first of all. This Odin, in his rude semi-articulate way, had a word to

speak. A great heart laid open to take in this great Universe, and man's
Life here, and utter a great word about it. A Hero, as I say, in his own

rude manner; a wise, gifted, noble-hearted man. And now, if we still
admire such a man beyond all others, what must these wild Norse souls,

first awakened into thinking, have made of him! To them, as yet without
names for it, he was noble and noblest; Hero, Prophet, God; _Wuotan_, the

greatest of all. Thought is Thought, however it speak or spell itself.
Intrinsically, I conjecture, this Odin must have been of the same sort of

stuff as the greatest kind of men. A great thought in the wild deep heart
of him! The rough words he articulated, are they not the rudimental roots

of those English words we still use? He worked so, in that obscure
element. But he was as a _light_ kindled in it; a light of Intellect, rude

Nobleness of heart, the only kind of lights we have yet; a Hero, as I say:
and he had to shine there, and make his obscure element a little

lighter,--as is still the task of us all.
We will fancy him to be the Type Norseman; the finest Teuton whom that race

had yet produced. The rude Norse heart burst up into _boundless_
admiration round him; into adoration. He is as a root of so many great

things; the fruit of him is found growing from deep thousands of years,
over the whole field of Teutonic Life. Our own Wednesday, as I said, is it

not still Odin's Day? Wednesbury, Wansborough, Wanstead, Wandsworth: Odin
grew into England too, these are still leaves from that root! He was the

Chief God to all the Teutonic Peoples; their Pattern Norseman;--in such way
did _they_ admire their Pattern Norseman; that was the fortune he had in

the world.
Thus if the man Odin himself have vanished utterly, there is this huge

Shadow of him which still projects itself over the whole History of his
People. For this Odin once admitted to be God, we can understand well that

the whole Scandinavian Scheme of Nature, or dim No-scheme, whatever it
might before have been, would now begin to develop itself altogether

differently, and grow thenceforth in a new manner. What this Odin saw
into, and taught with his runes and his rhymes, the whole Teutonic People

laid to heart and carried forward. His way of thought became their way of
thought:--such, under new conditions, is the history of every great thinker

still. In gigantic confused lineaments, like some enormous camera-obscure
shadow thrown upwards from the dead deeps of the Past, and covering the

whole Northern Heaven, is not that Scandinavian Mythology in some sort the
Portraiture of this man Odin? The gigantic image of _his_ natural face,

legible or not legible there, expanded and confused in that manner! Ah,
Thought, I say, is always Thought. No great man lives in vain. The

History of the world is but the Biography of great men.
To me there is something very touching in this primeval figure of Heroism;

in such artless, helpless, but hearty entire reception of a Hero by his
fellow-men. Never so helpless in shape, it is the noblest of feelings, and

a feeling in some shape or other perennial as man himself. If I could show
in any measure, what I feel deeply for a long time now, That it is the

vital element of manhood, the soul of man's history here in our world,--it
would be the chief use of this discoursing at present. We do not now call

our great men Gods, nor admire _without_ limit; ah no, _with_ limit enough!
But if we have no great men, or do not admire at all,--that were a still

worse case.
This poor Scandinavian Hero-worship, that whole Norse way of looking at the

Universe, and adjusting oneself there, has an indestructible merit for us.
A rude childlike way of recognizing the divineness of Nature, the

divineness of Man; most rude, yet heartfelt, robust, giantlike; betokening
what a giant of a man this child would yet grow to!--It was a truth, and is

none. Is it not as the half-dumb stifled voice of the long-buried
generations of our own Fathers, calling out of the depths of ages to us, in

whose veins their blood still runs: "This then, this is what we made of
the world: this is all the image and notion we could form to ourselves of

this great mystery of a Life and Universe. Despise it not. You are raised
high above it, to large free scope of vision; but you too are not yet at

the top. No, your notion too, so much enlarged, is but a partial,
imperfect one; that matter is a thing no man will ever, in time or out of

time, comprehend; after thousands of years of ever-new expansion, man will
find himself but struggling to comprehend again a part of it: the thing is

larger shall man, not to be comprehended by him; an Infinite thing!"
The essence of the Scandinavian, as indeed of all Pagan Mythologies, we

found to be recognition of the divineness of Nature; sincerecommunion of
man with the mysteriousinvisible Powers visibly seen at work in the world

round him. This, I should say, is more sincerely done in the Scandinavian
than in any Mythology I know. Sincerity is the great characteristic" target="_blank" title="a.特有的 n.特性">characteristic of it.

