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

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!

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.

In his first important attempt at social commentary, “Signs of the Times” (1829), Carlyle noticed that society’s drift toward efficiency and uniformity had penetrated to the deepest layers of the human psyche: “For the same habit regulates not our modes of action alone, but our modes of thought and feeling. Men are grown mechanical in head and in h

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

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.

Hero-worship endures forever while man endures.

They understood in their heart that it was indispensable to be brave; that Odin would have no favour for them, but despise and thrust them out, if they were not brave. Consider too whether there is not something in this! It is an everlasting duty, valid in our day as in that, the duty of being brave. Valour is still value. The first duty for a man

The Duke means Dux, Leader; King is Kön-ning, Kan-ning, Man that knows or cans. Society everywhere is some representation, not insupportably inaccurate, of a graduated Worship of Heroes;—reverence and obedience done to men really great and wise. Not insupportably inaccurate, I say!

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