Present, that the tenure by which we have hold upon life is the most
frail and shadowy. For, by the strictest analysis, _there is no
Present_. The formula, _It is_, even before we can give it utterance, by
some subtile chemistry of logic, is resolved into _It was_ and _It
shall be_. Thus by our analysis do we retreat into the ideal. In the
deepest reflection, all that we call external is only the material basis
upon which our dreams are built; and the sleep that surrounds life
swallows up life,--all but a dim wreck of matter, floating this way and
that, and forever evanishing from sight. Complete the analysis, and we
lose even the shadow of the external Present, and only the Past and the
Future are left us as our sure inheritance. This is the first
initiation,--the veiling of the eyes to the external. But, as _epoptæ_,
by the synthesis of this Past and Future in a living nature, we obtain a
higher, an ideal Present, comprehending within itself all that can be
real for us within us or without. This is the second initiation, in
which is unveiled to us the Present as a new birth from our own life.

Thus the great problem of Idealism is symbolically solved in the
Eleusinia. For us there is nothing real except as we _realize_ it. Let
it be that myriads have walked upon the earth before us,--that each race
and generation has wrought its change and left its monumental record
upon pillar and pyramid and obelisk; set aside the ruin which Time has
wrought both upon the change and the record, levelling the cities and
temples of men, diminishing the shadows of the Pyramids, and rendering
more shadowy the names and memories of heroes,--obliterating even its
own ruin;--set aside this oblivion of Time, still there would be
hieroglyphics,--still to us all that comes from this abyss of Time
behind us, or from the abyss of Space around us, must be but dim and
evanescent imagery and empty reverberation of sound, except as, becoming
a part of our own life, by a new birth, it receives shape and