Superior sincerity (far superior) consoles us for the total want of old
Grecian grace. Sincerity, I think, is better than grace. I feel that

these old Northmen wore looking into Nature with open eye and soul: most
earnest, honest; childlike, and yet manlike; with a great-hearted

simplicity and depth and freshness, in a true, loving, admiring, unfearing
way. A right valiant, true old race of men. Such recognition of Nature

one finds to be the chief element of Paganism; recognition of Man, and his
Moral Duty, though this too is not wanting, comes to be the chief element

only in purer forms of religion. Here, indeed, is a great distinction and
epoch in Human Beliefs; a great landmark in the religious development of

Mankind. Man first puts himself in relation with Nature and her Powers,
wonders and worships over those; not till a later epoch does he discern

that all Power is Moral, that the grand point is the distinction for him of
Good and Evil, of _Thou shalt_ and _Thou shalt not_.

With regard to all these fabulous delineations in the _Edda_, I will
remark, moreover, as indeed was already hinted, that most probably they

must have been of much newer date; most probably, even from the first, were
comparatively idle for the old Norsemen, and as it were a kind of Poetic

sport. Allegory and Poetic Delineation, as I said above, cannot be
religious Faith; the Faith itself must first be there, then Allegory enough

will gather round it, as the fit body round its soul. The Norse Faith, I
can well suppose, like other Faiths, was most active while it lay mainly in

the silent state, and had not yet much to say about itself, still less to
sing.

Among those shadowy _Edda_ matters, amid all that fantastic congeries of
assertions, and traditions, in their musical Mythologies, the main

practical belief a man could have was probably not much more than this: of
the _Valkyrs_ and the _Hall of Odin_; of an inflexible _Destiny_; and that

the one thing needful for a man was _to be brave_. The _Valkyrs_ are
Choosers of the Slain: a Destiny inexorable, which it is uselesstrying to

bend or soften, has appointed who is to be slain; this was a fundamental
point for the Norse believer;--as indeed it is for all earnest men

everywhere, for a Mahomet, a Luther, for a Napoleon too. It lies at the
basis this for every such man; it is the woof out of which his whole system

of thought is woven. The _Valkyrs_; and then that these _Choosers_ lead
the brave to a heavenly _Hall of Odin_; only the base and slavish being

thrust elsewhither, into the realms of Hela the Death-goddess: I take this
to have been the soul of the whole Norse Belief. They understood in their

heart that it was indispensable to be brave; that Odin would have no favor
for them, but despise and thrust them out, if they were not brave.

Consider too whether there is not something in this! It is an everlasting
duty, valid in our day as in that, the duty of being brave. _Valor_ is

still _value_. The first duty for a man is still that of subduing _Fear_.
We must get rid of Fear; we cannot act at all till then. A man's acts are

slavish, not true but specious; his very thoughts are false, he thinks too
as a slave and coward, till he have got Fear under his feet. Odin's creed,

if we disentangle the real kernel of it, is true to this hour. A man shall
and must be valiant; he must march forward, and quit himself like a

man,--trusting imperturbably in the appointment and _choice_ of the upper
Powers; and, on the whole, not fear at all. Now and always, the

completeness of his victory over Fear will determine how much of a man he
is.

It is doubtless very savage that kind of valor of the old Northmen. Snorro
tells us they thought it a shame and misery not to die in battle; and if

natural death seemed to be coming on, they would cut wounds in their flesh,
that Odin might receive them as warriors slain. Old kings, about to die,

had their body laid into a ship; the ship sent forth, with sails set and
slow fire burning it; that, once out at sea, it might blaze up in flame,

and in such manner bury worthily the old hero, at once in the sky and in
the ocean! Wild bloody valor; yet valor of its kind; better, I say, than

none. In the old Sea-kings too, what an indomitablerugged energy!
Silent, with closed lips, as I fancy them, unconscious that they were

specially brave; defying the wild ocean with its monsters, and all men and
things;--progenitors of our own Blakes and Nelsons! No Homer sang these

Norse Sea-kings; but Agamemnon's was a small audacity, and of small fruit