ewhonians are yet prepared for any better
religion, and though (considering my gradually strengthened conviction
that they were the representatives of the lost tribes of Israel) I would
have set about converting them at all hazards had I seen the remotest
prospect of success, I could hardly contemplate the displacement of
Ydgrun as the great central object of their regard without admitting that
it would be attended with frightful consequences; in fact were I a mere
philosopher, I should say that the gradual raising of the popular
conception of Ydgrun would be the greatest spiritual boon which could be
conferred upon them, and that nothing could effect this except example. I
generally found that those who complained most loudly that Ydgrun was not
high enough for them had hardly as yet come up to the Ydgrun standard,
and I often met with a class of men whom I called to myself "high
Ydgrunites" (the rest being Ydgrunites, and low Ydgrunites), who, in the
matter of human conduct and the affairs of life, appeared to me to have
got about as far as it is in the right nature of man to go.

They were gentlemen in the full sense of the word; and what has one not
said in saying this? They seldom spoke of Ydgrun, or even alluded to
her, but would never run counter to her dictates without ample reason for
doing so: in such cases they would override her with due self-reliance,
and the goddess seldom punished them; for they are brave, and Ydgrun is
not. They had most of them a smattering of the hypothetical language,
and some few more than this, but only a few. I do not think that this
language has had much hand in making them what they are; but rather that
the fact of their being generally possessed of its rudiments was one
great reason for the reverence paid to the hypothetical language itself.

Being inured from youth to exercises and athletics of all sorts, and
living fearlessly under the eye of their peers, among whom there exists a
high standard of courage, generosity, honour, and every good and manly
quality--what wonder that they should have become, so to speak, a law
unto themselves; and, while taking an elevated view of the goddess
Ydgrun, they should have gradually lost all faith in the recognised
deities of the country? These they do not openly disregard, for
conformity until absolutely intolerable is a law of Ydgrun, yet they have
no real belief in the objective existence of beings which so readily
explain themselve