1859.1奥林匹斯和阿斯加德

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Olympus and Asgard
JANUARY 1859 ISSUE
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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. III.—JANUARY, 1859.—NO. XV.

How remote from the nineteenth century of the Christian era lies the old Homeric world! By the magic of the Ionian minstrel’s verse that world is still visible to the inner eye. Through the clouds and murk of twenty centuries and more, it is still possible to catch clear glimpses of it, as it lies there in the golden sunshine of the ancient days. A thousand objects nearer in the waste of past time are far more muffled, opaque, and impervious to vision. As you enter it through the gates of the "Ilias" and "Odusseia," you bid a glad adieu to the progress of the age, to railroads and telegraph-wires, to cotton-spinning, (there might have been some of that done, however, in some Nilotic Manchester or Lowell,) to the diffusion of knowledge and the rights of man and societies for the improvement of our race, to humanitarianism and philanthropy, to science and mechanics, to the printing-press and gunpowder, to industrialism, clipper-ships, power-looms, metaphysics, geology, observatories, light-houses, and a myriad other things too numerous for specification,— and you pass into a sunny region of glorious sensualism, where there are no obstinate questionings of outward things, where there are no blank misgivings of a creature moving about in worlds not realized, no morbid self-accusings of a morbid methodistic conscience. All there in that old world, lit "by the strong vertical light" of Homer's genius, is healthful, sharply-defined, tangible, definite, and sensualistic. Even the divine powers, the gods themselves, are almost visible to the eyes of their worshippers, as they revel in their mountain-propped halls on the far summits of many-peaked Olympus, or lean voluptuously from their celestial balconies and belvederes, soothed by the Apollonian lyre, the Heban nectar, and the fragrant incense, which reeks up in purple clouds from the shrines of windy Ilion, hollow Lacedaemon, Argos, Mycenæ, Athens, and the cities of the old Greek isles, with their shrine-capped headlands. The outlooks and watchtowers of the chief deities were all visible from the far streets and dwellings of their earthly worshippers, in that clear, shining, Grecian atmosphere. Uranography was then far better understood than geography, and the personages composing the heavenly synod were almost as definitely known to the Homeric men as their mortal acquaintances. The architect of the Olympian palaces was surnamed Amphiguëeis, or the Halt. The Homeric gods were men divinized with imperishable frames, glorious and immortal sensualists, never visited by qualms of conscience, by headache, or remorse, or debility, or wrinkles, or dyspepsia, however deep their potations, however fiercely they indulged their appetites. Zeus, the Grand Seignior or Sultan of Olympus and father of gods and men, surpassed Turk and Mormon Elder in his uxoriousness and indiscriminate concubinage. With Olympian goddess and lone terrestrial nymph and deep-bosomed mortal lass of Hellas, the land of lovely women, as Homer calls it, did he pursue his countless intrigues, which he sometimes had the unblushing coolness and impudence to rehearse to his wedded wife, Herè. His list would have thrown Don Giovanni’s entirely into the shade. Herè, the queen of Olympus, called the Golden-Throned, the Venerable, the OxEyed, was a sort of celestial Queen Bess, the undaunted she-Tudor, whose father, bluff Harry, was not a bad human copy of Zeus himself, the Rejoieer in Thunder.

In that old Homeric heaven,—in those quiet seats of the gods of the heroic world, which were never shaken by storm-wind, nor lashed by the wintry tempest that raved far below round the dwellings of wretched mortals,—in those quiet abodes above the thunder, there was for the most part nought but festal joy, music, choral dances, and emptying of nectar-cups, interrupted now and then by descents into the low-lying region of human life in quest of adventure, or on errands of divine intervention in the affairs of men, for whom, on the whole, Zeus and his court entertained sentiments of profound contempt. Once in a while Zeus and all his courtiers went on a festal excursion to the land of the blameless Ethiops, which lay somewhere over the ocean, where they banqueted twelve days. Why such a special honor as this was shown to these Ethiops is not explained. Within their borders were evidently the summer resorts, Newport and Baden-Baden, frequented by the Olympians. Only in great crises was the whole mythic host of the Grecian religion summoned to meet in full forum on the heights of the immemorial mountain. At such times, all the fountains, rivers, and groves of Hellas were emptied of their guardian dæmons, male, and female, who hastened to pay their homage to and receive their orders from the Cloud-Gatherer, sitting on his throne, in his great skyey Capitolium, and invested with all the pomp of mythic majesty, his ambrosial locks smoothly combed and brushed by some Olympian friseur, his eagle perched with ruffled plumes upon his fist, and everything else so arranged as most forcibly to impress the country visitors and rural incumbents with salutary awe for the occupant of their sky-Vatican. Whether these last were compelled to salute the Jovine great toe with a kiss is not recorded, there being no account extant of the ceremonial and etiquette of Olympus. Whatever it was, doubtless it was rigidly enforced; for the Thunderer, it would seem, had a Bastile, or lock-up, with iron doors and a brazen threshold specially provided for contumacious and disobedient gods.

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Zeus, although he could claim supreme dominion under the law of primogeniture, was originally only a coequal ruler with his two brothers, Hades, king of the underworld, and Ennosigæus, monarch of the salt sea-foam. They were alike the sons and coequal heirs of Kronos, or Time, and the Mœræ, or Destinies, had parcelled out the universe in three equal parts between them. But the position of Zeus in his serene air-realm gave him the advantage over his two brothers,—as the metropolitan situation of the Roman see in the capital of the world gave its diocesan, who was originally nothing more than the peer of the Bishops of Antioch, Alexandria. Carthage, and Constantinople, an opportunity finally to assert and maintain a spiritual lordship. This is a case exactly in point. It is certainly proper to illustrate a theocratic usurpation by an hierarchic one. Zeus, with his eagle and thunder and that earthquaking nod, was too strong for him of the trident and him of the three-headed hound. The whole mythic host regarded Jove’s court as a place of final resort, of ultimate appeal. He was recognized as the Supreme Father, Papa, or Pope, of the Greek mythic realm. The nod of his immortal head was decisive. His azure eyebrows and ambrosial hair were full of fate.

The wars of mortals in Hellas and Dardanland were matters of more interest to the Olympian celestials than any other mere human transactions. These occasioned partisanships, heartburnings, and factions in the otherwise serene Olympian palaces. Even Father Zeus himself acknowledged a bias for sacred Ilium and its king and people over all the cities of terrestrial men beneath the sun and starry heaven. In the ten-years' war at Troy, the Olympians were active partisans upon both sides at times, now screening their favorites from danger, and now even pitting themselves against combatants of more vulnerable flesh and blood. But in the matter of vulnerability they seem not to have enjoyed complete exemption, any more than did Milton's angels. Although they ate not bread nor drank wine, still there was in their veins a kind of ambrosial blood called ichor, which the prick of a javelin or spear would cause to flow freely. Even Ares, the genius of homicide and slaughter, was on one occasion at least wounded by a mortal antagonist, and sent out of the melee badly punished, so that he bellowed like a bull-calf, as he mounted on a dusty whirlwind to Olympus. Over his misadventures while playing his own favorite game certainly there were no tears to be shed; but when, prompted by motherly tenderness, Aphrodite, the soft power of love,—she of the Paphian boudoir, whose recesses were glowing with the breath of Sabæan frankincense fumed by a hundred altars,—she at whose approach the winds became hushed, and the clouds fled, and the dædal earth poured forth sweet flowers,— when such a presence manifested herself on the field of human strife on an errand of motherly affection, and attempted to screen her bleeding son from the shafts of his foes with a fold of her shining peplum, surely the audacious Grecian king should have forborne, and, lowering his lance, should have turned his wrath elsewhere. But no,—he pierced her skin with his spear, so that, shrieking, she abandoned her child, and was driven, bleeding, to her immortal homestead. The rash earth-born warrior knew not that he who put his lance in rest against the immortals had but a short lease of life to live, and that his bairns would never run to lisp their sire’s return, nor climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

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Homer, in the first books of his "Ilias," permits us to glance into the banqueting-hall of Olympus. The two regular pourers of nectar, to wit, Hebe and Ganymede, are off duty. Hephæstus the Cripple has taken their place; and as he halts about from guest to guest, inextinguishable laughter arises among the gods at his awkward method of "passing the rosy." His lameness was owing to that sunset fall on the isle of Lemnos from the threshold of heaven. So, all day long, says the poet, they revelled, Apollo and the Muses performing the part of a ballet-troop. It is pleasing to learn that the Olympians kept early hours, conforming, in this respect, to the rule of Poor Richard. Duly at set of sun they betook themselves to their couches. Zeus himself slept, and by his side Herè of the Golden Throne.

Who would wish to have lived a pagan under that old Olympian dispensation, even though, like the dark-eyed Greek of the Atreidean age, his fancy could have “fetched from the blazing chariot of the Sun a beardless youth who touched a golden lyre and filled the illumined groves with ravishment”?—even though, like him, he might in myrtle-grove and lonely mountain-glen have had favors granted him even by Idalian Aphrodite the Beautiful, and felt her warm breath glowing upon his forehead, or been counselled by the blue-eved Athene, or been elevated to ample rule by Herè herself, Heaven’s queen? That Greek heaven was heartless, libidinous, and cold. It had no mild divinities appointed to bind up the broken heart and assuage the grief of the mourner. The weary and the heavy-laden had no celestial resource amongst its immortal revellers and libertines, male and female. There was no sympathy for mortal suffering amongst those, divine sensualists. They talked with contempt and unsympathizing ridicule of the woes of the earthborn, of the brevity of mortal life, and of its miseries. A boon, indeed, and a grateful exchange, was the Mother Mild of the Roman Catholic Pantheon, the patroness of the brokenhearted, who inclines her countenance graciously to the petitions of womanly anguish, for the voluptuous Aphrodite, the haughty Juno, the Di-Vernonish Artemis, and the lewd and wanton nymphs of forest, mountain, ocean, lake, and river. Ceres alone, of the old female classic dæmons, seemed to be endowed with a truly womanly tenderness and regard for humankind. She, like the Mater Dolorosa, is represented in the myths to have known bereavement and sorrow, and she, therefore, could sympathize with the grief of mothers sprung from Pyrrha’s stem. Nay, she had envied them their mortality, which enabled them to join their lost ones, who could not come back to them, in the grave. Vainly she sought to descend into the dark underworld to see her "young Persephone, transcendent queen of shades." Not for her weary, wandering feet was a single one of the thousand paths that lead downward to death. Her only consolation was in the vernal flowers, which, springing from the dark earthly mould, seemed to her to be

“heralds from the dreary deep,
Soft voices from the solemn streams,"

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by whose shores, veiled in eternal twilight, wandered her sad child, the queen of the realm of Dis, with its nine-fold river, gates of adamant, and minarets of fire. The heartlessness of all the ethnic deities, of whatever age or nation, is a noticeable feature, especially when contrasted with the unfathomable pity of their Exterminator, who wept over the chief city of his fatherland, and would have gathered it, as a hen gathereth her chickens, under the wings of his love, though its sons were seeking to compass his destruction. Those old ethnic deities were cruel, inexorable, and relentless. They knew nothing of mercy and forgiveness. They ministered no balm to human sorrow. The dænons who wandered in human shape over the classic lands of old were all fickle and malevolent. They oftentimes impelled their victims to suicide. The ghouls that haunt the tombs and waste places of the regions where they were once worshipped are their lineal descendants and modern representatives. The vampires and pesthags of the Levant are their successors in malignity. The fair humanities of the old religion were fair only in shape and exterior. The old pagan gods were friendly only to kings, heroes, and grandees; they had no beatitude for the poor and lowly. Human despair, under their dispensation, knew no alleviation but a plunge from light and life into the underworld,—rather than be monarch of which, the shade of Achilles avers, in the "Odusseia,” that it would prefer to be the hireling and drudge of some poor earthly peasant. Elysium was only for a privileged few.

It has been said that the old ethnic creeds were the true religion "growing wild,"—that the human soil was prepared by such kind of spiritual crops and outgrowths, with their tares and weeds intermingled with wheat, for the seed that was finally to be sown by the Divine Sower,—that, erroneous as they were in a thousand respects, they were genuine emanations of the religious nature in man, and as such not to be stigmatized or harshly characterized,—that without them the human soil could not have been made ready for the crop of unmixed truth. This may be true of some of them, though surely not of the popular form of the old Greek ethnic faith. Its deities were nothing better than the passions of human nature projected upon ethereal heights, and incarnated and made personal in undecaying dæmonic shapes,—not conditioned and straitened like the bodies of man, but enjoying perpetual youth and immunity from death in most cases, with permission to take liberties with Space and Time greater even than are granted to us by steam and telegraph-wires.

The vulgar Grecian polytheism was all material. It had no martyrs and confessors. It was not worth dying for, as it was good for nothing to live by. The religion of Hellas was the religion of sensualistic beauty simply. It was just the worship for Pheidias and Praxiteles, for the bard of Teos and the soft Catullus, for sensual poet, painter, and sculptor. But "the blind old man of Scio’s rocky isle," although we gather most of our knowledge of Olympus and the Olympians from his verse, was worthy of a loftier and purer heaven than the low one under which he wandered from city to city, singing the tale of Troy divine, and hymns and pæans to the gods. The good and the true were mere metaphysical abstractions to the old Greek. What must he have been when it would not have been safe for him to leave his wife alone with the best and highest of his gods? The ancient Hellenes were morally most vicious and depraved, even when compared with contemporary heathen nations. The old Greek was large in brain, but not in heart. He had created his gods in his own image, and they were—what they were. There was no goodness in his religion, and we can tolerate it only as it is developed in the Homeric rhapsodies, in the far-off fable-time of the old world, and amongst men who were but partially self-conscious. In that remote Homeric epoch it is tolerable, when cattle-stealing and war were the chief employments of the ruling caste,—and we may add, woman-stealing, into the bargain. "I did not come to fight against the Trojans," says Achilles, "because I had suffered any grievance at their hands. They never drove off my oxen and horses or stole my harvests in rich-soiled Phthia, the nurse of heroes; for vale-darkening mountains and a tumultuous sea separate us.”

