Such were the Eleusinia of Greece. But what do they mean to us? We have already hinted at their connection with the Sphinx's riddle. It is through this connection that they receive their most general significance; for this riddle is the riddle of the race, and the problem which it involves can be adequately realized only in the life of the race. To Greece, as peculiarly sensitive to all that is tragical, the Sphinx connected her questions most intimately with human sorrow, either in the individual or the household.
"Who is it," thus the riddle ran, "who is it that in the morning creeps upon all-fours, touching the earth in complete dependence,—and at noon, grown into the fulness of beauty and strength, walks erect with his face toward heaven,—but at the going down of the sun, returns again to his original frailty and dependence?"
This, answered Oedipus, is Man; and most fearfully did he realize it in his own life! In the mysteries of the Eleusinia there is the same prominence of human sorrow,—only here the Sphinx propounds her riddle in its religious phase; and in the change from the mystæ to the epoptæ, in the revelation of the central self, was the great problem symbolically realized.
Greece had her reckoning; and to her eye the Sphinx long ago seemed to plunge herself headlong into precipitate destruction. But this strange lady is ever reappearing with her awful alternative: they who cannot solve her riddle must die. It is no trifling account, reader, which we have with this lady. For now her riddle has grown to fearful proportions, connecting itself with the rise and fall of empires, with the dim realm of superstition, with vast systems of philosophy and faith. And the answer is always the same: "That which hath been is that which shall be; and that which hath been is named already,—and it is known that it is Man."
What is it that shall explain the difference between our map of the world and that of Sesostris or Anaximander? Geological deposits, the washing away of mountains, and the change of river-courses are certainly but trifling in such an account. But an Argonautic expedition, a Trojan siege, a Jewish exodus, Nomadic invasions, and the names of Hanno, Cæsar, William the Conqueror, and Columbus, suggest an explanation. It is the flux of human life which must account for the flowing outline of the earth's geography. As with the terrestrial, so with the celestial. The heavens change by a subtiler movement than the precession of the equinoxes. In Job, "Behold the height of the stars, how high they are!" but to Homer they bathe in the Western seas; while to us, they are again removed to an incalculable distance,—but at the same time so near, that, in our hopes, they are the many mansions of our Father's house, the stepping-stones to our everlasting rest.
But there is also another map, reader, more shadowy in its outline, of an invisible region, neither of the heavens nor of the earth,—but having vague relations to each, with a secret history of its own, of which now and then strange tales and traditions are softly whispered in our ear,—where each of us has been, though no two ever tell the same story of their wanderings. Strange to say, each one calls all other tales superstitions and old-wives' fables; but observe, he always trembles when he tells his own. But they are all true; there is not one old-wife's fable on the list. Necromancers have had private interviews with visitors who had no right to be seen this side the Styx. The Witch of Endor and the raising of Samuel were literal facts. Above all others, the Nemesis and Eumenides were facts not to be withstood. And, philosophize as we may, ghosts have been seen at dead of night, and not always under the conduct of Mercury;[6] even the Salem witchcraft was very far from being a humbug. They are all true,—the gibbering ghost, the riding hag, the enchantment of wizards, and all the miracles of magic, none of which we have ever seen with the eye, but all of which we believe at heart. But who is it that weirdly draws aside the dark curtain? Who is this mystic lady, ever weaving at her loom,—weaving long ago, and weaving yet,—singing with unutterable sadness, as she interweaves with her web all the sorrows and shadowy fears that ever were or that ever shall be? We know, indeed, that she weaves the web of Fate and the curtain of the Invisible; for we have seen her work. We know, too, that she alone can show the many-colored web or draw aside the dark curtain; for we have seen her revelations. But who is she?
Ay, reader, the Sphinx puts close questions now and then; but there is only one answer that can satisfy her or avert death. This person,—the only real mystery which can exist for you,—of all things the most familiar, and at the same the most unfamiliar,—is yourself! You need not speak in whispers. It is true, this lady has a golden quiver as well as a golden distaff; but her arrows are all for those who cannot solve her riddle.
Protagoras, then, was right; and, looking back through these twenty-two centuries, we nod assent to his grand proposition: "Man is the measure of all things,—of the possible, how it is,—of the impossible, how it is not." In the individual life are laid the foundations of the universe, and upon each individual artist depend the symmetry and meaning of the constructed whole. This Master-Artist it is who holds the keys of life and death; and whatsoever he shall bind or loose in his consciousness shall be bound or loosed throughout the universe. Apart from him, Nature is resolved into an intangible, shapeless vanity of silence and darkness,—without a name, and, in fact, no Nature at all. To man, all Nature must be human in some soul. God himself is worshipped under a human phase; and it is here that Christianity, the flower of all Faith, furnishes the highest answer and realization of this world-riddle of the Sphinx,—here that it rests its eternal Truth, even as here it secures its unfailing appeal to the human heart!
The process by which any nature is realized is the process by which it is humanized. Thus are all things given to us for an inheritance. Let it be, that, apart from us, the universe sinks into insignificance and nothingness; to us it is a royal possession; and we are all kings, with a dominion as unlimited as our desire. Ubi Cæsar, ibi Roma! Rome is the world; and each man, if he will, is Cæsar.
If he will;—ay, there's the rub! In the strength of his will lie glory and absolute sway. But if he fail, then becomes evident the frailty of his tenure,—"he is a king of shreds and patches!"