apprehend, on regarding the principles of human nature, equally
effective in restraining crime: for our human and short-sighted minds
are often affected by punishments, in proportion as they are human and
speedy. A penance in the future world is less fearful and distinct,
especially to the young and the passionate, than an unavoidable
retribution in this. Man, too fondly or too vainly, hopes, by
penitence at the close of life, to redeem the faults of the
commencement, and punishment deferred loses more than half its
terrors, and nearly all its certainty.

As long as the Greeks were left solely to their mythology, their views
of a future state were melancholy and confused. Death was an evil,
not a release. Even in their Elysium, their favourite heroes seem to
enjoy but a frigid and unenviable immortality. Yet this saddening
prospect of the grave rather served to exhilarate life, and stimulate
to glory:--"Make the most of existence," say their early poets, "for
soon comes the dreary Hades!" And placed beneath a delightful
climate, and endowed with a vivacious and cheerful temperament, they
yielded readily to the precept. Their religion was eminently glad and
joyous; even the stern Spartans lost their austerity in their sacred
rites, simple and manly though they were--and the gayer Athenians
passed existence in an almost perpetual circle of festivals and
holydays.

This uncertainty of posthumous happiness contributed also to the
desire of earthly fame. For below at least, their heroes taught them,
immortality was not impossible. Bounded by impenetrable shadows to
this world, they coveted all that in this world was most to be desired
[59]. A short life is acceptable to Achilles, not if it lead to
Elysium, but if it be accompanied with glory. By degrees, however,
prospects of a future state, nobler and more august, were opened by
their philosophers to the hopes of the Greeks. Thales was asserted to
be the first Greek who maintained the immortality of the soul, and
that sublime doctrine was thus rather established by the philosopher
than the priest. [60]

XXII. Besides the direct tenets of religion, the mysteries of the
Greeks exercised an influence on their morals, which, though greatly
exaggerated by modern speculators, was, upon the whole, beneficial,
though not from the reasons that have been assigned. As they grew up
into their ripened and mature importance--their ceremonial, rather
than their doctrine