There is really no other way of accounting for him, for except on this supposition he is quite otiose and unnecessary to the Grettir-story: the saga-man has no use for him.
One fault, which even the beauty of the verse fails to conceal, is the introduction of all sorts of stilted and otiose allusions to sheepcraft, which only serve to render yet more apparent the inherent absurdity of the artificial pastoral.
Supposing the characters to be Sumatran, it would be necessary to show that the people of Sumatra do represent their otiosedeity as in the painting copied by Grey.
It appears to me that these affable familiar ghosts, practically serviceable, had cast the otiose Atahocan into the background.
Now it must not only be admitted but proclaimed that the doctrine of the essays holds that intelligence is not an otiose affair, nor yet a mere preliminary to a spectator-like apprehension of terms and propositions.
Much may be said about that other great rupture of continuity which analytic realism would maintain: that between the world and the knower as something outside of it, engaged in an otiose contemplative survey of it.
Such an otiose form may sometimes indicate a succession of divine quasi-dynasties, somewhat as in the Greek sequence of Ouranos, Kronos, Zeus.
He is, however, in part an otiose deity and can hardly be said to rule over this otherworldly realm.
He has been transplanted to the Parish Church, and he will stir up a few of the respectable otiose souls there if he has an opportunity.
Now that conception is considerably above the obsolescent belief in an otiose god which is usually found among barbaric races of the type from which the Australians are said to have degenerated.
The Tshi speaking people of the Gold Coast have their unworshipped Nyankupon, a now otiose unadored being, with a magisterial deputy, worshipped with many sacrifices.
To substitute the otiose insight gained by manipulation of a formula for the slow cooeperative work of a humanity guided by reflective intelligence is more than a technical blunder of speculative philosophers.
No doubt there is, and has been, a good deal of otiose and even rather silly criticism of details in historical novels which do not satisfy the strict historian.
