ell me what that is, you tell me to a very great extent
what the man is, what the kind of things he will do is. Of a man or of
a nation we inquire, therefore, first of all, What religion they had?
Was it Heathenism,--plurality of gods, mere sensuous representation of
this Mystery of Life, and for chief recognised element therein
Physical Force? Was it Christianism; faith in an Invisible, not as
real only, but as the only reality; Time, through every meanest moment
of it, resting on Eternity; Pagan empire of Force displaced by a
nobler supremacy, that of Holiness? Was it Scepticism, uncertainty and
inquiry whether there was an Unseen World, any Mystery of Life except
a mad one;--doubt as to all this, or perhaps unbelief and flat denial?
Answering of this question is giving us the soul of the history of the
man or nation. The thoughts they had were the parents of the actions
they did; their feelings were parents of their thoughts: it was the
unseen and spiritual in them that determined the outward and
actual;--their religion, as I say, was the great fact about them. In
these Discourses, limited as we are, it will be good to direct our
survey chiefly to that religious phasis of the matter. That once known
well, all is known. We have chosen as the first Hero in our series,
Odin the central figure of Scandinavian Paganism; an emblem to us of a
most extensive province of things. Let us look for a little at the
Hero as Divinity, the oldest primary form of Heroism.

Surely it seems a very strange-looking thing this Paganism; almost
inconceivable to us in these days. A bewildering, inextricable jungle
of delusions, confusions, falsehoods and absurdities, covering the
whole field of Life! A thing that fills us with astonishment, almost,
if it were possible, with incredulity,--for truly it is not easy to
understand that sane men could ever calmly, with their eyes open,
believe and live by such a set of doctrines. That men should have
worshipped their poor fellow-man as a God, and not him only, but
stocks and stones, and all manner of animate and inanimate objects;
and fashioned for themselves such a distracted chaos of hallucinations
by way of Theory of the Universe: all this looks like an incredible
fable. Nevertheless it is a clear fact that they did it. Such hideous
inextricable jungle of misworships, misbeliefs, men, made as we are,
did actually hold by, and live at home in. This is strange. Yes, we
may pause in sorrow and sil