Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/223

Rh CHAP. of Baldur. The life or the reign of the ^Esir themselves will come to an end, but a new earth rising from this second chaos will resemble that of the golden age in the Hesiodic tradition. Of this Teutonic theogony we may say without the least misgiving that it exhibits no sign of any Christian influence. It would be almost as reasonable - to trace such an influence in the Hesiodic poems, where, if we could get over the insurmountable difficulties of chronolog)', such an attempt might be made with far greater plausibihty. Nor can we charge Bunsen with speaking too strongly, when he says that we must be brought to this negative conclusion, unless " we are to set above facts a preconceived opinion, taken up at random on the slightest grounds, or indolently to decline scrutiny of those facts, or profound reflexions on what they indicate." ^

The idea which the Arj'ans of India sought to express under the The name names Brahman and Atman, the Aryans of Europe strove to signify ^°^^'^- by the name Wuotan. That idea centred in the conception of Will as a power which brought all things into being and preserves them in it, of a will which followed man wherever he could go and from which there was no escape, which was present alike in the heavens above and in the depths beneath, an energy incessantly operating and making itself felt in the multiplication as well as in the sustain- ing of life. Obviously there was no one thing in the physical world which more vividly answered to such a conception than the wind, as the breath of the great Ether, the moving power which purifies the air. Thus the Hindu Brahman denoted originally the active and propulsive force in creation, and this conception was still more strictly set forth under the name Atman, the breath or spirit which becomes the atmosphere of the Greeks and the athem of the Ger- mans. Atman is thus the breathing, in other words, the self-existent being, — the actual self of the universe ; and the meaning thus as- signed to the word was so impressed upon the minds of the Aryans of India that no mythology ever grew up round it. In Professor Miiller's words " the idea of the Atman or self, like a pure crystal, was too transparent for poetry, and therefore was handed down to philosophy, which afterwards polished, and turned, and watched it as the medium through which all is seen and in which all is reflected and known." ^ The conception of the Teutonic Wuotan was at first not less exalted. Like Brahman and Atman, it is the moving strength and power of creation, and the word in Grimm's belief carries us to the Latin vad-ere, to go or move, the Bavarian wueteln,

' God in History, ii. 409. « Chips, &-C., i. 71.