“When a man dies, he is like those who are being initiated into the mysteries. The one expression, τελευτᾶν—the other, τελεῖσθαι, correspond.... Our whole life is but a succession of wanderings, of painful courses, of long journeys by tortuous ways without outlet. At the moment of quitting it, fears, terrors, quiverings, mortal sweats, and a lethargic stupor, come over us and overwhelm us; but as soon as we are out of it, pure spots and meadows receive us, with voices and dances and the solemnities of sacred words and holy sights. It is there that man, having become perfect and initiated—restored to liberty, really master of himself—celebrates, crowned with myrtle, the most august mysteries, holds converse with just and pure souls, looking down upon the impure multitude of the profane or uninitiated, sinking in the mire and mist beneath him—through fear of death and through disbelief in the life to come, abiding in its miseries.” There was probably no dogmatic teaching—there were possibly no words spoken—it was all an acted parable.[610] But it was all kept in silence. There was an awful individuality about it. They saw the sight in common, but they saw it each man for himself. It was his personal communion with the divine life. The glamour and the glory of it were gone when it was published to all the world.[611] The effect of it was conceived to be a change both of character and of relation to the gods. The initiated were by virtue of their initiation made partakers of a life to come. “Thrice happy they who go to the world below having seen these mysteries: to them alone is life there, to all others is misery.”[612]