falls victim to malice and wickedness, and the sorrow of
his fall takes possession of the whole of heaven. Thus pain and
sacrifice are hallowed, for man by the history of the gods, and his
intercourse with them leads him into heights and depths unknown
before.

But the conviction is now establishing itself that this phase of
Teutonic religion is borrowed from Christianity, which was then
seriously menacing the existence of the old faith, and that it is the
shadow of their approaching extinction by the new religion, which
occasions among the Northern gods this feeling of sadness. They feel
themselves falling from their position; they are to be gods no
longer, but are to yield to the world-order, based on a deeper law
than theirs, which called them into being and now is preparing their
dismissal. Distinctly Christian ideas enter the old world of gods;
the ideas of sin, of sacrifice, of a final judgment, of a good god
who dies, of an evil spirit who, after prevailing for a time, is
chained up to await his doom. That a sense of guilt rests on the gods
shows that they are abandoning their rule, and they acknowledge that
their successors will be better than they have been.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED

Grimm's _German Mythology_, translated by Stallybrass, 4 vols.

Grimm's _Fairy Tales_. Mr. Lang writes an Introduction to the English
translation in Bell's edition.

Mannhardt, _Germanische Mythen_, 1858, and _Wald- und Feld-kulte_,
1875, 77.

For the later Northern section, Vigfusson and Powell's _Corpus
Poeticum Boreale_, especially the Excursus on Religion, i. 401.

Dasent, _Burnt Njal; or Life in Iceland at the end of the tenth
century_.

Mallet's _Northern Antiquities_.

Thorpe, _Northern Mythology_.

De la Saussaye, _The Religion of the Teutons_, 1902, the most
comprehensive statement of the whole subject.

Ralston, _Songs of Russian People_, and _Russian Folk Tales_.

Simrock, _Handb. der deutschen Mythologie_.

R. M. Meyer, _Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte_, 1910.

Sir John Rhys, _Oxford Proceedings_, p. 201, _sqq._

CHAPTER XVI
GREECE

The history of Europe begins in Greece. It is there that the Aryans
in Europe first feel the touch of the arts and civilisation of the
East, and are stirred up to new activities; and the life thus
quickened in Greece transmitted its spark to Italy, and so to the
whole of Europe.

People and Land.--There is no direct evidence that the Greeks came to
their count