It remains to resume the results of the last four chapters. It has been seen in examining four of the great public festivals of Athens, the Diasia, the Anthesteria, the Thargelia, the Thesmophoria, that neither their names, nor primarily their ritual, were concerned with the worship of the Olympian gods to whom the festivals were ostensibly dedicated. When the nature of that ritual was examined, it was seen to consist not in sacrifice like that paid to the Olympians, which was of the nature of _tendance_ and might be embodied in the formula _do ut des_, but rather of ceremonies of _aversion_ based on ignorance and fear. Its formula was _do ut abeas_. In the Anthesteria the ceremonies known as ἐναγισμοί were seen to be purifications (καθαρμοί), and by purifications were meant placations of Keres, of ghosts and sprites. In the Thargelia the ceremony of the pharmakos was seen to be also a purification, but in the sense not of the placation or riddance of ghosts and sprites but of a magical cleansing from physical evil. In the Thesmophoria the ceremony with the pigs was preceded by ceremonies of purification, and was in itself of magical intent. Moreover the element of cursing and _devotion_ was seen to lie at the root of the later notion of _consecration_. To these three festivals, taken from the three seasons of the agricultural year, has now been added the rite of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the gist of which has been shown to be purification as preliminary to the handling of magical _sacra_ and to the partaking of first-fruits. The only just way of understanding the religious notions of a particular race is to examine the terminology of the language of that race. Our modern notion of ancient religion is largely summed up by the word ‘sacrifice.’ We are too apt to ask ‘what was the nature of sacrifice among the Greeks?’ If we follow the lead of their language instead of imposing our language on them, it is abundantly clear that sacrifice, with all our modern connotations of vicarious expiation and of mystical communion, they had not. All the ancient ceremonies, so far considered, point to a thought simpler and nowise less beautiful or less deeply religious, and that thought is _purification_. Purification practically unknown to Olympian worship is the keynote of the lower stratum. It is all important that this should be clearly and emphatically stated at this point in order that the sequel may be intelligible. When the new impulse connected with the names of Dionysos and Orpheus entered Greece, it left aside the great and popular Olympian system embodied in the formula _do ut des_, and, by a true instinct, fastened on an element which, if in some respects it was lower, was truer to fact and had in it higher possibilities, a religion that recognized evil, though mainly in physical form, and that sought for purification.