man Antiquary, goes so far as to deny that any man
Odin ever existed. He proves it by etymology. The word _Wuotan_, which
is the original form of _Odin_, a word spread, as name of their chief
Divinity, over all the Teutonic Nations everywhere; this word, which
connects itself, according to Grimm, with the Latin _vadere_, with
the English _wade_ and such like,--means primarily Movement, Source of
Movement, Power; and is the fit name of the highest god, not of any man.
The word signifies Divinity, he says, among the old Saxon, German and
all Teutonic Nations; the adjectives formed from it all signify divine,
supreme, or something pertaining to the chief god. Like enough! We must
bow to Grimm in matters etymological. Let us consider it fixed that
_Wuotan_ means _Wading_, force of _Movement_. And now still, what
hinders it from being the name of a Heroic Man and _Mover_, as well as
of a god? As for the adjectives, and words formed from it,--did not the
Spaniards in their universal admiration for Lope, get into the habit of
saying "a Lope flower," "a Lope _dama_," if the flower or woman were of
surpassing beauty? Had this lasted, _Lope_ would have grown, in Spain,
to be an adjective signifying _godlike_ also. Indeed, Adam Smith, in his
Essay on Language, surmises that all adjectives whatsoever were formed
precisely in that way: some very green thing, chiefly notable for its
greenness, got the appellative name _Green_, and then the next thing
remarkable for that quality, a tree for instance, was named the _green_
tree,--as we still say "the _steam_ coach," "four-horse coach," or the
like. All primary adjectives, according to Smith, were formed in this
way; were at first substantives and things. We cannot annihilate a man
for etymologies like that! Surely there was a First Teacher and Captain;
surely there must have been an Odin, palpable to the sense at one time;
no adjective, but a real Hero of flesh and blood! The voice of all
tradition, history or echo of history, agrees with all that thought will
teach one about it, to assure us of this.

How the man Odin came to be considered a _god_, the chief god?--that
surely is a question which nobody would wish to dogmatize upon. I have
said, his people knew no _limits_ to their admiration of him; they
had as yet no scale to measure admiration by. Fancy your own generous
heart's-love of some greatest man expanding till it _transcended_ all
bounds, till it filled and overflowed the wh