Into that old Homeric world we enter through the portals of the "Ilias" and "Odusseia," and see the peaks of Olympus shining afar off in white splendor like silvery clouds, not looking for or expecting either a loftier or a purer heaven. Somewhere on the bounds of the dim ocean-world we know that there is an exiled court, a faded sort of St. Germain celestial dynasty, geologic gods, coevals of the old Silurian strata,—to wit, Kronos, Rhea, Nox, et al. Here these old, unsceptred, discrowned, and skyfallen potentates “cogitate in their watery ooze,” and in "the shady sadness of vales,”—sometimes visited by their successors for counsel or concealment, or for the purpose of establishing harmony amongst them. The Sleep and Death of the Homeric mythology were naturally gentle divinities,—sometimes lifting the slain warrior from the field of his fame, and bearing him softly through the air to his home and weeping kindred. This was a gracious office. The saintly legends of the Roman Church have borrowed a hint from this old Homeric fancy. One pleasant feature of the Homeric battles is, that, when some blameless, great-souled champion falls, the blind old bard interrupts the performances for a moment and takes his reader with him away from the din and shouting of the battle, following, as it were, the spirit of the fallen hero to his distant abode, where sit his old father, his spouse, and children,— thus throwing across the cloud of battle a sweet gleam of domestic, pastoral life, to relieve its gloom. Homer, both in the "Ilias" and “Odusseia,” gives his readers frequent glimpses into the halls of Olympus; for messengers are continually flashing to and fro, like meteors, between the throne of Zeus and the earth. Sometimes if is Hermes sandalled with down; sometimes it is wind-footed Iris, who is winged with the emerald plumes of the rainbow; and sometimes it is Oneiros, or a Dream, that glides down to earth, hooded and veiled, through the shadow of night, bearing the behests of Jove. But however often we are permitted to return to the ambrosial homestead of the ever-living gods in the wake of returning messengers, we always find it the same calm region, lifted far up above the turbulence, the perturbations, the clouds and storms of —a glorious aërial Sans-Souci and house of pleasaunce.

"That low spot which men call earth,"

It is curious that the atheistic Lucretius has given us a most glowing description of the Olympian mansions; but perhaps the Olympus of the Epicurean poet and philosopher is somewhat higher up and more sublimated and etherealized than the Olympus of Homer and of the popular faith. In a flash of poetic inspiration, he says, "The walls of the universe are cloven. I see through the void inane. The splendor (numen) of the gods appears, and the quiet seats which are not shaken by storm-winds nor aspersed by rain-clouds; nor does the whitely falling snow-flake, with its hoar rime, violate their summery warmth, but an ever-cloudless ether laughs above them with widespread radiance.” Lucretius had all these lineaments of his Epicurean heaven from old Homer. They are scattered up and down the "Ilias" and “Odusseia” in the shape of disjecta membra. For instance, the Olympus which he beholds through a chasm in the walls of the universe, towering into the pure empyrean, has some of the features of Homer's island Elysiums, the blissful abodes of mortal heroes who have been divinized or translated. The Celtic island-valley of Avalon, the abode of King Arthur, "with its orchard-lawns and bowery hollows," so exquisitely alluded to by Tennyson, is a kindred spot with the Homeric Elysian plain. Emerson says, "The race of gods, or those we erring own, are shadows floating up and down in the still abodes.” This is exactly the meaning of Lucretius also. They are all air-cities, these seats of the celestials, whatever be the creed,— summery, ethereal climes, fanned with spice-winds and zephyrs. Meru, Kaf, Olympus, Elboorz,—they are all alike. The ethnic superior dæmons were well termed the powers of the air. Upward into the far blue gazes the weary and longing saint and devotee of every faith. Beyond the azure curtains of the sky, upward into the pure realm, over the rain-cloud and the thunder and the silver bars of the seirrhus, he places his quiet seats, his mansions of rest.

The German poet, Schiller, who was a worshipper of Art and sensualistic beauty, and who regarded the sciences as the mere handmaids of Art, exalting the æsthetic above the moral nature in man, quite naturally regretted that he had not lived in the palmy days of the anthropomorphic creed of Hellas, before the dirge of Pan was chanted in the Isle of Naxos. His "Gods of Greek Land” is as fine a piece of heathenish longing as could well be written at so late a day. His heart was evidently far away from the century in which he lived, and pulsated under that distant Grecian sky of which he somewhere speaks. For artistic purposes the myths of Greece formed a glorious faith. Grace and symmetry of form were theirs, and they satiated the eye with outward loveliness; but to the deep fountains of feeling and sentiment, such as a higher faith has unsealed in the heart, they never penetrated. What a poor, narrow little world was that myth-haunted one of the Grecian poet and sculptor, and even philosopher, compared with the actual world which modern science is revealing from year to year! What a puny affair was that Grecian sun, with its coachman’s apparatus of reins, fire-breathing nags, and golden car, which Schiller looks back to, in the spirit of Mr. Weller, Senior, when compared with the vast empyreal sphere and light-fountain of modern science, with its retinue of planets, ships of space, freighted with souls! Science the handmaid of Art! Well might the mere artist and worshipper of anthropomorphic beauty shrink appalled, and sigh for a lodge under some low Grecian heaven and in the bosom of some old myth-peopled Nature, as he trembled before the apocalypses of modern sidereal science, which has dropped its plummet to unimaginable depths through the nebulous abysses of space, shoaled with systems of worlds as the sea is with its finny droves. The Nature and the Physical Universe of the old ethnic Greek formed only a little niche and recess, on the walls of which the puny human image was easily reflected in beautiful and picturesque and grotesque shadows, which were mistaken for gods. But the Nature and Universe revealed by modern Christian science are too vast and profound to mirror anything short of the image of the Omnipotent himself.

Still there is a period in the life of every imaginative youth, when he is a pagan and worships in the old Homeric pantheon,—where self-denial and penance were unknown, and where in grove and glen favored mortal lover might hear the tread of "Aphrodite’s glowing sandal.” The youthful poet may exclaim with Schiller,—

"Art thou, fair world, no more?
Beturn, thou virgin-bloom on Nature's face!
Ah, only on the minstrel’s magic shore
Can we the footstep of sweet Fable trace!
The meadows mourn for the old hallowing life;
Vainly we search the earth of gods bereft;
Where once the warm and living shapes were rife,
Shadows alone are left!
Cold, from the North, has gone
Over the flowers the blast that chilled their May;
And, to enrich the worship of the One,
A universe of gods must pass away!
Mourning, I search on yonder starry steeps,
But thee, no more, Selene, there I see!
And through the woods I call, and o’er the deeps,
And—Echo answers me.”1

The Elysian beauty and melancholy grace which Wordsworth throws over the shade of Alcestis were gleams borrowed from a better world than the mythic Elysium. Neither Olympus nor Erebus disdained the pleasures of sense.

Shakspeare, in his "Midsummer-Night's Dream,” has mingled the mythologies of Hellas and Scandinavia, of the North and the South, making of them a sort of mythic olla podrida. He represents the tiny elves and fays of the Gothic fairyland, span-long creatures of dew and moonshine, the lieges of King Oberon, and of Titania, his queen, as making an irruption from their haunted hillocks, woods, meres, meadows, and fountains, in the North, into the olive-groves of Ilissus, and dancing their ringlets in the ray of the Grecian Selene, the chaste, cold huntress, and running by the triple Hecate’s team, following the shadow of Night round the earth. Strangely must have sounded the horns of the Northern Elfland, “faintly blowing” in the woods of Hellas, as Oberon and his grotesque court glanced along, "with bit and bridle ringing,” to bless the nuptials of Theseus with the bouncing Amazon. Strangely must have looked the elfin footprints in the Attic green. Across this Shakspearean plank, laid between Olympus and Asgard, or more strictly Alfheim, we gladly pass from the sunny realm of Zeus into that of his Northern counterpart, Odin, who ought to be dearer and more familiar to his descendants than the Grecian Jove, though he is not. The forms which throng Asgard may not be so sculpturesquely beautiful, so definite, and fit to be copied in marble and bronze as those of Olympus. There may be more vagueness of outline in the Scandinavian abode of the gods, as of far-off blue skyey shapes, but it is more cheerful and homelike. Pleasantly wave the evergreen boughs of the LifeTree, Yggdrasil, the mythic ash-tree of the old North, whose leaves are green with an unwithering bloom that shall defy even the fires of the final conflagration. Idung, or Spring, sits in those boughs with her apples of rejuvenescence, restoring the wasted strength of the gods. In the shade of its topmost branches stands Asgard, the abode of the Asen, who are called the Rafters of the World,—to wit, Odin, Thor, Freir, and the other higher powers, male and female, of the old Teutonic religion. In Asgard is Valhalla, the hall of elect heroes. The roots of this mundane ash reach as far downwards aa its branches do upwards. Its roots, trunk, and branches together thrid the universe, shooting Hela, the kingdom of death, Midgard, the abode of men, and Asgard, the dwelling of the gods, like so many concentric rings.

This ash was a psychological and ontological plant. All the lore of Plato and Kant and Fichte and Cousin was audible in the sigh of its branches. Three Norns, Urt, Urgand, and Skuld, dwelt beneath it, so that it comprehended time past, present, and future. The gods held their councils beneath it. By one of its stems murmured the Fountain of Mimir, in Niflheim or Mistland, from whose urn welled up the ocean and the rivers of the earth. Odin had his outlook in its top, where kept watch and ward the All-seeing Eye. In its boughs frisked and gambolled a squirrel called Busybody, which carried gossip from bough to root and back. The warm Urdar Fountain of the South, in which swam the sun and moon in the shape of two swans, flowed by its celestial stem in Asgard. A tree so much extended as this ash of course had its parasites and rodentia clinging to it and gnawing it; but the brave old ash defied them all, and is to wave its skywide umbrage even over the ruins of the universe, after the dies tree shall have passed. So sings the Voluspa. This tree is a worthy type of the Teutonic race, so green, so vigorous, so all-embracing. We should expect to find the chief object in the Northern myth-world a tree. The forest was ever dear to the sons of the North, and many ancient Northern tribes used to hold their councils and parliaments under the branches of some wide-spreading oak or ash. Like its type, Yggdrasil, the Teutonic race seems to be threading the earth with the roots of universal dominion, and, true to hereditary instincts, it is belting the globe with its colonies, planting it, as it were, with slips from the great Mundane Ash, and throwing Bifrost bridges across oceans, in the shape of telegraph-cables and steamships.

Asgard is a more homelike place than Olympus. Home and fireside, in their true sense, are Teutonic institutions. Valhalla, the hall of elect heroes, was appropriately shingled with golden shields. Guzzlers of ale and drinkers of lagerbier will be pleased to learn that this Northern Valhalla was a sort of celestial beer-saloon, thus showing that it was a genuine Teutonic paradise; for ale would surely be found in such a region. In the "Prose Edda,” Hor replies to Gangler— who is asking him about the board and lodgings of the heroes who had gone to Odin in Valhalla, and whether they had anything but water to drink—in huge disdain, inquiring of Gangler whether he supposed that the Allfather would invite kings and jarls and other great men, and give them nothing to drink but water. How do things divine and supernatural, when conceived of by man and cast in an earthly, finite mould, necessarily assume human attributes and characteristics! Strong drinks, the passion of the Northern races in all ages, are of course found in their old mythic heaven, in their fabled Hereafter,—and even boar’s flesh also. The ancient Teuton could not have endured a heaven with mere airy, unsubstantial joys. There must be celestial roasts of strong meat for him, and flagons of his ancestral ale. His descendants to this day never celebrate a great occasion without a huge feed and corporation dinners, thus establishing their legitimate descent from Teutonic stock. The Teutonic man ever led a life of vigorous action; hence his keen appetite, whetted by the cold blasts of his native North. What wonder, then, at the presence of sodden boar’s flesh in his ancient Elysium, and of a celestial goat whose teats yielded a strong beverage? The Teuton liked not fasting and humiliation either in Midgard or Asgard. He was ever carnivorous and eupeptic. We New Englanders are perhaps the leanest of his descendants, because we have forsaken too much the old ways and habits of the race, and given ourselves too much to abstractions and transcendentalism. The old Teuton abhorred the abstract. He loved the concrete; the substantial. The races of Southern Europe, what are now called the Latin races, were more temperate than the Teutonic, but they were far less brave, honest, and manly. Their sensuality might not be so boisterous, but it was more bestial and foul. Strength and manliness, and a blithe, cheery spirit, were ever the badges of the Teuton. But though originally gross and rough, he was capable of a smoother polish, of a glossier enamel, than a more superficial, trivial nature. He was ever deeply thoughtful, and capable of profounder moods of meditation than the lightly-moved children of the South. Sighs, as from the boughs of Yggdrasil, ever breathed through his poetry from of old. He was a smith, an artificer, and a delver in mines from the beginning. The old Teutonic Pan was far more musical and awe-inspiring than his Grecian counterpart. The Noon-spirit of the North was more wild than that of the South. How all the ancient North was alive in its Troll-haunted hillocks, where clanged the anvil of the faëry hillsmith, and danced and banqueted the Gnome and Troll,—and in its streams and springs, musical with the harps of moisthaired Elle-women and mermaids, who, ethnic dæmons though they were, yet cherished a hope of salvation! The mythspirits of the North were more homely and domestic than those of the South, and had a broader humor and livelier fancies. The Northern Elf-folk were true natives of the soil, grotesque in costume and shape.

