Note 1032 — Chapter XVII · THE GRECIAN MYTHICAL VEIN COMPARED WITH THAT OF MODERN EUROPE.

Dahlmann, Histor. Forschung. t. i. p. 220. There is a valuable article on this subject in the Zeitschrift für Geschichts Wissenschaft (Berlin, vol. i. pp. 237-282) by Stuhr, “Über einige Hauptfragen des Nordischen Alterthums,” wherein the writer illustrates both the strong motive and the effective tendency, on the part of the Christian clergy who had to deal with these newly-converted Teutonic pagans, to Euêmerize the old gods, and to represent a genealogy, which they were unable to efface from men’s minds, as if it consisted only of mere men.

Mr. John Kemble (Über die Stammtafel der Westsachsen, ap. Stuhr, p. 254) remarks, that “nobilitas,” among that people, consisted in descent from Odin and the other gods.

Colonel Sleeman also deals in the same manner with the religious legends of the Hindoos,—so natural is the proceeding of Euêmerus, towards any religion in which a critic does not believe:—

“They (the Hindoos) of course think that the incarnation of their three great divinities were beings infinitely superior to prophets, being in all their attributes and prerogatives equal to the divinities themselves. But we are disposed to think that these incarnations were nothing more than great men whom their flatterers and poets have exalted into gods,—this was the way in which men made their gods in ancient Greece and Egypt.—All that the poets have sung of the actions of these men is now received as revelation from heaven: though nothing can be more monstrous than the actions ascribed to the best incarnation, Krishna, of the best of the gods, Vishnoo.” (Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, vol. i. ch. viii. 61.)