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/98

 miniature, the life of a people or of the whole human family.

This was a digression, and we confess that it is not the first one we have made; but in the world of thought, as in the world of music, monotony is tedious; and the reader having perhaps refreshed his mind by the interlude, we will proceed to discuss further the union of the ethical with the physical interpretation of mythology. Physical interpretation alone is the shell without the kernel. Nature gives us only the source of the myth; but we want its value in the minds and hearts of a people in their childhood. The touching gracefulness of Nanna, and of Idun reclining on Brage's breast, was not suggested by nature alone, but the pictures of these reflect corresponding natures in our ancestors. To explain a myth simply by the phenomenon in external nature (be it remembered, however, that man also constitutes a part of nature) that suggested it to the ancients, would be reducing mythology to a natural science and it is sad to witness how the beautiful and poetical Eddas, in the hands of some, have dwindled down into the dry chemistry, chronology, electro-magnetism, mathematics, astronomy, or, if you please, the almanacs, of our forefathers, instead of being presented as the grand, prophetic drama which foreshadowed the heroic and enterprising destiny of the Teutonic nations. The twelve dwellings of the gods, they say, represent the twelve signs of the zodiac; Balder they make the constellation of the lion; Odin's twelve names, they say, are the twelve months of the year; his fifty-two names, which he himself enumerates in Grimnismaal, are the fifty-two weeks in the year; the thirteen valkyries are the thirteen new moons in the year. How profound! How