The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries

countrymen deemed sacred. The undercurrent of this world is set toward one goal; and inside of human credulity — call it human weakness, if you please — is a power almost infinite, a holy faith capable of apprehending the supremest truths of all Existence. The veriest dreams of life, pertaining as they do to "the minor mystery of death," have in them more than external fact can reach or explain; and Myth, however much she is proved to be a child of Earth, is also received among men as the child of Heaven. The Cinder-Wench of the ashes will become the Cinderella of the Palace and be wedded to the King's Son.

The instant that we attempt to analyze, the sensible, palpable facts upon which so many try to build disappear beneath the surface, like a foundation laid upon quicksand. "In the deepest reflections," says a distinguished writer, "all that we call external is only the material basis upon which our dreams are built; and the sleep that surrounds life swallows up life, — all but a dim wreck of matter, floating this way and that, and forever vanishing from sight. Complete the analysis, and we lose even the shadow of the external Present, and only the Past and the Future are left us as our sure inheritance. This is the first initiation, — the vailing muesis (closing) of the eyes to the external. But as epoptæ (those who have seen the mysteries), by the synthesis of this Past and Future in a living nature, we obtain a higher, an ideal Present, comprehending within itself all that can be real for us within us or without. This is the second