"_Baldr_, in the Scandinavian Edda, the divine prototype of Sigurd and Sigrit, is beloved by the whole world. Gods and men, the whole of nature, all that grows and lives, had sworn to his mother not to hurt the bright hero. The mistletoe alone, that does not grow on the earth, but on trees, had been forgotten, and with it Baldr was killed at the winter solstice.... Baldr, whom no weapon pierced or clove, But in his breast stood fix'd the fatal bough Of mistletoe, which Lok, _the accuser, gave To Hoder_, and the unwitting Hoder threw; 'Gainst that alone had Baldr's life no charm." "Thus Infendiyar, in the Persian epic, cannot be wounded by any weapon.... _All these are fragments of solar myths_." One hardly likes to disturb such illusions. Solar myths! well, allow me at least to repeat the history which seems to me so very like this myth. Many centuries ago, in a beautiful garden which a concurrence of tradition places somewhere in Central Asia, a man, the first man of our race, framed according to the "divine prototype," dwelt beloved by the whole world. God and the angels, and the whole of nature--all that grows and lives, were agreed that nothing should do him harm. One fruit or growth alone--the mistletoe it may have been--something that does not grow on the earth, but on trees, was excepted; and it was told to this man, whose name was--but we will not anticipate--that on the day on which he touched this fruit he should die the death. It so came about that the accuser, whom some call the serpent, had previously handed it to his companion, and his unwitting companion gave it to him. He took it, and he died. Against that fatal bough his life had no charm. No weapon pierced or clove him; for Baldr--I should say Adam--was invulnerable, as was Achilles and Meleager, except in one single respect. I believe that instances might be indefinitely multiplied. I shall content myself, however, with the following, which I think will be generally considered among the happiest illustrations of nature worship.[138] [138] Granting the tendency to nature-worship, I conclude that the conspicuous luminaries of the heavens would become primary objects of such worship. In amusing illustration of this I remember a friend of mine telling me that he happened to ask a young lad, the son of one of his tenants, who had just returned from a voyage to the Northern seas, how he liked his captain? He said, "Oh, he was an _awful_ man--he swore by the _sun, moon_, and _stars_." Still less do I deny the tendency to sun-worship. It was, as Gibbon tells us (ii. 438, iii. 150), the last superstition Constantine abandoned before his conversion, and the first to which Julian betook himself after his apostacy.