Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/28

 barbarians of an almost brutal ignorance and ferocity, without a spark of civilisation or literature. We see that these Vikings, or marauders from the North, were bloody, daring, capable of incredible enterprises and exertion, and of incredible outrages and cruelty when successful—and that a few hundreds of them landing from row-boats, could daunt and subdue extensive tracts of country, and all their inhabitants; yet we do not draw the natural conclusion from these facts, that this terrifying, conquering few must have been superior in mental power, energy, and vigour of action, to the daunted, conquered many. All conquests that history tells of will be found to resolve themselves into the superior mental powers of the conquerors. The Romans conquered nations armed in the same way as themselves, by superior tactics, discipline, military arrangement, and perseverance; that is, by superior mental power applied to the same material means. The moderns in America, India, and in Europe, conquer by the superiority of fire-arms, or of what belongs to the efficiency of fire-arms, in a campaign. This too is the superiority of mental power in the invention, construction, or application of material means. The Northmen, armed with the same weapons as the inhabitants of England, men of the same physical powers as the Anglo-Saxons, land in small piratical bands, altogether insignificant in numbers, on the coasts of England and France, and terrify, paralyse, and conquer, as the Spaniards with their fire-arms and horses, did in Mexico or Peru. What is this but the superiority of mind, of intellectual power, energy, spirit, over the inert passive Anglo-Saxon inhabitants, tamed down by the church influence and superstition of five centuries into a state of listless existence, without spirit or feeling as a nation, or confidence and self-dependence as individuals, and looking for aid from saints, prayers, and miracles?