The ritual extravaganza of the Theatre state, its half-divine lord immobile, tranced, or dead at the dramatic center of them, were the symbolic expression less of the peasantry's greatness than of what its notion of that greatness was. What the Baliness state did for Baliness society was to cast into sensible form a concept of what, together, they were supposed to make of themselves: an illustration of the power of grandeur of generalities.