On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History (Rethinking the Western Tradition)

What defined this group of premodern heroes was their ability to awaken heroic instincts in others, and to channel these toward the comprehension and the realization of order, hierarchy, harmony, beauty, and justice.

The essence of the Scandinavian, as indeed of all Pagan Mythologies, we found to be recognition of the divineness of Nature; sincere communion of man with the mysterious invisible Powers visibly seen at work in the world round him.

He proves it by etymology. The word Wuotan, which is the original form of Odin, a word spread, as name of their chief Divinity, over all the Teutonic Nations everywhere; this word, which connects itself, according to Grimm, with the Latin vadere, with the English wade and such like,—means primarily Movement, Source of Movement, Power; and is the fi

Dante has given us the Faith or soul; Shakspeare, in a not less noble way, has given us the Practice or body.

Hero-worship endures forever while man endures.

Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation,—till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.

Creative, we said: poetic creation, what is this too but seeing the thing sufficiently?

All deep things are Song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, Song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls!

In his 1906 edition of Carlyle’s history, John Holland Rose cogently defined Carlyle’s achievement: “[He] asserted that no visible and finite object had ever spurred men on to truly great and far-reaching movements. Only the invisible and the infinite could do that” (1:xiv).