The Teuton of to-day is the lineal descendant of the old worshipper of Thor. Miöllnir, the hammer of Thor, still survives in the gigantic mechanisms of Watt, Fulton, and Stephenson. Thor embodied more Teutonic attributes than Odin. The feats which Thor performed in that strange city of Utgard, as they are related in the old "Prose Edda," were prophetic of the future achievements of the race, of which he was a chief god. Thor once went on a journey to Jötunheim, or Giant-land,—a primitive outlying country, full of the enemies of the Asgard dynasty, or cosmical deities. In the course of the journey, he lodged one night with his two companions in what he supposed to be a huge hall, but which turned out to be the glove of a giant named Skrymir, who was asleep and snoring as loud as an earthquake, near by. When the giant awoke, he said to Thor, who stood near, —"My name is Skrymir, but I need not ask thy name, for I know that thou art the god Thor. But what hast thou done with my glove?” Sure enough, on looking, Thor found that he had put up that night in Skrymir’s handshoe, or glove. The giant and Thor breakfasted amicably together and went on their way till night, when Skrymir gave up his wallet of provisions to Thor and his two companions, and bade them supply themselves, —he meanwhile composing himself to sleep, snoring so loudly that the forest trembled. Thor could not undo the giant’s wallet, and in his wrath he smote the somnolent lubber with his mallet, a crushing blow. Skrymir simply awoke, and inquired whether a leaf had not fallen upon his head from the oak-tree under which he was lying. Conceive the chagrin and shame of Thor at this question! A second time Thor let fly at the giant with his mallet. This time it sank into his skull up to the handle, but with no more satisfactory result. The giant merely inquired whether an acorn had not dropped on his head, and wanted to know how Thor found himself, whether he slept well or not; to which queries Thor muttered an answer, and went away, determined to make a third and final effort with his mallet, which had never failed him until then. About daybreak, as Skrymir was taking his last snooze, Thor uplifted his hammer, clutching it so fiercely that his knuckles became white. Down it came, with terrific emphasis, crushing through Skrymir’s check, up to the handle. Skrymir sat up and inquired if there were not birds perched on the tree under which he had been lodging; he thought he felt something dropping on his head,—some moss belike. Alas for Thor and his weapon! For once he found himself worsted, and his mightiest efforts regarded as mere flea-bites; for Skrymir’s talk about leaves and acorns and moss was merely a sly piece of humor, levelled at poor crestfallen Thor, as he afterwards acknowledged. After this incident, Thor and his two companions, the peasant’s children, Thjalfi and Röska, and Skrymir went their ways, and came to the high-gated city of Utgard, which stood in the middle of a plain, and was so lofty that Thor had to throw back his head to see its pinnacles and domes. Now Thor was by no means small; indeed, in Asgard, the city of the Æsir, be was regarded as a giant; but here in Utgard Skrymir told him be had better not give himself any airs, for the people of that city would not tolerate any assumption on the part of such a mannikin!

Utgard-Loki, the king of the city, received Thor with the utmost disdain, calling him a stripling, and asked him contemptuously what he could do. Thor professed himself ready for a drinkingmatch. Whereupon Utgard-Loki bade his cup-bearer bring the large horn which his courtiers had to drain at a single draught, when they had broken any of the established rules and regulations of his palace. Thor was thirsty, and thought he could manage the horn without difficulty, although it was somewhat of the largest. After a long, deep, and breathless pull which he designed as a finisher, he set the horn down and found that the liquor was not perceptibly lowered. Again he tried, with no better result; and a third time, full of wrath and chagrin, he guzzled at its contents, but found that the liquor still foamed near to the brim. He gave back the horn in disgust. Then Utgard-Loki proposed to him the childish exercise of lifting his cat. Thor put his hands under Tabby’s belly, and, lifting with all his might, could only raise one foot from the floor. He was a very Gulliver in Brobdignag. As a last resort, he proposed to retrieve his tarnished reputation by wrestling with some Utgardian; whereupon the king turned into the ring his old nurse, Elli, a poor toothless crone, who brought Thor to his knees, and would have thrown him, had not the king interfered. Poor Thor! The next morning he took breakfast in a sad state of mind, and owned himself a shamefully used-up individual. The fact was, he had strayed unconsciously amongst the old brute powers of primitive Nature, as he ought to have perceived by the size of the kids they wore. He had done better than he was aware of, however. The three blows of his hammer had fallen on nothing less than a huge mountain, instead of a giant, and left three deep glens dinted into its surface; the drinking-horn, which he had undertaken to empty, was the sea itself, or an outlet of the sea, which he had perceptibly lowered; while the cat was in reality the Midgard Serpent, which enringed the world in its coils, and the toothless she-wrestler was Old Age! What wonder that Thor was brought to his knees? On finding himself thus made game of, Thor grew wroth, but had to go his ways, as the city of Utgard had vanished into thin air, with its cloud-capped towers and enormous citizens. Thor afterwards undertook to catch the Midgard Serpent, using a bull’s head for bait. The WorldSnake took the delicious morsel greedily, and, finding itself hooked, writhed and struggled so that Thor thrust his feet through the bottom of his boat, in his endeavors to land his prey.

There is a certain grotesque humor in Thor’s adventures, which is missed in his mythologic counterpart of the South. Hercules. It is the old rich "world-humor" of the North, genial and broad, which still lives in the creations of the later Teutonic Muse. The dints which Thor made on the mountain-skull of Skrymir were types and forerunners of the later feats of the Teutonic race, performed on the rough, shaggy, wilderness face of this Western hemisphere, channelling it with watery highways, tunnelling and levelling its mountains, and strewing its surface with cities. The old Eddas and Voluspas of the North are full of significant lore for the sons of the Northmen, wherever their lot is cast. There they will find, that, in colonizing and humanizing the face of the world, in zoning it with railroads and telegraph-wires, in bridging its oceans with clipper-ships and steamboats, and in weaving, forging, and fabricating for it amid the clang of iron mechanisms, they are only following out the original bent of the race, and travelling in the wake of Thor the Hammerer.

While the Grecian and Roman myths are made familiar by our school-books, it is to be regretted that the wild and glorious mythic lore of our ancient kindred is neglected. To that you must go, if you would learn whence came

“the German’s inward sight,
And slow-sure Britain’s secular might,”

and it may be added, the Anglo-American’s unsurpassed practical energy, skill, and invincible love of freedom. From the fountains of the ash-tree Yggdrasil flowed these things. Some of the greatest of modern Teutonic writers have gone back to these fountains, flowing in these wild mythic wastes of the Past, and have drunk inspiration thence. Percy, Scott, and Carlyle, by so doing, have infused new sap from the old life-tree of their race into our modern English literature, which had grown effete and stale from having had its veins injected with too much cold, thin, watery Gallic fluid. Yes, Walter Scott heard the innumerous leafy sigh of Yggdrasil’s branches, and modulated his harp thereby. Carlyle, too, has bathed in the three mystic fountains which flow fast by its roots. In an especial manner has the German branch of the Teuton kindred turned back to those old musical well-springs bubbling up in the dim North, and they have been strengthened and inspired by the pilgrimage. "Under the root, which stretches out towards the Jötuns, there is Mimir's Well, in which Wisdom and Wit lie hidden.” Longfellow, too, has drunk of Mimir’s Well, and hence the rare charm and witchery of his "Evangeline," “Hiawatha,” and “Golden Legend.” This well in the North is better than Castalian fount for the children of the North.

How much more genial and lovable is Balder, the Northern Sun-god, than his Grecian counterpart, the lord of the unerring bow, the Southern genius of light, and poesy, and music ! Balder dwelt in his palace ot Breidablick, or Broadview; and in the magical spring-time of the North, when the fair maiden Iduna breathed into the blue air her genial breath, he set imprisoned Nature free, and filled the sky with silvery haze, and called home the stork and crane, summoning forth the tender buds, and clothing the bare branches with delicate green. "Balder is the mildest, the wisest, and the most eloquent of all the Æsir,” says the “Edda.” A voice of wail went through the palaces of Asgard when Balder was slain by the mistletoe dart, Hermod rode down to the kingdom of Hela, or Death, to ransom the lost one. Meantime his body was set adrift on a floating funeral pyre. Hermod would have succeeded in his mission, had not Lok, the Spirit of Evil, interposed to thwart him. For this, Lok was bound in prison, with cords made of the twisted intestines of one of his own sons; and he will remain imprisoned until the Twilight of the Gods, the consummation of all things.

On the shoulders of Odin, the supreme Scandinavian deity, sat two ravens, whispering in his ears. These two ravens are called Hugin and Munin, or Thought and Memory. These “stately ravens of the saintly days of yore” flew, each day, all over the world, gathering “facts and figures,” doubtless for their august master. It is a beautiful fable, and reminds one of Milton's “thoughts which wander through eternity.” The dove of the Ark, and the bird which perched on the shoulder of the old Plutarchan hero Sertorius, are recalled by this Scandinavian legend:—

"Hugin and Munin
Each down take their flight
Earth’s fields over.”

Nobler birds, these dark ravens of the Northern Jove, than the bolt-bearing eagle of his Grecian brother. So much deeper, more significant, and musical are the myths of the stern, dark, and tender North than those of the bright and fickle South!

Notwithstanding that Valhalla was full of invincible heroes, and that the celestial city of Asgard was the abode of the chief gods, still it had a watchman who dwelt in a tower at the end of the Bridge Bifrost. Heimdall was his name, and he was endowed with the sharpest ear and eye that ever warder possessed. He could hear grass and wool grow with the utmost distinctness. The Æsir, notwithstanding their supreme position, had need of such a warder, with his Gjallar-horn, mightier than the Paladin Astolfo’s, that could make the universe reëcho to its blast. The truth was, over even the high gods of Asgard hung a Doom which was mightier than they. It was necessary for them to keep watch and ward, therefore, for evil things were on their trail. There were vast, mysterious, outlying regions beyond their sway : Niflheim or Mistland, Muspellheim or Flameland, and Jötunheim, the abode of the old earth-powers, matched with whom, even Thor, the strongest of the Asen, was but a puny stripling. Over this old Scandinavian heaven, as over all ethnic celestial abodes, the dark Destinies lorded it with unquestioned sway. From the four corners of the world, at last, were to fly the snow-flakes of the dread Fimbul, Winter, blotting the sun, and moaning and drifting night and day. Three times was Winter to come and go, bringing to men and gods "a stormage, a wolf-age." Then cometh Ragnarök, the Twilight of the Gods! Odin mounts his war-steed. The vast ash Yggdrasil begins to shiver through all its height. The beatified heroes of Valhalla, who have ever been on the watch for this dread era, issue forth full of the old dauntless spirit of the North to meet the dread agents of darkness and doom. Garm, the Moonhound, breaks loose, and bays. "High bloweth Heimdall his horn aloft. Odin counselleth Mimir's head.” The battle joins. In short, the fiery baptism prophesied in the dark scrolls of Stoic sage and Hebrew and Scandinavian seald alike wraps the universe. The dwarfs wail in their mountain-clefts. All is uproar and hissing conflagration.

"Dimmed’s now the sun;
In ocean earth sinks;
From the skies are cast
The sparkling stars;
Fire-reek rageth
Around Time’s nurse,
And flickering flames
With heaven itself shall play.”

By "Time’s nurse,” in the foregoing lines from the "Voluspa,” is meant the Mundane Tree Yggdrasil, which shall survive unscathed, and wave mournfully over the universal wreck. But in the "Edda" Hor tells Gangler that "another earth shall appear, most lovely and verdant, with pleasant fields, where the grain shall grow unsown. Vidar and Vali shall survive. They shall dwell on the Plain of Ida, where Asgard formerly stood. Thither shall come the sons of Thor, bringing with them their father’s mallet. Baldur and Hödur shall also repair thither from the abode of Death. There shall they sit and converse together, and call to minsd their former knowledge and the perils they underwent.”

Perhaps we might give the Eddaic Twilight of the Gods a more human and strictly European interpretation. May it not also foreshadow the great Armageddon struggle which is evidently impending between the Teutonic races in Western Europe, with their Protestantism, free speech, individual liberty, right of private judgment, and scorn of all thraldom, both material and mental, on the one side, and the dark powers of absolutism, repression, and irresponsible authority in church and state, on the other ? How Russia, the type of bruteforce, presses with crushing weight on intellectual Germany! Soon she will absorb the old kingdoms of Scandinavia,— to wit, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. On the shores of Norway the ruler of the Sclavonic race will hang over Scotland and England, like a bird of prey about to swoop upon his victim. All despots and absolutists will array themselves under his banner or be his auxiliaries. The old hierarchies will be banded with him to crush out Protestantism, which is a plant of Teutonic growth. Old Asia, with her rancor and despotic traditions, recognizes in the Russian imperial rule a congenial rallying-point against the progressive and hated Anglo-Saxonism and Protestantism of the West. A decisive struggle is surely impending between freedom and absolutism, between the bigoted adherents of the old faiths and the nations that have cut loose from them. Perhaps this struggle may be prefigured in the, old Northern myth of the Twilight of the Gods.

All the old mythic cosmogonies are strangely suggestive and full of mystic import,—that of Northern Odinism more than any other. In that dim Niflheim, for instance, with its well-springs of the waters of the upper world confusedly bubbling, and its metallic ore-veins, and dusk, vaporous atmosphere, whence issued the old Nibelungen heroes of the great Teutonic epos, there is much that is suggestive. May not one discover in this old cosmogonic myth a dim hint of the nebular hypothesis of creation, as it is called? Certainly, Niflheim, the Mistland, and Muspellheim, the Flameland, commingled together, would produce that hot, seething, nebulous fire-mist, out of which, the physicists say, was evolved, by agglomeration and centrifugal and centripetal attraction, our fair, harmonious system of worlds bounded by outermost Neptune, thus far the Ultima Thule of the solar system. Perhaps Asgard, translated from mythic into scientific language, means the Zodiacal Light, and the Bridge Bifröst, the Milky Way.

