In spite of many extravagant statements from antiquity, we have no means of estimating how widely participation in the Eleusinian mysteries (whether of those celebrated at Eleusis itself or in the numerous associated festivals) was extended in Greece. Still, it is probable that large numbers, not from Athens alone but from the whole of Greece, sought eagerly to enter the state of grace vouchsafed to the worshippers at Eleusis. In this way the more lively conception of the state of the soul in the hereafter may have gradually become the common property of Greek imagination. On the whole, we must be on our guard against attributing too great an importance to these mysteries. There can hardly have been any question of moral influence--the ancients themselves in their most exaggerated eulogies of the mysteries and their greatness, say almost nothing of this.[34\6] Nor is it easy to see what part of the mysteries could have served as a vehicle of moral influence.[35\6] Distinct dogma in the religious sense was never provided by the mysteries any more than by other worships of the gods in Greece. Nor was there anything exclusive about the cult of the mysteries; side by side with that cult and after it the Mystai took part in other worships of the gods, according to the usages prevailing in their own homes. The great festival when it was over left no sting behind in the hearts of the initiated. No requirement of a new manner of life, no new and peculiar condition of conscience was theirs on its account; no strange revaluation of values, contradicting the general opinions of the time, was learnt there. There was a total absence of that which (if we rightly understand the word) gives to the doctrines of sectarian religion their force and persuasiveness--_paradox_. Even the prospect of future bliss opened to the initiated did not divert them from the normal tenor of their existence. It was a genial prospect; not a compelling demand drawing all things to itself and turning men away from ordinary life. The light that fell from beyond was not so blinding that it made all things on this earth seem dark and mean. If in the decadence of Greek culture--and even among the people of Homer--ideas hostile to this life made their appearance and in many places acquired weight and influence; if some men began to think death superior {229} to life, and this life, of which alone we can be assured, as merely a preparation, a land of passage to a higher life in the world invisible--for all this the mysteries were not responsible. It was not they, nor the feelings and surmises awakened by their pictures and performances, that dulled the beauty of this earth for the enthusiasts "intoxicated with other-worldliness", or made them strangers to the instincts of life and sanity prevailing in older and unspoiled ages of Greek life. NOTES TO CHAPTER VI