There was probably, however, a more intellectual side to this spirit of accommodation. All, or nearly all, of these associations celebrated mysteries or sacred dramas based on the same lines as the Eleusinian and setting forth, it would seem, the passion, death, and resurrection of some god. These plays, when we consider the relatively slender number of the initiates and the limited means at their disposal, must generally have been acted with maimed and abbreviated rites in which a good deal was left to the imagination of the beholder. But this very fact must have set the always curious and inquisitive Greeks upon enquiry into the nature and origin of the scenes thus indicated rather than acted, and this in its turn must have led to many discussions and explanations of the gods there portrayed. For such conversations, too, there must have been far greater opportunities in the case of those _thiasi_, _orgeones_, or _erani_ (as these associations were called), where members were few and in the habit of meeting each other daily than with the Eleusinian rites which were celebrated only once or twice a year and then in the presence of a huge crowd dispersed immediately after to the different parts of the Hellenic world. It is hardly putting it too strongly to say that anything like propagandism must have been confined to the smaller societies. To sum up, then, Alexander united the whole civilized world for the first time under a single head and gave to it a common language and culture. By the natural gifts of his extraordinary personality, he at the same time set before it a perfect model of kingship and thus ensured the persistence of the monarchical principle for two millenia. This, his conscious work, had a direct effect on the evolution of monotheism, while in other respects his conquests proved the turning point in the history of religions. By breaking down the barriers which racial and lingual divisions had hitherto set up between different nations of the earth, these conquests led to a great fusion of the religions hitherto professed by them, and thus opened the door to the world-religions which were afterwards to share between them his vast Empire. Before his coming we see the ancient world divided into separate communities each with its own pantheon and forms of worship and neither knowing nor caring greatly about those of its neighbours. But immediately after, all this is changed. The interchange of ideas between East and West has thrown the different religions of the world as it were into a melting-pot, in which the germs of a different grouping of the human race are dimly visible. The spirit of proselytism is abroad, and man now wants to impress his own ideas of the Divine upon his fellows. Above all, we see the beginning of those great associations of mankind for religious purposes which are henceforth to be the principal factors in the world’s history, and whose evolution has continued unchecked down to the present day. All