Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/75

Rh Pindar refused to credit charges of gluttony or unnatural crime against the gods, no violent shock was given to the popular belief; and even Sokrates might teach the strictest responsibility of man to a perfectly impartial judge, even while he spoke of the mythical tribunal of Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Aiakos. He was accused indeed of introducing new gods. This charge he denied, and with truth: but in no sense whatever was he a worshipper of the Olympian Zeus, or of the Phoibos who smote the Pythian dragon.

As compared with the Greek, the mythology of Northern Europe was arrested almost in its middle growth. After a fierce struggle, Christianity was forced upon the reluctant Northmen long before poets could rise among them to whom the sensuality or ferocity of their mythology would be repulsive or revolting, long before philosophers could have evolved a body of moral belief, by the side of which the popular mythology might continue peacefully to exist. By a sudden revolution, Odin and the Æsir, the deities of the North, were hurled from their ancient thrones, before the dread Twilight of the Gods had come. Henceforth they could only be regarded either as men or as devils. The former alternative made Odin a descendant of Noah; by the latter, the celestial hierarchy became malignant spirits riding on the storm-cloud and the whirlwind. If these gods had sometimes been beneficent before, they were never beneficent now. All that was beautiful and good in the older belief had been transferred to the Christian ideas of chivalry and saintliness, which furnished a boundless field and inexhaustible nourishment for the most exuberant inventive faculty. The demons of Hesiod were the spirits of the good who had died the painless death of the Golden Age; but even in heathen times they were gradually invested with a malignant character. With Thor and Odin the transmutation was more rapid and complete; and Frigga and Freya became beings full of a wisdom and power which they used only for evil. The same character passed to those who were, or professed to be, their votaries; and the assumption of an unlawful knowledge paved the way for that persecution of a fictitious witchcraft which has stamped an indelible disgrace on mediæval Christendom.