How curious, to trace in the grotesque mythic cosmogonies of India, Greece, and Scandinavia, modern geology, botany, chemistry, etc., — the vast and brutal giants of the Eddas and other old mythic scriptures being recognized as impersonations of the forces of Nature ! The old mythic cosmogonists and the modern geologists and astronomers do not differ amongst themselves so much, after all. The mythic physicists had personal agents at work, in place of our simple elemental ones; the result is the same. Take the mythic cosmogonies of ancient Greece, Scandinavia, and India, and the geologies and astronomies of the present day, and compare their pages, changing things personal into things impersonal. The expulsion and banishment of the old shapeless mundane deities by a new and more beautiful race of gods, the cosmical divinities, the powers and rulers of an ordered world, are intelligible enough when translated into our modern geological nomenclature. The leaves of the Stone Book, as the rocky layers of the earth have been called, and the blue hieroglyphic page of heaven, also, are more intelligibly read by the aid of the mythic glosses of old religion, of Saga, Rune, and Voluspa. They spell the telluric records aright in their own peculiar language. The assaults of the Typhons and Jötuns upon the celestial dynasty, and their attempts to scale the fiery citadels of the gods by making ladders of mountains, indicate clearly enough the different revolutions read by geology in the various strata and rocky layers piled upon the primitive granite of the globe, the bursting through of eruptions from the central fire, extruding and uplifting mountains, and the subsidence of the ocean from one ripple-marked sea-beach to another lower down. In those dim geologic epochs, where annals are written on Mica Slate, Clay Slate, and Silurian Systems, on Old Red Sandstones and New, on Primary and Secondary Rocks and Tertiary Chalkbeds, there were topsy-turvyings amongst the hills and gambollings and skippings of mountains, to which the piling of Pelion upon Ossa was a mere cobblestone feat. Alps and Apennines then played at leap-frog. Vast basaltic masses were oftentimes extruded into the astonished air from the very heart and core of the world. In truth, the old mythic cosmogonies of the ancient East, South, and North are not a whit too grotesque in their descriptions of the embryo earth, when it lay weltering in a sort of uterine film, assuming form and regular lineaments.

There is nothing more drear, monstrous, wild, dark, and lonely in the descriptions of the mythologie than of the scientific page. What more wild and drear is there, even in Indian cosmogonic fable, than that strange carbonigenous era of the globe, whose deposits, in the shape of petrified forests, now keep us warm and cook our food, and whose relics and souvenirs are pressed between the stone leaves of the secondary rock for preservation by the Omnipotent Herbalist? Land and water were then distinguishable,—but as yet there was no terrestrial animal, nothing organic but radiata and molluscs, belly-footed and headfooted, and other aquatic monstrosities, mailed, plated, and buckler-headed, casting the shovel-nosed shark of the present Cosmos entirely into the shade, in point of horned, toothed, and serrated horrors. These amorphous creatures glided about in the seas, and vast sea-worms, or centipedal asps, the parents of modern krakens and sea-serpents, doubtless, accompanied them. There stood that unfinished world reeking with charcoal fumes, its soft, fungous, cryptogamic vegetation efflorescing with fierce luxuriance in that ghastly carbonic atmosphere. Rudimental palms and pines of mushroom growth stood there motionless, sending forth no soft and soul-like murmurs into the lurid reek; for as yet leaves and flowers and blue skies and pure breezes were not,—nothing but whiffs of mephitic and lethal vapor ascending, as from a vast charcoal brazier. No lark or linnet or redbreast or mocking-bird could live, much less warble, in those carbonic times. The world, like a Mississippi steamer, was coaling, with an eye to the needs of its future biped passengers. The embryotic earth was then truly a Nitlheim, or Mistland,—a dun, fuming region. Those were the days, perhaps, when Nox reigned, and the great mundane egg was hatching in the oven-like heat, from which the winged boy Eros leaped forth, "his back glittering with golden plumes, and swift as eddying air.” We have it on good authority, that the Adirondack Mountains of New York, and the Grampian Hills of Scotland, where Norval was to feed his flocks, had already upheaved their bare backs from the boiling caldrons of the sea, thus stealing a march on the Alps and many other more famous mountains.

How opposite and remote from each other are the mythologic ages and the nineteenth century ! The critical and scientific spirit of the one is in strange contrast with the credulous, blindly reverent spirit of the other. Mythology delegated the government of the world to inferior deities, the subjects of an omnipotent Fate or Necessity; while, to show how extremes meet, mere science delegates it to chemical and physiological agencies, and ends, like the mythic cosmogonies, in some irrepressible spontaneous impulse of matter to develops itself in the ever-changing forms of the visible universe. Myriads of gods were the actors in “the rushing metamorphosis” of the old myth-haunted Nature; while chemic and elemental forces perform the same parts in the masquerade of the modern Phusis. Both mythology and science, therefore, stick fast in secondary causes.

Myths are the religion of youth, and of primitive, unsophisticated nations; while science may be called the religion of the mature man, full of experience and immersed in the actual. The Positivism of Comte, like the old myth-worship, sets up for its deity human nature idealized, adorned with genius and virtue. The Positivist worships virtuous human nature, conditioned and limited as it is; while the Mythist worshipped it reflected on the outer world and endowed with supernatural attributes, clothed with mist-caps and wishing-caps that gave it dominion over space and time. The restless, glittering, whimsical sprites of fairy mythology, that were believed of old to have so large a share in shaping the course of Nature and of human life, have vanished from the precincts of the schoolmaster at least. They could not endure the clear eyebeam of Science, which has searched their subterranean abodes, withering them up and metamorphosing them into mere physiological forces. Reason and scientific investigation have no patience with the things of faith and imagination. Our poets now have to go back to the Past, to the standpoints of the old pagan bards. Tennyson lives in the land of the Lotophagi, in the Arabian Nights of the Bagdad of Caliph Haroun, and in the orchard lawns of King Arthur’s Avalon. So, too, Longfellow must inhale the golden legendary air of the Past. The mere humanitarian bards, who try to make modern life trip to the music of trochees, dactyles, and spondees, fail miserably. Industrialism is not poetical. Our modern life expresses itself in machines, in mathematical formulas, in statistics, and with scientific precision generally. Art and poetry are pursued in the spirit of past ages, and concern themselves with the symbols, faiths, and ideal creations of the Past.

It is true, however, that all past ages of the world are contemporaneous in this age. For example, we have in this nineteenth century the patriarchal age of the world still surviving in the desert tents of the Arab,—while the mythic, anthropomorphic period is still extant in Persia, China, and India, and even among the nations of the West, in the rustic nooks and corners of the Roman Catholic countries of Europe. But the existing nations, which still preserve that old ethnic worship and the mediaeval superstitions, are mere lingerers and camp-followers in the march of humankind. Under the ample skirts of the Roman Church still cower and lurk the superstitions of the old ethnic world, baptized to be sure, and called by new names. The Roman see has ever had a lingering kindness for the fair humanities of old religion, which live no longer in the faith of Protestant reason and free inquiry. She compromised with them of old, and they have clung about her waist ever since. She has put her uniform upon them, and made them do service in her cause, and keep alive with their breath the fast expiring embers of faith and imaginative credulity, which she so much loves and commends. Like an equivocal and ambiguous nature, the old Mother Church, as she is called, is upward fair and Christian, but downward foul and ethnic. She attacks human nature on the side of the heart, the senses, and those old instincts which Coleridge says bring back the old names. Reason and intellection, sharpened by science, she abhors; but so large a part of mankind still linger in the rear of the vanguard nations, that she has yet a long lease of life to run, with myriads of adherents to cling to her with fanatical tenacity,—nay, with proselytes from amongst the poetical, the artistic, and imaginative, who voluntarily prefer to the broad sunshine of science the twilight gloom of her sanctuaries, in order there the better to woo the old inspiration of art, superstitious faith, and poesy. The old ethnic instincts of human nature are formidable auxiliaries of the Mother Church. Puseyism would rehallow the saintly wells even of Protestant, practical England, and send John Bull acain on a pilgrimage to the shrines of Canterbury and Walsingham. Compare a Yankee, common-school-bred, and an Austrian peasant, if you would learn how the twelfth and nineteenth centuries live together in the current year. The one is self-reliant, helpful, and versatile, not freighted with any old-world rubbish; while the other is abject, and blindly reverent, and full of the old mythic imagination that is in strong contrast with the keen common-sense of the Protestant, who dispels all twilight fantasies with a laugh of utter incredulity. The one sees projected on the outer world his own imaginings, now fair, now gloomy; while the other sees in the world, land to be cut up into cornerlots for speculation, and water for sawmills and cotton-mills, and to float clipper-ships and steamers. The one is thisworldly; the other is other-worldly. The one is armed and equipped at all points to deal with the Actual, to subdue it and make the most of it; he aims for success and wealth, for elegance, plenty, and comfort in his home;—while the other is negligent, a frequenter of shrines, in all things too superstitious, overlooking and slighting mere physical comfort, and content with misery and dirt. The Romish peasant lives begirt by supernatural beings, who demand a large share of his time and thoughts for their service; while the thrifty Protestant artisan or agriculturist is a practical naturalist, keeping his eye fixed on the main chance. Brownson would have us believe that he is morally and spiritually the inferior of the former. For this light of common day, which now shines upon the world, the multiplication-table, and reading and writing, are far better than amulet, rosary, and crucifix.

After all, this light of common day, which the bards and saints so much condemn and disdain, when subjected to the microscopic and telescopic ken of modern science, opens as large a field for wonder and for the imagination to revel in as did the old marvels, fables, and fictions of the Past. The True is beginning to be found as strange, nay, stranger than the purely Imaginative and Mythic. The Beautiful and the Good will yet be found to be as consistent with the strictly True and Actual, with the plain Matterof-Fact as it is called, as they have been, in the heroic ages of human achievement and endurance, with the glorious cheats and delusions that nerved man to high emprise. The modern scientific discoverer and inventor oftentimes finds himself engaged in quests as strange as that of the Holy Grail of Round-Table fiction. To the Past, with its mythic delusions, simplicity, and dense ignorance of Nature, we can never return, any more than the mature man can shrink into the fresh boy again. Nor is it to be regretted. The distant in time, like the distant in space, wears a halo, a vague, blue loveliness, which is all unreal. The tired wayfarer, who is weary with the dust, the din, and stony footing of the Actual and the Present, may sometimes fondly imagine, that, if he could return to the far Past, he would find all smooth and golden there ; but it is a pleasant delusion of that glorious arch-cheat, the imagination. Yet if we cannot go back to the Past, we can march forward to a Future, which opens a deeper and more wondrous and airier vista, with its magicians of the Actual casting into shade the puny achievements of old necromancy and mythic agencies.

Bulwer’s Translation.↩



奥林匹斯和阿斯加德
1859年1月号
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The Atlantic Monthly.

一本关于文学、艺术和政治的杂志。

VOL. III. -January, 1859.-No. XV.

离基督教时代的第十九世纪多么遥远，古老的荷马史诗世界就在那里！通过爱奥尼亚吟游诗人的诗篇的魔力，那个世界仍然存在。通过爱奥尼亚吟游诗人的诗句的魔力，那个世界对内心的眼睛仍然是可见的。透过二十多个世纪的云雾和阴霾，我们仍然可以清晰地瞥见它，就像它在古代的金色阳光下一样。在过去时间的废墟中，离它更近的无数物体都是更闷的，不透明的，不容易被看到。当你通过 "Ilias "和 "Odusseia "的大门进入它时，你会高兴地告别这个时代的进步，告别铁路和电报线，告别棉纺，（不过，在一些尼罗河畔的曼彻斯特或洛厄尔可能也有一些这样的工作），告别知识的传播和人的权利以及改善我们种族的社团，告别人道主义和慈善事业，告别科学和机械，告别印刷机和火药。到工业主义、快船、动力机、形而上学、地质学、天文台、灯塔，以及其他无数的东西，你就会进入一个光荣的感官主义的阳光地带，那里没有对外在事物的顽固质疑，那里没有一个在未实现的世界中活动的生物的空白疑虑，没有一个病态的方法论良心的病态自我指责。在那个古老的世界里，在荷马天才的 "强烈的垂直光线 "的照耀下，所有的东西都是健康的、清晰的、有形的、明确的和感性的。即使是神圣的力量，诸神本身，在他们的崇拜者眼中也几乎是可见的，因为他们在许多山峰的奥林匹斯山顶上的山顶大厅里狂欢，或从他们的天体阳台和腹部妖娆地俯身。在阿波罗的琴声、希伯来的甘露和芬芳的香氛的抚慰下，这些香氛从多风的伊里昂、空旷的拉凯戴蒙、阿尔戈斯、迈锡纳、雅典以及希腊古岛的城市的神龛中散发着紫色的云雾，并有神龛覆盖的岬角。在那清澈、闪亮的希腊氛围中，从远处的街道和地上的崇拜者的住所，都可以看到主要神灵的前景和瞭望塔。当时对天文学的理解远胜于地理学，荷马史诗中的人们对组成天上会议的人物几乎和他们的凡人熟人一样清楚。奥林匹亚宫殿的建筑师被称为Amphiguëeis，或Halt。荷马史诗中的诸神是具有不朽的躯体的神化者，是光荣而不朽的感官主义者，他们从未被良心的不安、头痛、悔恨、衰弱、皱纹或消化不良所困扰，无论他们的欲望有多深，无论他们如何猛烈地放纵自己的食欲。宙斯，奥林匹斯山的大酋长或苏丹，众神和人的父亲，在他的淫乱和滥交方面超过了土耳其人和摩门老祖。他与奥林匹亚女神、孤独的陆地仙女以及荷马所说的可爱的女人之乡--希腊的深闺少女一起，进行了无数次的阴谋活动，他有时还毫不掩饰地对他的妻子赫雷讲述这些阴谋。他的名单完全可以把唐-乔万尼的名单抛到脑后。赫雷，奥林匹斯山的女王，被称为 "金顶"、"可敬"、"牛眼"，是一种天人合一的贝丝女王，不畏艰险的都铎夫人，她的父亲，虚张声势的哈里，是宙斯本人的一个不错的人类副本，雷霆中的欢呼者。

