DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.791#0058
27
CHAPTER IV.
THE TEMPLE OF CERES.
We need no stronger evidence of the extreme piety of the Athenians than the numberless
temples which embellished the limited territory of this interesting people. It seems impossible to
attribute to the operations of a religion founded upon the absurd fables connected with their
mythology, the lasting effects produced upon the manners of a people, which, until a period com-
paratively late, were visible in their religious and civil establishments. Accordingly we discover
that the Eleusinian mysteries, the most sacred of their rites, professed to reveal to the initiated
the errors of their theology, and to instil the most sublime precepts of morality and piety.
The origin of these rites may be traced to that country whence the Greeks derived their
knowledge of agriculture, and their first conceptions of the arts and sciences. In Egypt, from a
very early period, the legislature seems to have devised many expedients calculated to restrain the
community within the limits of subordination, so necessary to the existence of society: exposed
by their theology, to the dangers arising from the absence of moral example, and encouraged to
give a loose to the passions, by the corrupt and evil actions attributed by tradition to the beings
they were instructed to venerate and fear, some obligation was necessary, sufficiently powerful to tie
mankind down to the strict observance of the duties they owed the community. The polytheism
which had been invented as a measure of state policy, rendered corrupt by the embellishments
and interpolations of the poets and historians, instead of upholding, thus seemed to threaten the
subversion of moral obligation; and the rulers of mankind were early made sensible that the
beings to whom all human vices were attributable, were improper objects to be held up to the
respect and admiration of a people. The hierarchs, who were at once priests and legislators, were
thus led to institute inquiries into the origin and rationality of their mythology, and the result
seems to have led to the dispersion of the mist in which religion had become enveloped. The
people were now taught that their gods were deified mortals, who having been benefactors of
mankind, their posterity, in gratitude, had canonized them; although they possessed in common
with man the vices and propensities inherent in his nature. This was the first step towards
CHAPTER IV.
THE TEMPLE OF CERES.
We need no stronger evidence of the extreme piety of the Athenians than the numberless
temples which embellished the limited territory of this interesting people. It seems impossible to
attribute to the operations of a religion founded upon the absurd fables connected with their
mythology, the lasting effects produced upon the manners of a people, which, until a period com-
paratively late, were visible in their religious and civil establishments. Accordingly we discover
that the Eleusinian mysteries, the most sacred of their rites, professed to reveal to the initiated
the errors of their theology, and to instil the most sublime precepts of morality and piety.
The origin of these rites may be traced to that country whence the Greeks derived their
knowledge of agriculture, and their first conceptions of the arts and sciences. In Egypt, from a
very early period, the legislature seems to have devised many expedients calculated to restrain the
community within the limits of subordination, so necessary to the existence of society: exposed
by their theology, to the dangers arising from the absence of moral example, and encouraged to
give a loose to the passions, by the corrupt and evil actions attributed by tradition to the beings
they were instructed to venerate and fear, some obligation was necessary, sufficiently powerful to tie
mankind down to the strict observance of the duties they owed the community. The polytheism
which had been invented as a measure of state policy, rendered corrupt by the embellishments
and interpolations of the poets and historians, instead of upholding, thus seemed to threaten the
subversion of moral obligation; and the rulers of mankind were early made sensible that the
beings to whom all human vices were attributable, were improper objects to be held up to the
respect and admiration of a people. The hierarchs, who were at once priests and legislators, were
thus led to institute inquiries into the origin and rationality of their mythology, and the result
seems to have led to the dispersion of the mist in which religion had become enveloped. The
people were now taught that their gods were deified mortals, who having been benefactors of
mankind, their posterity, in gratitude, had canonized them; although they possessed in common
with man the vices and propensities inherent in his nature. This was the first step towards