The Undeveloped Reasoning Faculty Is Prone To Attach An
Undue Value And Meaning To The Forms Of Things, And The
Infancy Of A Nation's Mind Is Always More Ready To Worship
The MANIFESTATIONS Of A Power, Than To Look Beyond Them
For A Cause.
Was it not natural then that these northerns,
dwelling in daily communion with this grand Nature, should
fancy they
Could perceive a mysterious and independent
energy in her operations, and at last come to confound
the moral contest man feels within him, with the physical
strife he finds around him, to see in the returning
sun - fostering into renewed existence the winter-stifled
world - even more than a TYPE of that spiritual consciousness
which alone can make the dead heart stir; to discover
even more than an ANALOGY between the reign of cold,
darkness, and desolation, and the still blanker ruin of
a sin-perverted soul? But in that iron clime, amid such
awful associations, the conflict going on was too
terrible - the contending powers too visibly in presence
of each other, for the practical, conscientious Norse
mind to be content with the puny godships of a Roman
Olympus. Nectar, Sensuality, and Inextinguishable Laughter
were elements of felicity too mean for the nobler atmosphere
of their Walhalla; and to those active temperaments and
healthy minds, - invigorated and solemnized by the massive
mould of the scenery around them, - Strength, Courage,
Endurance, and above all Self-sacrifice - naturally seemed
more essential attributes of divinity than mere elegance
and beauty.
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