在那个古老的荷马史诗般的天堂里，--在那些英雄世界的诸神的安静座位上，它们从未被暴风所撼动，也未被远在下方围绕着可悲的凡人的住所的寒风暴雨所鞭挞，--在那些雷霆之上的安静住所里，除了节日的欢乐，大多时候都没有什么。在雷霆之上的宁静居所里，大部分时间除了节日的欢乐、音乐、合唱和清空花蜜杯之外，还时不时地被下到人类生活的低洼地区寻求冒险，或执行神圣干预人类事务的任务所打断，总体而言，宙斯和他的宫廷对这些人抱有深深的蔑视。有一次，宙斯和他的所有臣子都到大洋彼岸的无罪的伊西奥普斯的土地上进行节庆旅行，他们在那里宴请了12天。为什么要给这些伊西奥普斯人如此特殊的荣誉，这一点没有解释。在他们的边界内，显然是奥林匹亚人经常光顾的避暑胜地--纽波特和巴登-巴登。只有在巨大的危机中，希腊宗教的全部神话主人才会被召集到不朽之山的高处举行正式会议。在这种时候，希腊所有的喷泉、河流和树林都被清空，它们的守护神，无论男女，都赶来向云集者致敬并接受其命令，云集者坐在他的宝座上，在他伟大的天空中的Capitolium中，以所有神话中的威严盛装。他的发髻被一些奥林匹斯山上的人梳理得整整齐齐，他的老鹰带着褶皱的羽毛栖息在他的拳头上，其他一切都安排得很好，让乡下的游客和农村的在职人员对他们的天空梵蒂冈的居住者产生敬畏之情。这些人是否被迫以亲吻的方式向Jovine的大脚趾致敬，没有记载，因为没有关于奥林匹斯山的仪式和礼仪的现存记录。不管是什么，毫无疑问，它是被严格执行的；因为雷神，它似乎有一个Bastile，或锁，有铁门和一个铜制的门槛，专门为胆小和不听话的神提供。

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宙斯，尽管他可以根据长子继承法宣称拥有最高的统治权，但他最初只是与他的两个兄弟--冥王哈迪斯和盐海泡沫的君主埃诺西格尤斯--共同成为平等的统治者。他们都是克罗诺斯（Kronos）或时间的儿子和平等的继承人，Mœræ，或命运之神，把宇宙分成了三个平等的部分。但是宙斯在他宁静的空气领域中的地位使他比他的两个兄弟更有优势，就像罗马教廷在世界首都的大都会地位使它的教区长，原本只不过是安提阿、亚历山大、迦太基和君士坦丁堡的主教的同辈。迦太基和君士坦丁堡的主教，终于有机会宣称并维持一种精神上的统治权。这就是一个恰如其分的案例。用等级制度来说明神权的篡夺当然是恰当的。宙斯，用他的鹰和雷，以及那个地震的点头，对他的三叉戟和他的三头猎犬来说都太强大了。整个神话中的主人都把乔夫的法庭看作是一个最终诉诸的地方，是最终上诉的地方。他被认为是希腊神话界的最高父亲、爸爸或教皇。他不朽的头颅的点头是决定性的。他天蓝色的眉毛和伏羲的头发充满了命运的气息。

凡人在希腊和达丹地的战争，对奥林匹亚天神来说，比任何其他单纯的人类交易更有兴趣。这在原本宁静的奥林匹斯宫殿中引起了党派、心腹之患和派别。甚至父亲宙斯本人也承认，他对神圣的伊留姆及其国王和人民的偏爱超过了太阳和星空下的所有陆地人的城市。在特洛伊的十年战争中，奥林匹亚人有时是双方的积极支持者，现在为他们的宠儿挡住了危险，现在甚至把自己与更脆弱的血肉之躯的战斗人员对立起来。但在脆弱的问题上，他们似乎没有享受到完全的豁免，就像弥尔顿的天使一样。虽然他们不吃面包也不喝葡萄酒，但他们的血管里仍有一种被称为 "ichor "的芳香血液，标枪或长矛的刺击会使其自由流动。即使是杀人和屠杀的天才阿瑞斯，有一次也至少被一个致命的对手打伤了，并在混战中受到了严重的惩罚，以至于他在乘着尘土飞扬的旋风前往奥林匹斯山时，发出了像公牛小牛一样的吼叫。对于他在玩自己喜欢的游戏时的不幸遭遇，当然没有人流泪。但是，当阿佛洛狄忒，爱的柔和力量，--她在帕皮亚的闺房里，她的房间里闪烁着萨巴亚乳香的气息，被一百个祭坛熏得发亮，--她的到来让风变得安静，让云朵逃开，让大地上开出甜蜜的花朵。 - 当这样的存在在人类的争斗场上以母爱的名义出现，并试图用她闪亮的围裙为她流血的儿子挡住敌人的攻击时，大胆的希腊国王肯定会放弃，并放下他的长矛，将他的愤怒转向其他地方。但是没有，他用他的长矛刺穿了她的皮肤，所以她尖叫着放弃了她的孩子，被赶到她不朽的家园，流血不止。这个轻率的土生土长的战士不知道，他把他的长矛安放在仙人身上的人只有短暂的生命，而他的孩子们永远不会跑来呼唤他们的父亲回来，也不会爬上他的膝盖来分享令人羡慕的吻。

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荷马在他的 "伊利亚斯 "的第一本书中，允许我们瞥见奥林匹斯山的宴会厅。两位定期灌输花蜜的人，即希比和加尼美德，已经下班了。瘸子赫菲斯托斯取代了他们的位置；当他在客人之间走来走去时，众神对他 "传递玫瑰 "的笨拙方法产生了无尽的笑声。他的跛脚是由于夕阳从天堂的门槛上落在莱姆诺斯岛上。因此，诗人说，他们整天都在狂欢，阿波罗和缪斯女神扮演着芭蕾舞团的角色。令人高兴的是，奥林匹亚人保持着早起的时间，在这一点上，他们符合可怜的理查德的规则。太阳一落山，他们就回到自己的沙发上。宙斯自己也睡了，在他身边的是金座上的赫雷。

谁会希望自己是那个古老的奥林匹亚制度下的异教徒，即使像阿特雷德时代的黑眼睛希腊人一样，他的想象力可以 "从太阳的炽热战车上找到一个没有胡子的青年，他触摸着金色的琴，让照明的树林充满了狂欢"？ -即使像他一样，在桃金娘树林和孤独的山林中，他甚至可以得到伊达利安的美丽的阿佛洛狄忒的恩惠，感受到她温暖的气息在他的额头上发光，或者被蓝衣的雅典娜劝告，或者被天堂的女王赫雷本人提升到充分的统治？希腊的天堂是无情的、放荡的、冷酷的。它没有任何温和的神灵被指定来包扎破碎的心和减轻哀悼者的悲痛。在其不朽的狂欢者和放荡者中，无论男女，疲惫和沉重的人都没有天国的资源。在那些神圣的感官主义者中，对凡人的苦难没有任何同情心。他们以蔑视和不怀好意的嘲讽谈论地球人的苦难，谈论凡人生命的短暂和苦难。罗马天主教万神殿的母亲米尔德确实是一种恩惠，也是一种感激的交换，她是心碎者的守护神，对女人痛苦的请求慷慨地倾斜她的面孔，以代替妖艳的阿佛洛狄忒、傲慢的朱诺、狄维诺的阿尔特弥斯，以及森林、高山、海洋、湖泊和河流的淫荡和放纵的女妖。只有瑟雷斯，在古老的女性经典女神中，似乎被赋予了真正的女性温柔和对人类的关怀。她，像Mater Dolorosa一样，在神话中被描述为知道丧亲和悲伤，因此，她可以同情从Pyrrha的茎上长出的母亲的悲痛。不，她曾羡慕她们的死亡，这使她们能够在坟墓里与失去的亲人团聚，而这些亲人却无法回到她们身边。她徒劳地寻求进入黑暗的冥界，去看她的 "年轻的珀尔塞福涅，超然的阴暗女王"。在她疲惫、徘徊的脚步中，没有一条是通向死亡的千条道路。她唯一的安慰是春天的花朵，它们从黑暗的地球模子里冒出来，对她来说，似乎是

"来自沉闷的深渊的信使。
庄严的溪流中发出的柔和声音"。

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在其海岸边，在永恒的暮色中，徘徊着她悲伤的孩子，迪斯王国的女王，有九重的河流，金刚门和火的尖塔。所有民族的神灵，无论哪个时代或民族，都是无情的，这是一个明显的特征，特别是当与他们的灭绝者深不可测的怜悯形成对比时，他为他祖国的主要城市哭泣，并将它聚集在他的爱的翅膀下，就像母鸡聚集她的小鸡，尽管它的儿子正在寻求毁灭他。那些古老的民族神灵是残酷的、无情的、无止境的。他们不知道什么是怜悯和宽恕。他们不给人类的悲伤提供任何抚慰。在古老的经典土地上以人形游荡的大能们都是善变和恶毒的。他们经常迫使受害者自杀。在他们曾经被崇拜的地区的坟墓和废墟中出没的食尸鬼是他们的后代和现代代表。黎凡特地区的吸血鬼和长颈鹿是他们邪恶的继承者。古代宗教中公平的人性只是在形状和外表上是公平的。旧的异教诸神只对国王、英雄和大人物友好；他们对穷人和卑贱的人没有同情心。在他们的安排下，人类的绝望没有任何缓解，只有从光明和生命中坠入阴间，--而不是成为其中的君主，阿喀琉斯的阴影在 "Odusseia "中说，它宁愿成为一些可怜的尘世农民的雇佣者和苦工。极乐世界只属于少数特权者。

有人说，古老的民族信条是 "野蛮生长 "的真正宗教--人类的土壤是由这种精神作物和生长物准备的，它们的稗子和杂草与麦子混杂在一起，以备最终由神圣的播种者播下种子。 -尽管它们在很多方面都是错误的，但它们是人的宗教本性的真正发源地，因此不应受到指责或苛责，没有它们，人类的土壤就不可能为不含杂质的真理的庄稼做好准备。这可能是其中一些人的真实情况，但肯定不是古希腊民族信仰的流行形式。它的神灵不过是人类本性的激情投射在虚无的高处，并在不腐朽的神形中化身为个人，--不象人类的身体那样受到限制和束缚，而是在大多数情况下享有永久的青春和免于死亡的权利，允许对空间和时间的自由支配，甚至比蒸汽和电报线给予我们的还要大。

庸俗的古希腊多神教都是物质的。它没有殉道者和忏悔者。它不值得为之而死，因为它无益于生活。希腊的宗教是简单的感性美学的宗教。对于菲迪亚斯和普拉西特勒斯，对于提欧斯的吟游诗人和柔和的卡图卢斯，对于感性的诗人、画家和雕塑家，这只是一种崇拜。但是，"Scio岩石岛的盲人老人"，尽管我们对奥林匹斯山和奥林匹斯人的大部分了解都来自他的诗句，但他配得上一个更崇高、更纯净的天堂，在这个天堂里，他从一个城市流浪到另一个城市，唱着神圣的特洛伊的故事，以及对众神的赞美诗和颂歌。善与真对老希腊人来说只是形而上学的抽象概念。当他把他的妻子单独留给他最好的和最高的神时，他一定是什么？古希腊人在道德上是最恶毒和堕落的，即使与当代的异教徒国家相比也是如此。古希腊人脑子大，但心胸不大。他按照自己的形象创造了他的神，而他们就是他们。他的宗教中没有善良，我们只能容忍它在荷马史诗的狂想曲中发展，在遥远的旧世界的寓言时代，在那些只有部分自我意识的人中间。在那个遥远的荷马史诗时代，它是可以容忍的，当时偷牛和战争是统治阶级的主要工作，我们还可以加上偷女人。"阿基里斯说："我不是来和特洛伊人打仗的，"因为我在他们手里受过任何委屈。他们从来没有赶走过我的牛马，也没有在英雄的故乡--富饶的法提亚偷过我的庄稼；因为黑暗的山脉和动荡的大海把我们分开了。"

