Discourses: Book 3 21 : 2

And then it's for this, is it, that the young men are to leave their fatherlands and their own parents,—to come and listen to you interpreting trifling phrases? Ought they not to be, when they return home, forbearing, ready to help one another, tranquil, with a mind at peace, possessed of some such provision for the journey of life, that, starting out with it, they will be able to bear well whatever happens, and to derive honour from it? And where did you get the ability to impart to them these things which you do not possess yourself? Why, from the first did you ever do anything but wear yourself out over the question how solutions can be found for syllogisms, for the arguments that involve equivocal premisses, and those which derive syllogisms by the process of interrogation? "But So-and-so lectures; why shouldn't I too?" Slave, these things are not done recklessly, nor at random, but one ought to be of a certain age, and lead a certain kind of life, and have God as his guide. You say: No. But no man sails out of a harbour without first sacrificing to the gods and invoking their aid, nor do men sow hit-or-miss, but only after first calling upon Demeter; and yet will a man, if he has laid his hand to so great a task as this without the help of the gods, be secure in so doing, and will those who come to him be fortunate in so coming? What else are you doing, man, but vulgarizing the Mysteries, and saying, "There is a chapel at Eleusis; see, there is one here too. There is a hierophant there; I too will make a hierophant. There is a herald there; I too will appoint a herald. There is a torch-bearer there; I too will have a torch-bearer. There are torches there; and here too. The words said are the same; and what is the difference between what is done here and what is done there?"? Most impious man, is there no difference? Are the same acts helpful, if they are performed at the wrong place and at the wrong time? Nay, but a man ought to come also with a sacrifice, and with prayers, and after a preliminary purification, and with his mind predisposed to the idea that he will be approaching holy rites, and holy rites of great antiquity. Only thus do the Mysteries become helpful, only thus do we arrive at the impression that all these things were established by men of old time for the purpose of education and for the amendment of our life. But you are publishing the Mysteries abroad and vulgarizing them, out of time, out of place, without sacrifices, without purification; you do not have the dress which the hierophant ought to wear, you do not have the proper head of hair, nor head-band, nor voice, nor age; you have not kept yourself pure as he has, but you have picked up only the words which he utters, and recite them. Have the words a sacred force all by themselves?