The Jewish propaganda was not confined to receiving and imposing conditions on those who came. Some at least sought converts, although it is very doubtful that the Pharisaic societies as a class planned a real mission among the heathen. The methods that were used were those already in vogue—methods which had achieved success in many fields. Books and pamphlets were published to further the purpose of the missionaries; personal solicitation of those deemed receptive was undertaken. Actual preaching, such as the _diatribe_ commenced by the Cynics, and before them by Socrates, was probably confined to the synagogue, or meeting within the proseucha, and reached only those who were there assembled.[159] The literary form of the propaganda was especially active in those communities in which Jews and Greeks spoke a common language and partly shared a common culture. Even books intended primarily for Jewish circulation contain polemics against polytheism and attacks upon heathen custom, which the avowed purpose of the book would not justify. It is not to be supposed that the literary propaganda was the most effective. It was limited by the very field for which it was intended. Such a book as the Wisdom of Solomon was both too subtle and too finished a product to appeal to other than highly cultivated tastes, and men of this stamp are not readily reached by propagandizing religions. The chief object of attack was the Greek polytheism. “Wisdom” ventures even on an historical explanation of polytheism, which is strangely like that of Herbert Spencer.[160] Now, just for the Greeks, who might read and understand such a book, to refute polytheism was destroying a man of straw. No one of them seriously believed in it. Those who were not agnostics or atheists believed in the unity of the Divine essence, and at most maintained the existence of certain subordinate ministerial beings, who might or might not be identical with the names of the actors in the myths. But many Jews would be ready to admit so much. Indeed that there were subordinate _daemonia_, helpful and harmful, was a widespread belief in Judea, even if without authoritative sanction. Very often the heathen gods were conceived to be not absolute nullities, but demons really existing and evil—a belief which the early Christian church firmly held and preached.[161] Accordingly the polished society of a Greek city did not need the literary polemics against polytheism to be convinced that monotheism was an intellectually more developed and morally preferable dogma. On the other hand, it was a very difficult task to convince it that the ceremonies of the official cult, granting even their philosophic absurdity, were for that reason objectionable. To make them seem so, there would have to be present the consciousness of sin, and that was not a matter which argumentation could produce.