Page:Norse mythology or, the religion of our forefathers, containing all the myths of the Eddas, systematized and interpreted with an introduction, vocabulary and index.djvu/96

 between the child, the vigorous man, and old age,—the imaginative and prophetic child, the emotional and active man, and the reflecting elder. So a nation, which like the ancient Greek and Norse, for instance, has had a natural growth and development, has first its childhood of imagination and prophecy, producing poetry (Homer and the Eddas); then its manhood of emotion and activity, producing history (Herodotus and the Sagas); and then its old age of mature reflection, producing philosophy (Socrates). Dividing the three periods in Greek history more definitely, we will find that imagination and poetry predominated during the whole time before Solon; emotion, activity and history during the time between Solon and Alexander the Great; and then reflection and philosophy, such as they were, from Alexander to the collapse of the Greek states.

Even among the Romans, the most prosaic of all peoples, that nation of subduers, enslavers and robbers, traces of this growth from poetic childhood through historic manhood to philosophic old age can be found, which proves moreover that this is a law of human development that cannot be eradicated, although it may be perverted. That of the Romans is a most distorted growth, showing that as the twig is bent the tree is inclined. Ut sementem feceris, ita metes—as you sow, so will you reap,—to quote the Romans' own words against them. The Romans had their poetic and prophetic age during the reign of the seven kings; their emotional and historical age during the most prosperous and glorious epoch of the republic; and finally, their age of reflection and philosophy began with the time of the elder Cato. Rome took a distorted, misanthropic course from the beginning, so that her pro