, served to deepen and diffuse a reverence for
religious things. Whatever the licentiousness of other mysteries
(especially in Italy), the Eleusinian rites long retained their renown
for purity and decorum; they were jealously watched by the Athenian
magistracy, and one of the early Athenian laws enacted that the senate
should assemble the day after their celebration to inquire into any
abuse that might have sullied their sacred character. Nor is it,
perhaps, without justice in the later times, that Isocrates lauds
their effect on morality, and Cicero their influence on civilization
and the knowledge of social principles. The lustrations and
purifications, at whatever period their sanctity was generally
acknowledged, could scarcely fail of salutary effects. They were
supposed to absolve the culprit from former crimes, and restore him, a
new man, to the bosom of society. This principle is a great agent of
morality, and was felt as such in the earlier era of Christianity: no
corrupter is so deadly as despair; to reconcile a criminal with
self-esteem is to readmit him, as it were, to virtue.

Even the fundamental error of the religion in point of doctrine, viz.,
its polytheism, had one redeeming consequence in the toleration which
it served to maintain--the grave evils which spring up from the fierce
antagonism of religious opinions, were, save in a few solitary and
dubious instances, unknown to the Greeks. And this general
toleration, assisted yet more by the absence of a separate caste of
priests, tended to lead to philosophy through the open and
unchallenged portals of religion. Speculations on the gods connected
themselves with bold inquiries into nature. Thought let loose in the
wide space of creation--no obstacle to its wanderings--no monopoly of
its commerce--achieved, after many a wild and fruitless voyage,
discoveries unknown to the past--of imperishable importance to the
future. The intellectual adventurers of Greece planted the first flag
upon the shores of philosophy; for the competition of errors is
necessary to the elucidation of truths; and the imagination indicates
the soil which the reason is destined to culture and possess.

XXIII. While such was the influence of their religion on the morals
and the philosophy of the Greeks, what was its effect upon their
national genius?

We must again remember that the Greeks were the only nation among the
more intellectual of that day, who stripped their d