‘Eleusinian Mysteries’ was the Master thesis of the author, which was defended in 1887; it was an excellent example of historical and philological approach to studying Classical religion. The author was a disciple of F. F. Sokolov, and that influence is rather obvious in the book.
It is opened with a vast introduction, where the preserved sources and the historiography of the topic are described. The second chapter is centered at the possibility of Indian or Egyptian roots of the mysteries; the author rejected the first possibility and argued for the second one: ‘I consider that mysteries were translated on the soil of Hellas from the country of the pyramids’. The third chapter presented the essence of myths which were connected with the Eleusinian mysteries. The chapters four and five were the study of the role of those mysteries in the life of classical Athens: the author established a circle of hierophants, their rights, their cult duties, and principle of their selection. In the chapters six and seven he analyzed the ritual aspects of the mysteries. Finally, the eights chapter provided a survey of the inner meaning of the mysteries, as it was understood by ancient people.
A typical feature of the time, when the book was written, and of the research school, which the author belonged to, was an almost complete absence of attempts to combine the historical and philological analyses of the mysteries as a phenomenon of classical religion, with the anthropological study, i.e. – with the comparative studying the mysteries cults.