s of Ancient Greece" (ch. iii., p.
67, Am. ed.), remarks, in reference to the mysteries of Eleusis, that they
exhibited the superiority of civilized over savage life, and gave
instructions respecting a future life and its nature. For what was this
more than an interpretation of the sacred traditions which were told of the
goddess as the instructress in agriculture, of the forced descent of her
daughter to the lower world, etc.? And we need not be more astonished if,
in some of their sacred rites, we perceive an excitement carried to a
degree of enthusiastic madness which belonged peculiarly to the East, but
which the Hellenes were very willing to receive. For we must not neglect to
bear in mind that they shared the spirit of the East; and did they not live
on the very boundary-line between the East and the West? As those
institutions were propagated farther to the west, they lost their original
character. We know what the Bacchanalian rites became at Rome; and had they
been introduced north of the Alps, what form would they have there assumed?
But to those countries it was possible to {39} transplant the vine, not the
service of the god to whom the vine was sacred. The orgies of Bacchus
suited the cold soil and inclement forests of the North as little as the
character of its inhabitants.

Without going further into detail (the minutiae of which are thus opened to
every scholar), we must presume that the mythology of the children of Ham,
the origin of pagan worship, fostered by variant mysteries to obtain and
maintain temporal power, spread itself through the then known world. So far
as we know, the secret doctrines which were taught in the mysteries may
have finally degenerated into mere forms and an unmeaning ritual. And yet
the mysteries exercised a great influence on the spirit of the nation, not
of the initiated only, but also on the great mass of the people; and
perhaps they influenced the latter still more than the former. They
preserved the reverence for sacred things, and this gave them their
political importance. They produced that effect better than any modern
secret societies have been able to do. The mysteries had their secrets, but
not everything connected with them was secret. They had, like those of
Eleusis, their public festivals, processions, and pilgrimages, in which
none but the initiated took a part, but of which no one was prohibited from
being a spectator. While the multitude was permitted to gaze at