Some historians and commentators
are still fond of the unscientific method of taking a later
religion, in this case christianity, and writing down all
apparently coincident parts of belief, as having been borrowed
from the christian teachings by the Norsefolk, while all that
remain they lump under some slighting head. Every folk has from
the beginning of time sought to explain the wonders of nature,
and has, after its own fashion, set forth the mysteries of life.
The lowest savage, no less than his more advanced brother, has a
philosophy of the universe by which he solves the world-problem
to his own satisfaction, and seeks to reconcile his conduct with
his conception of the nature of things. Now, it is not to be
thought, save by "a priori" reasoners, that such a folk as the
Northmen -- a mighty folk, far advanced in the arts of life,
imaginative, literary -- should have had no further creed than
the totemistic myths of their primitive state; a state they have
wholly left ere they enter history.
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