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-obscura 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 recognising the divineness of
Nature, the divineness of Man; most rude, yet heartfelt, robust,
giantlike; betokening what a giant of a man this child would grow
to!--It was a truth, and is none. Is it not as the half-dumb stifled
voic