The pre-Christian Saxon notion of empty-heartedness

Although I know the following to be perfectly true, it's rather difficult to make the case, for all we have is the language of the Hêliand. Old Saxon contains a number of phonetically similar couples of words with opposite meanings, expressing in its own way Lord Byron's sentiment

Such as we know is false, yet dread in sooth, because the worst is ever nearest truth.

To wit:

• beedian (to force) - biddean (to plead)
• freesoon (to endanger) - fridhoon (to protect)
• edheli (noble) - iidal (gewgaw)
• thionoon (to serve) - gi-tiunean (to damage)

and, and this is the subject of this article,

• niotan (to enjoy) - niidhin (to persecute)

Both words are still with us in German as nießen and neiden, but the latter has experienced a subtle change in meaning (to persecute -> to envy).

I claim that this change is the result of a disagreement between Old Saxon and Christian philosophy. The Saxons thought of every movement of the heart per se as good, and evil, according to them, entered the world through the feeling that the Rolling Stones sang about in their probably most famous song, because the unsatisfied heart would start to derive satisfaction from the destruction of the satisfaction of other people's hearts.

This is not envy. Envy is simply the anger that somebody bought that ocean front property first - or managed to marry that woman - or man. This is something far deeper - and more troubling - and more relevant. In particular today.

See, Christianity holds that the devil lures nice little innocent people into rash acts of sin, whereas the Saxons held, and probably still hold, just not as openly, that people are grudgeful, malcontent monsters that God lures into harmlessness through taking foolish delight in nice little things.

Empty-heartedness as a psychological condition is still very much with us today. Whether we cleansed it from our tongues or not.