Nature is the mother at whose breast we all are nourished. In ancient times she was the object of childlike contemplation, nay, adoration. Nature and men were in close communion with each other, much closer than we are now. They had a more delicate perception of, and more sympathy for, suffering nature; and it were well if some of the purity of this thought could be breathed down to us, their prosaic descendants, who have abandoned the offerings to give place to avarice (die Habsucht nahm zu, als die Opfer aufhörten.—Grimm). It was a beautiful custom, which is still preserved in some parts of Norway, to fasten a bundle of grain to a long pole, which on Christmas eve was erected somewhere in the yard, or on the top of the house or barn, for the wild birds to feed upon early on Christmas-day morning,—(our heathen ancestors also had the Christmas or Yule-tide festival). In our degenerate times we think of chickens and geese and turkeys, but who thinks of the innocent and a suffering little birds? Nay, our ancestors lay nearer to nature’s breast. Have we had our hearts hardened by the iron yoke of civilized government? We certainly need to ask ourselves that question. The contemplation of the heavens produced the myth about Odin, and the thunder-storm suggested Thor, as in the Greek mythology Argos with his hundred eyes represents the starry heavens, and the wandering Io, whom Hera had set him to watch, is the wandering moon. But stopping here would be too prosaic; it would be leaving out the better half; it would be giving the empty shell and throwing away the kernel; it would be giving the skull of the slain warrior without any ale in it; it would be doing great injustice to our forefathers and robbing ourselves of more than half of the intellectual pleasure that a proper study of their myths afford. The old Frisians contemplated the world as a huge ship, by name Mannigfual (a counterpart of our ash-tree Ygdrasil); the mountains were its masts; the captain must go from one place to another of the ship, giving his orders, on horseback; the sailors go aloft as young men to make sail, and when they come down again their hair and beard are white. Ay, we are all sailors on board this great ship, and we all have enough to do, each in his own way, to climb its rope ladders and make and reef its sails, and ere we are aware of it our hairs are gray; but take the anthropomorphic element out of this myth, and what is there left of it?