Norse mythology the negative is the first, a <conditio sine qua non, space we might say, which we must conceive of as existing, before anything can be conceived as existing in it. Our ancestors imagined in the beginning only a yawning gap in which there was absolutely nothing. Wonderfully enough they said that the one side of this immense gulf extended to the north and the other to the south, as though there could be such things as north and south before the creation of the world. The north side was cold, the south warm; and thus we find by closer inspection that this nothing still was something, that contained in itself opposite forces, cold and heat, force of contraction and force of expansion, but these forces were in a state of absolute inertia. Thus also the Greek chaos:
. . . rudis indigestaque moles,
Nec quidquam nisi pondus iners, congestaque eodem
Non bone junctarum discordia semina rerum.
We cannot conceive how a body containing two forces can be a pondus iners, for every force is infinite and cannot rest unless it is prisoned by its opposite force, and this is then strife. The Norse view is, philosophically speaking, more correct. Here the opposite forces are separated by a gulf, and as they cannot penetrate the empty space, they remain inert.
It has before been stated that the Norsemen believed in a great and almighty god, who was greater than Odin. This god appears in the creation of the world, where he sends the heated blasts from Muspelheim and imparts life to the melted drops of rime. He will appear again as the just and mighty one, who is to reign with Balder in the regenerated earth. He is the true Allfather.
When the thought was directed to inquire into the
