she gave them bread: but they never forgot that she gave them the bread of life. she gave us, says the ancient isocrates, two gifts that are the most excellent: fruits, that we might not live like beasts; and that initiation, those who have part in which have sweeter hope,both as regards the close of life, and for all eternity. so dionysus gave them wine, not only to lighten the cares of life, but as a token, moreover, of efficient deliverance from the fear of death, and of the higher joy which he would give them in some happier world. and thus it is, that, from the earliest times and in all the world, bread and wine have been symbols of sacramental significance. human life so elevates all things with its exaltation and clothes them with its glory, that nothing vain, nothing trifling, can be found within its range. he who opposes himself to a single fact thus of necessity opposes himself to the whole onward and upward current, and must fall. we have heard of thor, who with his magic mallet and his two celestial comrades went to jötunheim in quest of adventures: and we remember the goblet which he could not exhaust because of its mysterious connection with the inexhaustible sea; the race with hugi, which in the end proved to be a race with thought; and the wrestle with the old nurse elli, who was no other than time herself, and therefore irresistible. so do we all get us mallets ingeniously forged by the dark elves;we try a race with human thought, and look vainly to come out ahead; we laugh at things because they are old, but with which we struggle to no purpose; and the cup which we confidently put to our lips has no bottom;in fact, the great world of jötunheim has grown for so long a time and so widely that it is quite too much for us,and its tall people, though we come down upon them, like thor and his companions, from celestial heights, are too stout for our mallet. nothing human is so insignificant, but that, if you will give it time and room, it will become irresistible. the plays of men become their dramas; their holidays change to holy days. the representations, through which, under various names, they have repeated to themselves the glory and the tragedy of their life,old festivals once celebrated in egypt far back beyond the dimmest myths of human remembrance,the mystic drama of the eleusinia, which we have been considering in its overwhelming sorrow developed in hurried flight, and its lofty hope through triumphal pomp and the significant symbolism of resurrection,the epos and the epic rhapsodies,the circus and the amphitheatre,and even the impetuous song and dance of painted savages,all these, which at first we may pass by with a glance, have for our deeper search a meaning which we can never wholly exhaust. let it be that they have grown from feeble beginnings, they have grown to gigantic dimensions; and not their infantile proportions, but their fullest growth is to be taken as the measure of their strength,if, indeed, it be not wholly immeasurable. upon some day, seemingly by chance, but really having its antecedent in the remotest antiquity, a company of men participate in some simple act,of sacrifice, it may be, or of amusement. now that act will be reiterated. quod semel dictum est stabilisque rerum terminus servet. the subtile law of repetition, as regards the human will, is as sure in determination as it is in consciousness. habit is as inevitable as memory; and as nothing can be forgotten, but, when once known, is known forever,so nothing is done but will be done again. lethe and annihilation are only myths upon the earth, which men, though suspicious of their eternal falsehood, name to themselves in moments of despair and fearful apprehension. the poppy has only a fabled virtue; but, like persephone, we have all tasted of the pomegranate, and must ever to hades and back again; for while death and oblivion only seem to be, remembrances and resurrections there must be, and without end. therefore this before-mentioned act of sacrifice or amusement will be reiterated at given intervals; about it, as a centre, will be gathered all the associations of intense interest in human life; and the names connected with its originonce human names upon the earthwill pass upon the stars, so that the _nomina_ shall have changed to _numina_, and be taken upon the lips with religious awe. so it was with these old festivals,so with all the representations of human life in stone or upon the canvas, in the fairy-tale, the romance, and the poem; at every successive repetition, at every fresh resurrection, is evolved by human faith and sympathy a deeper significance, until they become the centres of national thought and feeling, and men believe in them as in revelations from heaven; and even the oracles themselves, in respect of their inherent meaning, as also of their origin and authority, rise by the same ascending series of repeated birth,like that at delphi, which, at first attributed to the earth, then to themis, daughter of earth and heaven, was at last connected with the sun and constituted one of the richest gems in apollos diadem of light. in the end we shall find that the whole world organizes about its centre of faith. thus, under three different religious systems, jerusalem, delphi, and mecca were held to be each in its