But the story of the stolen Proserpina is itself an afterthought, a fable invented to explain the Mysteries; and, however much it may have modified them in detail, certainly could not have been their ground.  Nor is the sorrowing Demeter herself adequate to the solution.  For the Eleusinia are older than Eleusis,—­older than Demeter, even the Demeter of Thrace,—­certainly as old as Isis, who was to Egypt what Demeter was to Greece,—­the Great Mother[2] of a thousand names, who also had her endlessly repeated sorrow for the loss of Osiris, and in honor of whom the Egyptians held an annual festival.  Thus we only remove the mystery back to the very verge of myth itself; and we must either give up the solution or take a different course.  But perhaps Isis will reveal herself, and at the same time unveil the Mysteries.  Let us read her tablet:  “I am all that, has been, all that is, all that is to be; and the veil which is over my face no mortal hand hath ever raised!” Now, reader, would it not be strange, if, in solving her mystery, we should also solve the Sphinx’s riddle?  But so it is.  This is the Sphinx in her eldest shape,—­this Isis of a thousand names; and the answer to her ever-recurring riddle is always the same.  In the Human Spirit is infolded whatsoever has been, is, or shall be; and mortality cannot reveal it!

Not to Demeter, then, nor even to Isis, do the Eleusinia primarily point, but to the human heart.  We no longer look at them; henceforth they are within us.  Long has this mystic mother, the wonder of the world, waited for the revelation of her face.  Let us draw aside the veil, (not by mortal hand,—­it moves at your will,) and listen:—­

“I am the First and the Last,—­mother of gods and men.  As deep as is my mystery, so deep is my sorrow.  For, lo! all generations are mine.  But the fairest fruit of my Holy Garden was plucked by my mortal children; since which, Apollo among men and Artemis among women have raged with their fearful arrows.  My fairest children, whom I have brought forth and nourished in the light, have been stolen by the children of darkness.  By the Flood they were taken; and I wandered forty days and forty nights upon the waters, ere again I saw the face of the earth.  Then, wherever I went, I brought joy; at Cyprus the grasses sprang up beneath my feet, the golden-filleted Horae crowned me with a wreath of gold and clothed me in immortal robes.  Then, also, was renewed my grief; for Adonis, whom I had chosen, was slain in the chase and carried to Hades.  Six months I wept his loss, when he rose again and I triumphed.  Thus in Egypt I mourned for Osiris, for Atys in Phrygia, and for Proserpina at Eleusis,—­all of whom passed to the underworld, were restored for a season, and then retaken.  Thus is my sorrow repeated without end.  All things are taken from me.  Night treads upon the heels of Day, the desolation of Winter wastes the fair fruit of Summer, and Death walks in the ways of Life with inexorable claims.  But at the last, through Him, my First-begotten and my Best-beloved, who also died and descended into Hades, and the third day rose again,—­through Him, having ceased from wandering, I shall triumph in Infinite Joy!”