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 Joetunheim 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