turn the _omphalos_ or navel of the world. it follows inevitably that the _main_ movement of the world must always be joyous and hopeful. by reason of this joy it is that every religious system has its feast; and the sixth daythe day of iacchusis the great day of the festival. the inscription which rises above every other is to the saviour gods. we must look at history as a succession of triumphs from the beginning; and each trophy that is erected outdoes in its magnificence all that were ever erected before it. nothing has suffered defeat, except as it has run counter to the main movement of conquest. no system of faith, therefore, can by any possibility pass away. involved it may be in some fuller system; its _material_ bases may be modified; its central source become more central in the human heart, and so stronger in the world and more immediate in its connection with the eternal; but the life itself of the system must live forever and grow forever. still it is true that in the widest growth there is the largest liability to weakness. thus it is, says fouqué, with poor, though richly endowed man. all lies within his power so long as action is at rest within him; nothing is in his power the moment action has displayed itself, even by the lifting-up of a finger on the immeasurable world. in the very extent of the empire of an alexander, a cæsar, or a tamerlane, rests the possibility of its rapid dissolution. at the giddiest altitude of triumph it is that the brain grows dizziest and there is revealed the deepest chasm of possible defeat; and the conqueror, having his ear full of his airy fame, is just then most likely to fall like herod from his aërial pomp to the very dust. this consciousness, revealing at the highest moment of joy its utmost frailty, led the ancients to suspect the presence of some ate or nemesis in all human triumphs. we all remember the king who threw his signet-ring into the sea, that he might in his too happy fortunes avert this suspected presence; we remember, too, the apprehension of the chorus in the seven against thebes, looking forward from the noontide prosperity of the theban king to some coming catastrophe. but it is not without us that this nemesis waits; she is but another name for the fearful possibility which lurks in every human will, of treachery to itself. and as solemnity rises to its acme in the most sensuous manifestation of the glory of life,so in all that most fascinates and bewilders, at the very crisis of victorious exaltation, at the very height of joyous sensibility, does this mysterious power of temptation reveal her subtlest treachery; and sometimes in a single moment does she change the golden-filleted horæ, that are our ministers, into frightful furies, which drive us back again from triumph into flight. what was it, then, which saved the eleusinia from this defeat,which kept the movement of the dionysiac procession from the ruin inevitably consequent upon all intemperate joy? it was the presence of our lady, the sorrowing achtheia, who was the inseparable companion of the joyous conqueror,who subdued the joy of victory, and preserved the strength and holy purity of the great festival. demeter was thus necessary to dionysus,as dionysus to demeter; and if in remembrance of him the sepulchral walls were covered with scenes associated with festivity,in remembrance of her there must needs be a skeleton at every feast. how inseparably connected in human thought is sorrow with all permanent hope is indicated in the penances which men have imposed upon themselves, from the earliest gymnosophists of india, and the stylitæ of syria, down to the monastic orders of the romish church in later times. this is the meaning of the old indian fable which made two of the _rishis_ or penitents to have risen by the discipline of sorrow from some low caste,it may be, from very pariahs,first to the rank of brahmins, and at last to the stars. the first initiation in which we veil our eyes, losing all, is essential to our fresher birth, by which in the second initiation all things are unveiled to us as our inheritance: indeed, it is only through that which veils that anything is ever revealed or possessed. through the same gate we pass both to glory and to tragic suffering, each of which heightens and measures the other; and it is only so that we can understand the function of sorrow in the providence of god, or interpret the sudden calamities which sometimes overwhelm human hopes at their highest aspiration,which from the most serene and cloudless sky evoke storms which leave not even a wreck from their vast ruin. nor merely is sorrow efficient in those who hope, but in even a higher sense does it attach to the character of saviour. apollo is, therefore, fabled to have been an exile from heaven and a servant of admetus; indeed, danaüs, in the suppliants of Æschylus, appeals to apollo for protection on this very plea, addressing him as the holy one, and an exiled god from heaven. thus hercules was compelled to serve eurystheus; and his twelve labors were typed in the twelve signs of the zodiac. Æsculapius and prometheus both suffered excruciating tortures and death for the good of men. and dionysushimself the centre of all joywas persecuted by the queen of heaven and compelled to wander in the world