ree Igdrasil, in all its new developments, is
the selfsame world-old Life-tree: having found an element or elements
there, running from the very roots of it in Hela's Realms, in the Well
of Mimer and of the Three Nornas or Times, up to this present hour of
it in our own hearts, we conclude that such will have to continue. A
man has, in his own soul, an Eternal; can read something of the
Eternal there, if he will look! He already knows what will continue;
what cannot, by any means or appliance whatsoever, be made to
continue!

One wide and widest 'outline' ought really, in all ways, to be
becoming clear to us; this namely: That a 'Splendour of God,' in one
form or other, will have to unfold itself from the heart of these our
Industrial Ages too; or they will never get themselves 'organised;'
but continue chaotic, distressed, distracted evermore, and have to
perish in frantic suicidal dissolution. A second 'outline' or
prophecy, narrower, but also wide enough, seems not less certain:
That there will again _be_ a King in Israel; a system of Order and
Government; and every man shall, in some measure, see himself
constrained to do that which is right in the King's eyes. This too we
may call a sure element of the Future; for this too is of the
Eternal;--this too is of the Present, though hidden from most; and
without it no fibre of the Past ever was. An actual new Sovereignty,
Industrial Aristocracy, real not imaginary Aristocracy, is
indispensable and indubitable for us.

But what an Aristocracy; on what new, far more complex and cunningly
devised conditions than that old Feudal fighting one! For we are to
bethink us that the Epic verily is not _Arms and the Man_, but
_Tools and the Man_,--an infinitely wider kind of Epic. And again
we are to bethink us that men cannot now be bound to men by
_brass-collars_,--not at all: that this brass-collar method, in all
figures of it, has vanished out of Europe forevermore! Huge Democracy,
walking the streets everywhere in its Sack Coat, has asserted so much;
irrevocably, brooking no reply! True enough, man _is_ forever the
'born thrall' of certain men, born master of certain other men, born
equal of certain others, let him acknowledge the fact or not. It is
unblessed for him when he cannot acknowledge this fact; he is in the
chaotic state, ready to perish, till he do get the fact acknowledged.
But no man is, or can henceforth be, the brass-collar thrall of any
man; you will have to