Northern mythology

120 NORTHERN MYTHOLOGY.
wish, as mucli as possible,
to become acquainted with in
its whole purity. When these myths are, for example,
considered not only with relation to the history of the
North, but as universally historical ; when we, therefore,
in the Northern mythology find figurative indications of
the great epochs in the history of the world ; and in the
several myths of nations particular manifestations of
their
fortunes in the course of time, it is clear that this is not
truth but fiction. Though such notions of the Eddaic
lore may have in themselves poetic value, though they may,
in an agreeable manner, set the imagination in activity and
give it a store of new images, yet will the understanding
not allow itself to be set aside with impunity. If, therefore,
they assume the semblance of a serious interpretation,
they dissolve into airy nothingness, because they
lack a firm foundation.
Fiction may have its liberty, but
research has its restraint.
However widely the interpreters of the Eddas differ in
their opinions from each other, and however faithless they
sometimes are even to
nevertheless, all
themselves, their illustrations may,
be referred to three classes—the historic,
the physical, and the ethical : to the historic method, in
as far as every nation^s mythology and earliest history
come in contact and melt into each other at their boundaries,
and transgress each other^s domain ; to the physical,
because all mythology has nature and her manifestations
for object ; to the ethical, because laws for the conduct of
mankind are the final intent of all religion.
The historic mode of illustration is the most circumscribed
of all. As mythology embraces not only life physically
and ethically considered, but also the creation and
destruction of the world, the beginning and end of time,
or eternity, we consequently find in it many elements
that belong not to the province of history, and every attempt
to bring them within its pale must naturally prove