseen place). In common use, the place or state of the wicked after death, or the abode of evil spirits. Among the early Teutons the term signified the place under the earth whither all men. good or bad, went after death, and consequently denoted a concep- tion similar to the Semitic Sheol (q.v.). There is evidence, however, that already before contact with Christianity this nether world was divided into distinct parts. Thus in the realm over which the goddess Ilel rules there is the blessed place where Balder and Xanna dwell, and also Lif and Lifthraser, who are to become parents of a new and better human race; and there is Nas- trand, where the monster Nidhiigg feeds vipon the bodies of murderers, perjurers, and adulterers. How strongly intrenched the original meaning was is evident from the fact that the early trans- lators of the Bible did not hesitate to use the word as a rendering of Sheol. the pit, or the grave, even in passages where good men are said to descend into these places. Jlodern translators generally restrict the word to those cases where the original has Gehenna (q.v.) or Tartarus, in harmony with the significance that the term has gradually attained. The Greek conception of Hades, or the imseen world, as seen in the Ho- meric poems, is substantially the same as that of the early Teuton. To the animistic origin of the idea the Mycen;T>an tombs bear testimony. Whatever native tendencies there may have been in the direction of a moral distinction and a differing lot among the shades in Hades, they were greatly strengthened in the seventh and sixth centuries R.c. by the establishment upon Grecian soil of the originally Thracian Orphic cult societies. Those initiated in the Orphic mysteries secured for themselves a blessed im- mortality, while the uninitiated were liable to severe punishment for their sins in Hades. In a societv where the lex tatioiiis prevailed, it is natural that the punishment conceived to be in- llicted upon men in a future world should be related to the crimes committed, and (Jreek im- agination nicely adjusted the penalty to the sin. Through Pythagoras of Saiiios in the sixth cen- tury B.C., the idea of a transmigration of souls and the necessity of expiating the sins of a past age grafted itself upon the Orj)hic conceptions. With the expansion of Greek civilization through the conquests of Alexander, Orphic and Pytha- gorean speculation spread in the Kast, modifying or transforming many native ideas. .s in other Semitic nations, so in ancient Israel, the shadowy existence in Sheol was in marked contrast with existence in the land of the living and could not be called life at all. In Sheol there were no moral distinctions and no rewards for virtue or punish- ments for crimes. "The wicked ceased from troubling and the weary were at rest." This atti- tude toward the future was preserved throughout the Old Testament. There is not a single passage in which Sheol is represented as a place where the wicked are punished. When for the first time the idea of a resurrection is found in the Book of Daniel (written B.C. 105), the tyrants that are raised to obloquy and shame, as well as the martyrs that rise to life and glory, umloubtedly continue their existence on earth. In an addition to the last chapter of the Book of Isaiah, prob- ably made in the sec-ond century B.C. (Ixvi. 23, 24), it is predicted that the pious Jews who visit the temple in Jerusalem on Sabbaths and other Iiolidays will go out to look with pleasure upon the carcasses of the enemies that are being con- sumed by fire and worms. Probably the Valley of Hinnom (q.v.) is meant. It is significant that this place of punishment has not yet been trans- ferred to the unseen world. There was no allu- sion to this passage in the original text of Ecclus. vii. IT, where the Hebrew has only "the hope of man is the worm." But substantially the same conception of the Valley of Hinnom is found in ' Enoch xxvii. 2, 3, and xc. 24-26. While the growth of the doctrine of Gehenna can be ex- plained from national premises (see Hinnom), the transformation of a Sheol without wide dis- tinctions into a hell where the wicked are pun- ished, seen for the first time in Enoch xxii.. can scarcely be accounted for without resorting to Greek influence. In this place of punishment some sinners remain, according to the author, even after the general judgment, being neither slain nor raised. In the Slavonic Enoch, the prison of the apostate angels is in the second heaven (vii.), and the place of the damned in the northern part of the third heaven (x.); and in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the spirits of the lawless are confined in the second heaven. In the Wisdom of Solomon, iii. 10, 14; iv. 10. 19, Hades is practically identical with Gehenna, since the author does not believe in a resurrection. The influence of OrphicPj-tha- gorean thought is particularly evident in the fullest description of hell preserved from the early Church, the Apocalypse of Peter, where the different punishments are carefully adjusted to