我们通过 "伊利亚斯 "和 "奥杜塞亚 "的门户进入那个古老的荷马史诗世界，看到奥林匹斯山的山峰像银色的云朵一样在远处闪耀着白色的光辉，既不寻找也不期待更高的或更纯净的天堂。在昏暗的海洋世界的某处，我们知道有一个流亡的宫廷，一种褪色的圣日耳曼天体王朝，地质学上的诸神，古老的西鲁里亚地层的同胞，即克罗诺斯、瑞亚、诺克斯等人。在这里，这些古老的、未被接受的、被抛弃的和天降的权势者 "在他们的水样渗出物中思考"，在 "山谷的阴暗的悲伤 "中，有时他们的继任者会拜访他们，以寻求建议或隐蔽，或为了在他们之间建立和谐。荷马神话中的睡神和死神自然是温和的神灵，有时将被杀的战士从他的战场上抬起来，在空中轻轻地把他带到他的家里和哭泣的亲属那里。这是一个亲切的职务。罗马教会的圣徒传说从这个古老的荷马史诗的幻想中借用了一个暗示。荷马史诗中的一个令人愉快的特点是，当某个无愧于心的伟大冠军倒下时，盲目的老吟游诗人会暂时中断表演，带着他的读者离开战斗的喧嚣和呼喊，就像跟随倒下的英雄的灵魂到他遥远的住所，那里坐着他的老父亲、他的配偶和孩子，从而在战斗的阴云中投下家庭、田园生活的甜蜜光芒，以缓解其阴霾。荷马在《伊利亚斯》和《奥杜塞亚》中都让他的读者经常瞥见奥林匹斯山的大厅；因为信使们像流星一样，不断地在宙斯的宝座和大地之间来回穿梭。有时是赫耳墨斯穿着羽绒服；有时是风脚伊里斯，他带着彩虹的翡翠羽翼；有时是奥尼罗斯，或一个梦，带着头巾和面纱，穿过夜幕，带着乔夫的命令，滑落到地上。但是，无论我们多么频繁地被允许在返回的信使之后回到永生之神的暧昧家园，我们总是发现它是同一个平静的区域，远远高于动荡、扰动、乌云和风暴--一个光荣的Aërial Sans-Souci和快乐之家。

"人们称之为地球的那个低洼地"。

奇怪的是，无神论者卢克莱修为我们提供了关于奥林匹亚大厦的最生动的描述；但也许伊壁鸠鲁派诗人和哲学家的奥林匹亚比荷马和大众信仰的奥林匹亚更高大、更升华和更空灵。在诗歌灵感的闪现中，他说："宇宙的墙壁是紧缩的。我透过虚空看到的是无意义的。诸神的光辉（numen）出现了，安静的座位没有被暴风摇晃，也没有被雨云阻挡；白色的雪花带着它的粗糙的冰霜，也没有侵犯它们的夏日的温暖，而是一个永远没有云的乙醚在它们上面笑着发出广泛的光芒。" 卢克莱修从老荷马那里得到了他的伊壁鸠鲁式天堂的所有这些线状物。它们散布在 "伊利亚斯 "和 "奥杜塞亚 "的上下两层，呈 "废弃 "的形状。例如，他通过宇宙壁上的一道鸿沟看到的奥林匹斯山，高耸入云的纯洁的帝国，具有荷马的岛屿极乐世界的一些特征，那是凡人英雄被神化或转化后的幸福居所。凯尔特人的阿瓦隆岛谷，亚瑟王的居所，"有果园草地和低矮的空地"，丁尼生如此细腻地提到，是荷马史诗中的伊利西亚平原的一个相似点。爱默生说："神的种族，或者我们这些犯错的人，都是在静止的住所里上下浮动的影子。" 这也正是卢克莱修的意思。他们都是空气城市，这些天人的座位，不管是什么信仰，--夏天，空灵的气候，用香料风和热风吹拂着。梅鲁、卡夫、奥林匹斯、埃尔博尔兹，它们都是一样的。民族的高级神灵被称为空气的力量。疲惫和渴望的圣人和各种信仰的信徒都在仰望着遥远的蓝色。在蔚蓝的天空幕布之外，向着纯洁的领域，在雨云和雷声以及海浪的银条之上，他安置了他的安静的座位，他的休息的宅邸。

德国诗人席勒是艺术和感性美的崇拜者，他把科学看作是艺术的婢女，把人的审美凌驾于道德性之上，他很自然地感到遗憾，他没有生活在希腊拟人化信条的辉煌时代，在纳克索斯岛吟唱潘的哀歌之前。他的 "希腊土地上的诸神 "是一篇很好的异教徒渴望的文章，在这么晚的时候还能写出来。他的心显然已经远离了他所生活的那个世纪，并在他所说的遥远的希腊天空下跳动着。在艺术方面，希腊的神话形成了一种光辉的信仰。优雅和对称的形式是他们的，他们用外在的可爱来满足眼睛；但对于感觉和情感的深层泉源，如一个更高的信仰在心脏中解封，他们从未渗透。与现代科学逐年揭示的真实世界相比，古希腊诗人和雕塑家，甚至哲学家的那个神话般的小世界是多么可怜，多么狭窄啊! 席勒以韦勒先生的精神回顾的那个希腊太阳，以及它的马车夫的缰绳、喷火的纳格和金车，与现代科学的巨大的虚空球体和光泉，以及它的行星随从、空间之船和灵魂的货物相比，是多么微不足道的事情啊！科学是艺术的婢女。科学是艺术的女仆! 拟人化之美的单纯艺术家和崇拜者可能会感到震惊，并叹息在一些低矮的希腊天堂和一些古老的神话中的大自然的怀抱里，因为他在现代恒星科学的世界末日面前颤抖，它已经通过空间的模糊深渊将其坠落到难以想象的深度，像大海中的鱼群一样有各种世界系统。古代希腊民族的自然和物理宇宙只形成了一个小的壁龛和凹槽，在这个壁龛的墙壁上，微不足道的人类形象很容易反映在美丽如画和怪诞的阴影中，这些阴影被误认为是神灵。但是，现代基督教科学所揭示的自然和宇宙太过广阔和深邃，无法反映出全能者本人的形象。

在每个富有想象力的年轻人的生活中，仍然有一个时期，他是一个异教徒，崇拜古老的荷马史诗的万神殿，在那里，自我否定和忏悔是未知的，在树林和峡谷中，受宠的凡人情人可能听到 "阿佛洛狄忒的发光凉鞋 "的脚步声。年轻的诗人可以和席勒一起感叹：-

"你，美丽的世界，不再了吗？
你这个处女之花在大自然的脸上绽放吧!
啊，只有在吟游诗人的神奇海岸上
我们才能追寻到可爱的寓言的脚步!
草地为古老的圣洁的生命而哀伤。
我们徒劳地搜寻着失去神灵的大地。
曾经温暖的、活生生的形状充斥的地方。
只剩下影子!
寒冷从北方来，已经走了
寒风吹过花朵，使它们的五月变得寒冷。
为了充实对神的崇拜。
宇宙的神灵必须消失!
哀伤，我在那边的星阶上寻找。
但你已不在了，塞琳娜，我看到了你！我在树林中呼唤，你在哪里？
我在树林中呼唤，在深海中呼唤。
回声回应我。"1

华兹华斯在阿尔塞斯提斯的树荫下抛出的极乐世界的美丽和忧郁的优雅，是从一个比神话中的极乐世界更好的世界借来的光辉。无论是奥林匹斯山还是埃里伯斯山，都不屑于感官的愉悦。

莎士比亚在他的《仲夏夜之梦》中，将希腊和斯堪的纳维亚、北方和南方的神话混合在一起，使它们成为一种神话中的奥拉波利达。他表现了哥特式仙境中的小精灵和小费，长长的露水和月光的生物，奥伯伦国王和他的王后泰坦尼亚的仆人，从他们闹鬼的山岗、树林、草地和喷泉中闯出来。在北方的橄榄树丛中，在希腊的塞勒涅（Selene）的光芒中舞动着她们的发丝，她是一位贞洁、冷酷的女猎手，在赫卡特的队伍中奔跑着，跟随夜的影子绕过地球。奇怪的是，当奥伯龙和他那怪诞的宫廷 "咬着马缰绳响着"，为特修斯与蹦蹦跳跳的亚马逊的婚礼祝福时，北方的埃尔弗兰德的号角一定响起，在希腊的森林里 "微微地吹着"。阁楼绿地上的精灵脚印看起来一定很奇怪。穿过这块铺设在奥林匹斯山和阿斯加德（或更严格地说是阿尔夫海姆）之间的莎士比亚式的木板，我们很高兴地从宙斯的阳光王国进入他的北方同行奥丁的王国，奥丁应该比希腊的乔夫更亲近、更熟悉他的后代，尽管他并非如此。拥挤在阿斯加德的形态可能没有奥林匹斯山的形态那么雕塑般美丽，那么明确，那么适合在大理石和青铜中复制。斯堪的纳维亚诸神的居所可能有更多模糊的轮廓，如遥远的蓝色天空的形状，但它更欢快和像家一样。生命树（Yggdrasil）的常青枝条愉快地挥舞着，这是古老的北方神话中的白蜡树，它的叶子是绿色的，绽放着不凋谢的花朵，甚至能抵御最后的大火。伊东，或春天，坐在这些树枝上，带着她的再生苹果，恢复众神枯竭的力量。在它最顶端的树枝的阴影下，矗立着阿斯加德，这是阿森的住所，他们被称为世界的椽子，也就是奥丁、托尔、弗雷尔，以及古老的日耳曼宗教中的其他高级力量，男性和女性。在阿斯加德是瓦尔哈拉，是选拔英雄的殿堂。这棵平凡的白蜡树的根部向下延伸，就像它的树枝向上延伸一样。它的根、树干和树枝一起贯穿了整个宇宙，将死亡王国海拉、人类居住地米德加德和众神居住地阿斯加德，像许多同心圆一样射入。

这种灰是一种心理学和本体论的植物。柏拉图、康德、费希特和库桑的所有传说都能在它的树枝的叹息中听到。三个北欧人，乌尔特、乌尔甘和斯库尔德，住在它的下面，所以它能理解过去、现在和未来的时间。众神在它下面举行他们的会议。在它的一根茎上，喃喃自语着尼弗尔海姆或米斯特兰的米米尔之泉，从它的瓮中涌出了海洋和大地的河流。奥丁在它的顶部有他的视野，那里有全知之眼的监视和守卫。在它的枝桠上，有一只被称为 "忙碌者 "的松鼠，它把闲话从枝桠上传到根部，再传回来。温暖的南方乌尔达喷泉，里面游动着两只天鹅形状的太阳和月亮，在阿斯加德的天干上流动着。一棵像白蜡树这样的树，当然有它的寄生虫和啮齿动物紧紧抓住它并啃咬它；但勇敢的老白蜡藐视它们，甚至在宇宙的废墟上挥舞它的天空之怒，在死亡之树过去后。Voluspa也是这么唱的。这棵树是日耳曼民族当之无愧的典范，它是那么的绿，那么的有活力，那么的包罗万象。我们应该发现北方神话世界的主要对象是树。森林对北方的子民来说永远是珍贵的，许多古老的北方部落曾经在一些宽阔的橡树或白蜡树的树枝下举行他们的会议和议会。就像它的类型Yggdrasil一样，日耳曼人似乎正在用普遍统治的根系穿透地球，而且，忠实于遗传的本能，它正在用它的殖民地环绕地球，就像它一样，用伟大的世俗灰烬的碎片种植它，并以电报电缆和蒸汽船的形式在大洋上架起Bifrost桥。

阿斯加德是一个比奥林匹斯山更像家的地方。家和炉边，在其真正意义上，是日耳曼的机构。瓦尔哈拉（Valhalla），当选英雄的殿堂，被适当地用金色的盾牌遮盖。喝啤酒的人和喝拉格啤酒的人都会高兴地知道，这个北方的瓦尔哈拉是一种天体的啤酒馆，从而表明它是一个真正的日耳曼式的天堂；因为在这样一个地区肯定会有啤酒。在《散文集》中，霍尔以极大的蔑视态度回答了冈格勒--冈格勒正在向他询问那些去瓦尔哈拉找奥丁的英雄们的食宿情况，以及他们是否除了水以外还有其他东西可以喝，他询问冈格勒是否认为万能的父亲会邀请国王、领主和其他伟人，而只给他们水喝。神圣和超自然的事物，当被人设想并被铸在一个世俗的、有限的模子里时，必然会呈现出人类的属性和特征！这就是神的力量。强烈的饮料，是北方民族在所有时代的激情，当然在他们古老的神话中的天堂，在他们传说中的来世，甚至还有野猪肉。古代的日耳曼人不可能忍受一个只有空气的、没有实质意义的快乐的天堂。他必须要有天国的烤肉，还有他祖传的啤酒的酒瓶。时至今日，他的后人在庆祝一个伟大的时刻时，从来不会没有巨大的饲料和公司的晚餐，从而确立了他们来自日耳曼人的合法血统。日耳曼人一直过着精力充沛的生活；因此，他的胃口很好，被他家乡北方的寒风吹得发烫。那么，在他古老的极乐世界里，出现沾满泥土的野猪肉，还有一只天体的山羊，它的乳头能产生强烈的饮料，这又有什么奇怪呢？在米德加德或阿斯加德，条顿人不喜欢禁食和羞辱。他永远是肉食性和嗜酒性的。我们新英格兰人也许是他的后裔中最瘦弱的，因为我们放弃了太多种族的古老方式和习惯，而把自己过多地交给了抽象和超验主义。老日耳曼人厌恶抽象的东西。他喜欢具体的；实质性的。南欧的种族，也就是现在所谓的拉丁人种，比日耳曼人更有节制，但他们的勇敢、诚实和男子气概要差得多。他们的性欲可能没有那么旺盛，但却更加兽性和肮脏。力量和男子气概，以及轻快、愉悦的精神，永远是日耳曼人的标志。但是，尽管他最初是粗野和粗糙的，但比起更肤浅、更琐碎的天性，他却能有更光滑的打磨，更光亮的搪瓷。他总是深思熟虑，能够比南方那些轻装上阵的孩子有更深刻的沉思情绪。从古至今，他的诗歌中一直有叹息，就像从Yggdrasil的树枝上发出的叹息。他从一开始就是一个铁匠，一个工匠，一个矿工。老日耳曼人的潘比希腊人的潘更有音乐感，更令人敬畏。北方的正午精神比南方的更加狂野。古老的北方在巨魔出没的山丘上是多么的有活力，那里有法厄里山匠的铁砧，有地精和巨魔的舞蹈和宴会，在它的溪流和泉水中，有头发湿润的女精灵和美人鱼的竖琴声，她们虽然是民族的恶魔，但却怀有救赎的希望！北方的神话精神是多么的活跃。北方的神灵比南方的神灵更有家的感觉，有更广泛的幽默感和更活泼的幻想。北方的精灵是真正的土生土长的人，服装和形状都很怪异。

