"You say the attractions of a barbaric life could not exist without the perspective of civilization. Yet (if we call the Vikings barbarians) do you not think that they found their life good without that perspective? The sagas hum with self-glorification, with praise of the "whale path", and the glory of the foray. Dull, mindless clods, mere hunks of inert matter? I cannot agree there. Such men as Eric the Red, Leif the Lucky, Hrolf the Ganger, Hengist - they could not have been feeble jelly-like organisms groping blindly through the scum of primordial night. They were alive; they stung, they burned, they tingled with Life - life raw and crude and violent doubtless; but life, just the same, and worthy to be classified with the best effort of the intellectual side of man."