n 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 origin--once human names upon the earth--will 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 re