今天的日耳曼人是古老的雷神崇拜者的后裔。雷神的锤子Miöllnir仍然存在于瓦特、富尔顿和史蒂芬森的巨大机械中。托尔体现了比奥丁更多的日耳曼人的属性。正如古老的《散文艾达》中所描述的那样，托尔在乌特加德这个奇怪的城市所做的壮举，预示着这个种族未来的成就，他是这个种族的主神。托尔有一次到约顿海姆（Jötunheim）或巨人国（Giant-land）旅行，这是一个原始的外围国家，到处都是阿斯加德王朝的敌人，或宇宙神。在旅行过程中，有一天晚上他和他的两个同伴住在一个他认为是巨大的大厅里，但结果却是一个叫Skrymir的巨人的手套，他正在睡觉，鼾声如雷，就在旁边。当巨人醒来时，他对站在附近的托尔说："我叫斯克里米尔，但我不需要问你的名字，因为我知道你是托尔神。但你对我的手套做了什么？" 果然，托尔一看，发现他那天晚上穿上了斯克里米尔的手鞋，或手套。巨人和托尔友好地共进早餐，一直走到晚上，这时斯克莱米尔把他的钱包里的食物交给了托尔和他的两个同伴，并让他们自己补给，同时他自己也在睡觉，鼾声大得让森林颤抖。托尔无法解开巨人的钱包，他一怒之下用他的木槌敲打着这个昏昏欲睡的家伙，这是一个沉重的打击。斯克雷米尔只是醒了过来，并询问是否有一片叶子从他躺着的橡树下掉到了他的头上。想象一下托尔对这个问题的懊恼和羞愧吧! 托尔第二次用他的木槌向巨人飞去。这一次，木槌插入他的头骨，一直到手柄，但没有取得更令人满意的结果。巨人只是询问是否有一个橡子掉在他的头上，并想知道托尔是如何发现自己的，他是否睡得好；对于这些问题，托尔喃喃地回答，然后走开了，决心用他的木槌做第三次也是最后一次努力，在那之前，他从未失败过。天快亮时，当斯克里米尔打最后一个盹时，托尔举起了他的锤子，猛地一攥，指关节都发白了。锤子下来了，带着可怕的重点，击穿了斯库里米尔的检查，一直到手柄。斯克雷米尔坐了起来，询问是否有鸟儿栖息在他赖以生存的树上；他觉得他感觉到有什么东西掉在他的头上，好像是一些苔藓。唉，托尔和他的武器啊！他发现自己的处境很糟糕。这一次，他发现自己被打倒了，他最强大的努力被认为只是跳蚤的叮咬；因为斯克莱米尔关于树叶、橡子和苔藓的谈话只是一种狡猾的幽默，是针对可怜的失败者托尔的，他后来也承认了。这件事之后，托尔和他的两个同伴，农民的孩子泰尔菲和罗斯卡，以及斯克莱米尔各走各的路，来到了高高在上的乌特加德城，它矗立在平原的中央，高耸入云，托尔不得不仰头看它的尖顶和穹顶。现在，托尔绝不是小个子；事实上，在阿斯加德，即埃西尔的城市，他被视为一个巨人；但在乌特加德，斯克里米尔告诉他，最好不要给自己任何压力，因为那个城市的人们不会容忍这样一个人形动物的任何假设！他说："我不知道。

乌特加德-洛基，这个城市的国王，以最不屑的态度接待了托尔，说他是个乡巴佬，并轻蔑地问他能做什么。托尔说他已经准备好参加酒赛了。于是，乌特加德-洛基让他的捧杯人拿来大喇叭，他的臣子们如果违反了他宫殿里的任何既定规则和条例，就必须一饮而尽。托尔很渴，他认为自己可以毫不费力地处理这个喇叭，尽管它有点大。在他设计的一个长长的、深深的、令人窒息的拉动后，他把喇叭放下，发现酒并没有明显地降低。他又试了一次，结果没有好转；第三次，他满怀愤怒和懊恼，大口大口地喝着里面的酒，却发现酒液仍旧冒着泡沫，接近水满。他厌恶地交还了喇叭。然后乌特加德-洛基向他提出了举起他的猫这种幼稚的做法。托尔把他的手放在塔比的肚子下面，用尽全身力气，只能把一只脚从地上抬起来。他是一个很有格列佛精神的布罗布迪格。作为最后的手段，他提议通过与某个乌特加德人摔跤来挽回他被玷污的名誉；这时，国王把他的老护士埃利，一个可怜的没有牙齿的老太婆带进了拳击场，她把托尔带到了他的膝盖上，如果不是国王的干涉，她会把他扔出去。可怜的托尔! 第二天早上，他在悲伤的状态下吃了早餐，并认为自己是一个可耻的被利用的人。事实是，他不知不觉地走到了原始自然界的古老蛮力中，他应该从他们所穿的孩子的大小中看出这一点。然而，他做得比他所知道的要好。他的锤子的三击落在了一座巨大的山峰上，而不是一个巨人，并在其表面留下了三个深邃的峡谷；他承诺要清空的酒角是大海本身，或者是大海的一个出口，他已经明显地降低了；而猫实际上是中庭蛇，它用它的线圈包围着世界，而没有牙齿的女摔跤手是老龄化！这一切都让他感到惊讶。索尔被吓得跪在地上，这又有什么奇怪呢？当发现自己被玩弄于股掌之间时，托尔怒火中烧，但不得不走自己的路，因为乌特加德城已经消失得无影无踪，它的云顶塔和巨大的市民也消失了。之后，托尔用牛头做诱饵，开始捕捉中庭蛇。世界蛇贪婪地吃着美味的食物，发现自己被钩住了，就蠕动和挣扎，以至于托尔在努力让他的猎物上岸时，把他的脚从船底刺穿了。

雷神的冒险有某种怪诞的幽默感，这一点在他的南方神话对应者中是没有的。赫拉克勒斯。这是北方古老的丰富的 "世界幽默"，和蔼而宽广，它仍然活在后来日耳曼缪斯的创作中。托尔在斯克里米尔山的头骨上留下的印记是日耳曼人后来的功绩的类型和先驱，他们在这个西半球粗糙的、蓬乱的、荒芜的表面上完成了这些功绩，用水路来引导它，用隧道来铲平它的山脉，用城市来填满它的表面。北方古老的埃达斯（Eddas）和沃勒斯帕斯（Voluspas）对北方人的儿子来说充满了重要的传说，不管他们的命运在哪里。在那里，他们会发现，在对世界进行殖民化和人性化管理时，在用铁路和电报线对世界进行分区时，在用快船和汽船连接海洋时，在铁器的铿锵声中为世界进行编织、锻造和制造时，他们只是在遵循种族的原始倾向，在铁匠托尔的后面旅行。

当希腊和罗马的神话被我们的教科书所熟知时，令人遗憾的是，我们古老民族的狂野而辉煌的神话传说被忽视了。如果你想知道从何而来，你必须去了解

"德国人的内向型视力。
以及缓慢而肯定的英国的世俗力量"。

还可以补充说，英美人无与伦比的实际能量、技能和对自由的无敌热爱。从白蜡树Yggdrasil的泉眼中流淌出这些东西。一些最伟大的现代日耳曼作家已经回到了这些流淌在过去这些狂野的神话荒原上的喷泉，并从那里获得了灵感。珀西、斯科特和卡莱尔这样做，从他们种族的古老生命树上注入了新的汁液到我们的现代英国文学中，而我们的文学由于在血管中注入了太多冰冷、稀薄、水样的高卢液体而变得陈旧和乏味。是的，沃尔特-斯科特听到了Yggdrasil树枝上无数枝叶的叹息，并以此来调节他的竖琴。卡莱尔也曾沐浴在它根部快速流淌的三条神秘的喷泉中。以一种特殊的方式，日耳曼人的分支回到了那些在昏暗的北方涌现的古老的音乐泉眼，他们在朝圣的过程中得到了加强和启发。"在向Jötuns延伸的树根下，有Mimir的井，里面藏着智慧和智慧。" 朗费罗也曾喝过米米尔之井，因此他的《伊凡杰琳》、《希瓦塔》和《金色传说》具有罕见的魅力和魔力。对于北方的孩子来说，北方的这口井比卡斯塔利亚的泉眼更好。

北方的太阳神巴尔德，比他在希腊的对应者，无误之弓的领主，南方的光明、诗歌和音乐的天才，要和蔼可亲得多！巴尔德住在他的宫殿里。巴尔德住在他的宫殿Breidablick，或Broadview；在北方神奇的春天，当美丽的少女Iduna向蓝色的空气呼出她和煦的气息时，他让被囚禁的大自然获得自由，让天空充满银色的雾气，并召唤鹳和鹤回家，召唤出嫩芽，让光秃秃的树枝披上精致的绿色。"巴尔德是所有埃西尔中最温和、最智慧、最善于表达的人，"《埃达》中说。当巴尔德被槲寄生飞镖杀死时，哀嚎声传遍了阿斯加德的宫殿，赫莫德骑马前往海拉（即死神）的国度，去赎回失去的人。与此同时，他的尸体被放在漂浮的火葬场上。如果不是恶灵洛（Lok）插手阻挠，赫莫德本会成功完成他的任务。为此，洛被捆绑在监狱里，用他自己一个儿子的扭曲的肠子做绳索；他将一直被囚禁，直到诸神的黄昏，万物的完结。

在斯堪的纳维亚最高神灵奥丁的肩上，坐着两只乌鸦，在他耳边低语。这两只乌鸦被称为Hugin和Munin，即思想和记忆。这两只 "昔日圣洁的乌鸦 "每天飞往世界各地，收集 "事实和数字"，无疑是为了它们庄严的主人。这是一个美丽的寓言，让人想起弥尔顿的 "在永恒中徘徊的思想"。方舟的鸽子和栖息在老普鲁塔克英雄塞尔托里乌斯肩上的鸟，被这个斯堪的纳维亚的传说所回忆：--

"Hugin和Munin
各自向下飞去
地球上的田野"。

北方乔夫的这些黑鸦比他希腊兄弟的带栓鹰更高贵。严酷的、黑暗的、温柔的北方的神话比明亮的、善变的南方的神话更深刻、更有意义、更有音乐性！尽管瓦尔哈拉是一个非常好的地方，但它也是一个很好的地方。

尽管瓦尔哈拉充满了无敌的英雄，天城阿斯加德是众神的居所，但它仍有一个守望者，住在比弗罗斯特桥尽头的一座塔里。他的名字叫海姆达尔（Heimdall），他拥有守望者所拥有的最敏锐的耳朵和眼睛。他能极其清晰地听到草和羊毛的生长。Æsir，尽管他们有至高无上的地位，也需要这样一个看守人，他的Gjallar号比圣骑士Astolfo的更强大，可以使宇宙为之回声。事实上，即使是阿斯加德的高高在上的诸神，也笼罩着一个比他们更强大的厄运。因此，他们必须保持警惕和警戒，因为邪恶的东西正在追赶他们。在他们的势力范围之外还有广阔的、神秘的外围地区：尼弗尔海姆（Niflheim）或米斯特兰（Mistland），穆斯佩尔海姆（Muspellheim）或火焰之地（Flameland），以及约顿海姆（Jötunheim），这是古老的大地之力的居所，与之相比，即使是阿森家族中最强大的托尔，也不过是个弱小的家伙。在这个古老的斯堪的纳维亚天堂，就像在所有民族的天堂一样，黑暗的命运之神毫无疑问地主宰着它。最后，从世界的四个角落飞来了可怕的Fimbul的雪片，冬天，遮住了太阳，日夜呻吟和漂移。冬天来了三次，又走了一次，给人和神带来了 "暴风雨，狼的时代"。然后，拉格纳罗克（Ragnarök），诸神的黄昏来临了！奥丁骑上他的战马。奥丁骑着他的战马。巨大的灰烬Yggdrasil开始颤抖，穿过它所有的高度。瓦尔哈拉的英雄们，一直在为这个可怕的时代守候，他们满怀北方古老的无畏精神出发，迎接黑暗和厄运的可怕代理人。猎月犬加姆(Garm)挣脱了束缚，并大声喊道。"海姆达尔的号角高高吹起。奥丁劝说米米尔的头。" 战斗打响了。简而言之，斯多葛圣人、希伯来人和斯堪的纳维亚人的黑暗卷轴中所预言的火热洗礼包裹着整个宇宙。侏儒们在他们的山洞里哀嚎。一切都在喧嚣和嘶嘶作响的火光中。

"现在太阳黯淡了。
大地在海洋中沉没。
天空中投下了
闪亮的星星。
火焰在时间的护士身边肆虐
围绕着时间的护士。
闪烁的火焰
与天堂本身一起游戏"。

在 "Voluspa "的前几行中，"时间的奶妈 "是指世俗之树Yggdrasil，它将毫发无损地存活下来，并在世界的残骸上哀伤地挥舞。但在《埃达》中，霍尔告诉甘格勒，"另一个地球将出现，最可爱、最青翠，有愉快的田地，那里的谷物将不被播种。维达尔和瓦利将幸存下来。他们将居住在艾达平原上，那里是阿斯加德的旧址。托尔的儿子们将来到这里，带来他们父亲的棒槌。鲍杜尔和霍杜尔也将从死神的居所赶到那里。在那里，他们将坐在一起交谈，并唤起他们以前的知识和他们所经历的危险"。

