well) in whose words dumb and inarticulate emotion finds expression. The inquirer would, however, be entirely on the wrong track {viii} and be led to some remarkable conclusions who ventured without more ado to deduce from the religious ideas that find expression in Greek literature a complete Theology of the Greek _people_. Where direct literary statements and allusions fail us we are left with nothing but surmises in face of the religion of the Greeks and its inmost guiding forces. Of course there are plenty of people of sanguine temperament and industrious fancy who find no difficulty in producing for our benefit the most admirable solutions of the problem. Others in varying degrees of good faith press the emotions of Christian piety into the service of explaining ancient faith in gods. Thus injustice is done to both forms of religion and an understanding of the essentials of Greek belief in its true and independent reality is made completely impossible. A good example of this is provided by the Eleusinian Mysteries, and by that favourite topic of controversy (which has, indeed, received more than its due share of attention from students of religion), the amalgamation of the worship of gods and the belief in Souls said to have taken place therein. Nowhere else has the complete unprofitableness of the attempt to make use of the shifting ideas and tendencies of modern civilization to explain the underlying motive forces of these significant cult practices, been more strikingly and repeatedly demonstrated. On this head in particular the author of the present work has renounced all attempts to cast a fitful and ambiguous light upon the venerable gloom of the subject by the help of the farthing dip of his own private imaginings. There is no denying that here as in so many departments of ancient ~euse/beia~ there is something greater and finer that eludes our grasp. The revealing word, never having been written down, has been lost. Instead of trying to find a substitute in modern catch phrases it seems better simply to describe, in the plainest and most literal fashion, the actual phenomena of Greek piety exactly as they are known to us. There will be plenty of opportunity for the author's own suggestions and they need not always obtrude themselves. The aim of this work is to make plain the facts of the Greek _Cult of Souls_ and of that belief in immortality the inner workings of which are only partially intelligible to our most sympathetic efforts to understand them. To give a clearer presentation of the origin and development of those practices and those beliefs; to distinguish the transformations through which they passed and their relationship with other and kindred intellectual tendencies; to disentangle the many different lines of thought and speculation from the inextricable {ix} confusion in which they lie in many minds (and in many books) and to let them stand out clearly and distinctly one from another, seemed particularly desirable.