Is not every leaf of it a biography, every fibre there an act or word? Its
boughs are Histories of Nations. The rustle of it is the noise of Human
Existence, onwards from of old. It grows there, the breath of Human
Passion rustling through it;--or storm tost, the storm-wind howling through
it like the voice of all the gods. It is Igdrasil, the Tree of Existence.
It is the past, the present, and the future; what was done, what is doing,
what will be done; "the infinite conjugation of the verb _To do_."
Considering how human things circulate, each inextricably in communion with
all,--how the word I speak to you to-day is borrowed, not from Ulfila the
Moesogoth only, but from all men since the first man began to speak,--I
find no similitude so true as this of a Tree. Beautiful; altogether
beautiful and great. The "_Machine_ of the Universe,"--alas, do but think
of that in contrast!


Well, it is strange enough this old Norse view of Nature; different enough
from what we believe of Nature. Whence it specially came, one would not
like to be compelled to say very minutely! One thing we may say: It came
from the thoughts of Norse men;--from the thought, above all, of the
_first_ Norse man who had an original power of thinking. The First Norse
"man of genius," as we should call him! Innumerable men had passed by,
across this Universe, with a dumb vague wonder, such as the very animals
may feel; or with a painful, fruitlessly inquiring wonder, such as men only
feel;--till the great Thinker came, the _original_ man, the Seer; whose
shaped spoken Thought awakes the slumbering capability of all into Thought.
It is ever the way with the Thinker, the spiritual Hero. What he says, all
men were not far from saying, were longing to say. The Thoughts of all
start up, as from painful enchanted sleep, round his Thought; answering to
it, Yes, even so! Joyful to men as the dawning of day from night;--_is_ it
not, indeed, the awakening for them from no-being into being, from death