也许我们可以给《埃达诸神的黄昏》一个更加人性化和严格的欧洲解释。这难道不是预示着西欧日耳曼人的大决战即将来临，他们以新教、言论自由、个人自由、私人判断权以及对所有物质和精神的束缚的蔑视为一方，以专制主义、压制和不负责任的教会和国家权威的黑暗势力为另一方？俄国，这个野蛮的类型，是如何以压倒性的力量压迫着知识分子的德国！她很快就会吞并旧的王国。不久，她将吸收斯堪的纳维亚半岛的古老王国，即瑞典、挪威和丹麦。在挪威海岸，斯克拉夫人的统治者将悬在苏格兰和英格兰上空，就像一只即将扑向他的受害者的猎鸟。所有的暴君和专制主义者都将在他的旗帜下列队，或成为他的助手。旧的等级制度将与他联合起来，粉碎新教，因为新教是日耳曼人的一种植物。具有敌意和专制传统的旧亚洲，在俄罗斯帝国的统治下，认识到了一个与西方进步的、令人憎恶的盎格鲁-撒克逊主义和新教主义相适应的集结点。在自由和专制主义之间，在旧信仰的偏执追随者和已经脱离旧信仰的国家之间，一场决定性的斗争肯定即将到来。也许这场斗争可以在古老的北方神话 "诸神的黄昏 "中得到预示。

所有古老的神话宇宙观都具有奇怪的暗示性，并充满了神秘的意味，北方奥丁主义的神话比其他任何神话都更有意义。例如，在那个昏暗的尼弗尔海姆，它的上层世界的水的井口混乱地冒着气泡，它的金属矿脉，以及昏暗的、蒸腾的大气，伟大的日耳曼神话中的古老的尼伯龙根英雄就是从那里发出的，有很多东西是令人联想的。难道人们不能从这个古老的宇宙神话中发现所谓创造的星云假说的一个模糊的暗示吗？当然，Niflheim，Mistland，和Muspellheim，Flameland，混合在一起，会产生热的、沸腾的、云雾状的火雾，物理学家说，从这些火雾中，通过聚集、离心和向心的吸引力，演化出我们公平、和谐的世界体系，以最外层的海王星为界，迄今是太阳系的Ultima Thule。也许阿斯加德，从神话中翻译成科学语言，意味着黄道之光，而大桥Bifröst是银河。

在印度、希腊和斯堪的纳维亚的怪诞的神话宇宙论中追踪现代地质学、植物学和化学等，是多么令人好奇啊！埃达斯和其他古老的神话经文中的巨大而残酷的巨人被认为是自然力量的化身！古老的神话宇宙论被认为是自然的化身。毕竟，古老的神话宇宙论者和现代地质学家和天文学家之间的分歧并不大。神话中的物理学家有个人代理人在工作，而不是我们简单的元素代理人；结果是一样的。以古希腊、斯堪的纳维亚和印度的神话宇宙论，以及当今的地质学和天文学为例，比较它们的篇幅，将个人的东西变为非个人的东西。一个新的、更美丽的神的种族，即宇宙神，一个有秩序的世界的力量和统治者，对旧的没有形状的世俗神的驱逐和放逐，在翻译成我们的现代地质学命名法时，是足够明白的。石头书的叶子，正如地球上的岩石层被称为的那样，以及天堂的蓝色象形文字页，借助于古老宗教的神话词汇，即萨迦、卢恩和沃鲁斯帕的神话词汇，也更容易理解。他们用自己特有的语言正确地拼写了泰尔族的记录。提丰人和约顿人对天体王朝的攻击，以及他们试图用山的梯子来攀登众神的火城，足够清楚地表明地质学在全球原始花岗岩上堆积的各种地层和岩石层中读到的不同革命，从中央火中爆发的喷发，挤压和抬升的山脉，以及海洋从一个有涟漪标记的海滩下沉到另一个低处。在那些昏暗的地质时代，在云母板岩、粘土板岩和志留系、旧红砂岩和新红砂岩、原生岩和次生岩以及第三纪白垩纪上都写下了年轮，在山丘之间发生了翻天覆地的变化，山峰的赌博和跳动，对这些来说，佩利翁岛堆积在奥萨岛上只是一个鹅卵石的壮举而已。阿尔卑斯山和亚平宁山脉当时在玩跳跃游戏。巨大的玄武岩块经常从世界的心脏和核心地带被挤压到令人惊讶的空气中。事实上，古代东方、南方和北方的神话宇宙论对地球胚胎的描述一点也不夸张，当时它在一种子宫膜中蠕动，形成了形状和规则的线条。

在神话的描述中，没有什么比科学页面的描述更沉闷、畸形、狂野、黑暗和孤独了。即使在印度的宇宙寓言中，还有什么比地球上那个奇怪的碳土时代更狂野、更沉闷的呢？这个时代的沉积物，以石化森林的形式，现在让我们取暖，为我们做饭，其遗物和纪念品被压在次生岩石的石叶之间，由全能的草药学家保存？陆地和水在那时是可以区分的，但是还没有陆地动物，除了腹足和头足的辐射动物和软体动物，以及其他水生的怪兽，带甲的、带板的和带扣头的，在角、齿和锯齿的恐怖方面，把现在宇宙中的铲鼻鲨完全抛在了后面。这些无定形的生物在海洋中滑行，巨大的海虫或蜈蚣，即现代克拉肯和海蛇的父母，毫无疑问，伴随着它们。那是一个未完成的世界，散发着炭烟的气味，其柔软的、菌类的、隐蔽的植被在那可怕的碳氛围中散发着激烈的繁茂。多情的棕榈树和生长着蘑菇的松树一动不动地站在那里，没有对着这可怕的臭气发出柔和的、像灵魂一样的呢喃；因为还没有树叶、花朵、蓝天和纯净的微风，只有从巨大的炭火炉中升起的一缕缕令人窒息的致命蒸汽。在那个碳化时代，没有百灵鸟、林雀、红嘴鸟或知更鸟可以生存，更不用说鸣叫了。世界就像一艘密西西比河的汽船，正在为其未来的两足动物乘客的需要而加油。胚胎期的地球当时确实是一个尼特海姆，或者说是米斯特兰，一个昏暗的、发烟的地区。那些日子，也许是诺克斯统治时期，伟大的世俗之蛋在烤箱般的高温中孵化，长着翅膀的男孩厄洛斯从那里跃出，"他的背上闪耀着金色的羽毛，像流动的空气一样迅速。" 我们有充分的理由相信，纽约的阿迪朗达克山和苏格兰的格兰皮亚山，也就是诺瓦要喂养他的羊群的地方，已经从沸腾的海锅中挺起了赤裸的脊背，从而在阿尔卑斯山和许多其他的名山面前抢先一步。

神话时代和十九世纪是多么的相反和相距甚远啊! 一个时代的批判和科学精神与另一个时代的轻信和盲目崇敬的精神形成了奇怪的对比。神话把世界的管理权交给了低等神灵，他们是无所不能的命运或必然性的主体；而为了显示极端的情况，单纯的科学把它交给了化学和生理机构，并且像神话中的宇宙论一样，以物质的某种不可抗拒的自发冲动来发展自己在可见宇宙中不断变化的形式。成千上万的神灵是古老的神话所困扰的自然界的 "急剧变形 "中的演员；而化学和元素的力量在现代Phusis的伪装中扮演着同样的角色。因此，神话和科学都坚守在次要原因中。

神话是年轻人的宗教，是原始的、不成熟的民族的宗教；而科学可以被称为成熟的人的宗教，充满了经验，沉浸在现实中。孔德的实证主义，就像古老的神话崇拜一样，为它的神灵设置了理想化的人性，用天才和美德来装饰。实证主义者崇拜有德行的人性，因为它是有条件的和有限的；而神话主义者则崇拜它反映在外部世界，并被赋予超自然的属性，披着雾帽和许愿帽，使它对空间和时间具有支配权。仙女神话中那些不安分的、闪光的、异想天开的精灵，过去被认为在塑造自然和人类生活的过程中有很大的作用，现在至少已经从校长的辖区内消失了。它们无法忍受科学的清澈目光，科学已经搜查了它们的地下巢穴，使它们枯萎，并使它们蜕变为单纯的生理力量。理性和科学调查对信仰和想象力的东西没有耐心。我们的诗人现在不得不回到过去，回到古老的异教吟游诗人的立场上。丁尼生生活在Lotophagi的土地上，生活在哈里发-哈伦的巴格达的天方夜谭里，生活在亚瑟王的阿瓦隆的果园草坪上。因此，朗费罗也必须吸入过去的金色传奇空气。仅仅是人道主义的吟游诗人，试图让现代生活在特罗凯斯（trochees）、达克尔（dactyles）和斯邦德（spondees）的音乐中旅行，是很失败的。工业主义是没有诗意的。我们的现代生活用机器、数学公式、统计学和一般的科学精确性来表达自己。艺术和诗歌是以过去时代的精神来追求的，并关注过去的象征、信仰和理想创造。

然而，世界上所有过去的时代在这个时代确实是同时存在的。例如，在十九世纪，我们有世界上的父权制时代仍然生存在阿拉伯人的沙漠帐篷里，而神话的、拟人化的时期仍然存在于波斯、中国和印度，甚至在西方国家中，在欧洲的罗马天主教国家的乡村角落里。但是，那些仍然保留着古老的民族崇拜和中世纪迷信的现存国家，只是人类前进道路上的徘徊者和追随者而已。在罗马教会宽大的裙摆下，旧的民族世界的迷信仍在畏缩和潜伏，当然是经过洗礼的，并以新的名字称呼。罗马教廷对旧宗教的公平人文一直有一种挥之不去的善意，它们不再生活在新教的理性和自由探索的信仰中。她在过去与他们达成了妥协，从那时起他们就一直紧紧抱着她的腰。她把她的制服穿在他们身上，让他们为她的事业服务，用他们的呼吸来维持她所喜爱和赞扬的信仰和想象力的轻信的快速消亡的火焰。就像一个模棱两可和模棱两可的自然界一样，古老的母亲教会，正如她被称为的那样，向上是公平的和基督教的，但向下是肮脏的和种族的。她从心灵、感官以及柯勒律治所说的那些让人回味无穷的古老本能的角度来攻击人性。她厌恶经过科学磨砺的理性和智慧。但是，有那么多的人仍然徘徊在先锋民族的后方，所以她还有很长的生命力，有无数的追随者狂热地依附于她，而且，还有来自诗意的、艺术的和富有想象力的人，他们自愿选择科学的广阔阳光，而不是她圣殿的黄昏阴暗，以便在那里更好地争取艺术、迷信和诗歌的古老灵感。人类天性中古老的民族本能是母亲教会强大的辅助力量。普西主义甚至会重新允许新教的、实用的英格兰的圣人之井，并送约翰-布尔去坎特伯雷和沃尔辛汉的圣地朝圣。如果你想了解十二世纪和十九世纪的人是如何在今年生活在一起的，那么就把一个在普通学校长大的美国人和一个奥地利农民作个比较。一个人自力更生、乐于助人、多才多艺，没有任何旧世界的垃圾；而另一个人卑微、盲目崇敬，充满了古老的神话想象力，这与新教徒敏锐的常识形成了强烈的对比，他用完全难以置信的笑声驱散了所有黄昏的幻想。一个人看到他自己的想象投射在外部世界上，现在是公平的，现在是阴暗的；而另一个人在世界中看到的是土地被切割成投机的角落，水用于锯木厂和棉花厂，以及漂浮在剪船和蒸汽船上。一个是这个世界的，另一个是另一个世界的。一个人在各方面都有武装和装备，以应对实际情况，征服它并充分利用它；他的目标是成功和财富，优雅、丰富和舒适的家；而另一个人则是疏忽的，是神龛的常客，对所有事情都过于迷信，忽视和轻视单纯的身体舒适，满足于痛苦和肮脏。罗马教的农民生活在超自然生物的庇护下，他们需要大量的时间和思想为他们服务；而节俭的新教工匠或农夫则是一个实用的自然主义者，他的眼睛一直盯着主要的机会。布朗森想让我们相信，他在道德和精神上都不如前者。对于现在照耀世界的这道普通的日光，乘法表、阅读和写作，远比护身符、念珠和十字架要好。

毕竟，吟游诗人和圣人如此谴责和蔑视的普通日之光，当被置于现代科学的显微镜和望远镜下时，为奇迹和想象力打开了一个巨大的领域，让人们陶醉于过去的奇迹、寓言和虚构。真实开始被发现，甚至比纯粹的想象和神话更奇怪。美丽和美好将被发现与严格意义上的真实和现实，与所谓的朴素事实相一致，就像它们在人类成就和忍耐的英雄时代，与激发人类高度进取的光荣欺骗和妄想相一致一样。现代科学发现者和发明家经常发现自己从事的探索和圆桌小说中的圣杯一样奇怪。过去的神话般的幻想、简单和对自然的无知，我们永远也回不去了，就像成熟的男人不能再缩回到刚出生的孩子一样。这也不值得遗憾。遥远的时间，就像遥远的空间，戴上了光环，一种模糊的、蓝色的可爱，这一切都是虚幻的。疲惫的旅行者，对现实和现在的尘埃、喧嚣和石子脚感到厌倦，有时可能会亲切地想象，如果他能回到遥远的过去，他会发现那里的一切都很顺利，都是金色的；但这是那个光荣的大厨师，想象力的愉快错觉。然而，如果我们不能回到过去，我们可以向未来迈进，这将打开一个更深、更奇妙、更广阔的视野，它的实际的魔术师将古老的巫术和神话机构的微不足道的成就置于阴影之下。

布尔韦的翻译。