end and its observance of unknown antiquity. The pre-Aryan and
the Aryan elements of religion acted and reacted on each other, the
Aryan, no doubt, being the element of progress, but blending with the
other in indistinguishable mixture. The spirits of ancestors lived in
the belief and the practice of posterity; a thousand unseen agents in
the sky, and in the earth, and under the earth were believed in and
treated according to tradition, fed or flouted, bribed or exorcised,
as occasion suggested. New gods appeared, or old ones were combined
into new, or a god migrated from one province to another. Here also
myths and rituals were formed by various processes. But a more
constant growth of belief took place in connection with some gods as
larger social organisms came into existence, village communities
combining into tribes, tribes into nations. The great gods of heaven,
whatever the history of their early growth, proved specially fitted
to unite together clans and peoples. These beings received different
names in different countries. Their early history, no doubt, was not
the same in all, yet in each mythology there were figures and stories
which occurred also in others, whether in consequence of parallel
growth out of similar circumstances in each land, or from a process
of borrowing at a later time, or from both, we need not try to
decide.

We give a short account of the religion of the Germans. That of the
Celts, which may be studied in the Hibbert Lectures of Professor
Rhys,[1] or that of the Slavs (of which there is an excellent short
summary by Mr. W. R. Morfill in _Religious Systems of the World_),
would have equally well served the purpose of exhibiting an Aryan
religion at a low stage of development, and held by a people not
thoroughly compacted into a nation. The religion of the Teutons has
the advantage for our study over these others, that it remained
longer unsuppressed by Christianity, and in its Scandinavian branch
put forth a vigorous original growth in comparatively recent times.
The latest paganism which flourished in Europe, it is also the
religion of our ancestors, on which the Christianity of the Northern
lands was grafted, and many a survival of which may still be
recognised in our own land. It therefore possesses for us even in
itself considerable interest.

[Footnote 1: _Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as
illustrated by Celtic Heathendom_, 1886.]

Of the ancient Germans, of the dw