Knowest thou how to pray? Knowest thou how to offer? Better not pray at all Than to offer too much, Better is nothing sent Than too much consumed. In these few and simple words are couched the same thought as in the Jewish and Greek accounts just given. It is this identity in thought, with diversity of depth, breadth, beauty, simplicity, etc., in the expression or symbol that characterizes the differences between all mythological systems. Each has its own peculiarities stamped upon it, and in these peculiarities the spirit of the people, their tendency to thorough investigation or superficiality, their strength or weakness, their profoundness or frivolity, are reflected as in a mirror. The beauty of the Greek mythology consists not so much in the system, considered as a whole, as in the separate single groups of myths. Each group has its own center around which it revolves, each group moves in its own sphere, and there develops its own charming perfection, without regard to the effect upon the system of mythology considered as a whole. Each group is exquisite, and furnishes an inexhaustible fountain of legendary narrative, but the central thought that should bind all these beautiful groups into one grand whole is weak. Nay, the complex multiplicity into which it constantly kept developing, as long as the Greek mind was in vigorous activity, was the cause that finally shattered it. Is not this the same spirit, which we find so distinctly developed in the Greek mythology, this want of a centralizing thought, most wonderfully and perfectly reflected in the social and political characteristics of the Greek states, and in all the more recent Romance nations? Each Greek state developed a peculiar beauty and perfection of its own; but between the different states (Sparta, Athens, etc.,) there was no strong bond of union which could keep them together, and hence all the feuds and civil wars and final dissolution. In the Norse mythology, on the other hand, the centralizing idea or thought is its peculiar feature; in it lies its strength and beauty. In the Norse mythology, the one myth and the one divinity is inextricably in communion with the other; and thus, also, the idea of unity, centralization, is a prominent feature, and one of the chief characteristics of the Teutonic nations. While the Greek mythology foreshadowed all the petty states of Greece, as well as those of South Europe and South America, the Norse mythology foreshadowed the political and social destinies of _united_ Scandinavia, _united_ Great Britain, _united_ Germany, and the _United_ States of North America. When the Greeks unite, they _fall_. We Northerners live only to be _united_.