ine man is condemned to
subside into intellectual apathy.

This, however, could never be the case with the Greeks, and their
fate in this respect proved different from that of any other people.
After their intellectual awakening took place, and when they had
begun to seek in every direction for a first principle of all things,
never doubting that the world was a system of reason, but trying one
key after another to unlock its secret, we find that religion itself
became aware of the need of the times, and that the attempt was made,
late in the day but with deep earnestness and great ability, to
construct out of the myths a reasoned account of the origin of
things. This was the aim of the Orphic poets. Orpheus, the mythical
singer of Thrace, who charmed men and beasts with his songs on earth,
had descended into Hades to fetch back his wife, who had been taken
from him, and had beheld the secrets of the under-world. The school
which was named after him dealt with the deepest problems, and sought
to explain both the nature of the gods and the destiny of the human
soul. It insisted strongly on the power and sole headship of Zeus, in
whom Greek religion had possessed from Homer downwards a figure
fitted for a monotheistic position. "Zeus is the head, Zeus the
middle, from Zeus are all things made. He is male and female, he is
the foundation of the earth and of the starry heaven, the breath in
all, the strength of fire, the root of the sea, sun, and moon. Zeus
is the king, the progenitor of all things." The god Dionysus also is
placed by the Orphic writers at the head of the whole process of
creation. The myth of his dismemberment and of the scattering of his
ashes over the whole world is made to symbolise the great thought of
the connection of all things with the same source of life.
Descriptions were also given, answering to the growing sense of
personal responsibility, of the abodes of Hades and of the fate of
souls there, and of the metempsychoses through which the soul must
pass. This teaching had an influence which it is difficult to
measure; it acted on the tragedians in their magnificent attempts to
reform the beliefs of their country by making them moral; it is to be
traced in Plato, it also found expression in the mysteries. In its
own development it gave rise to a new phenomenon in Greek religion,
that of itinerant preachers who went about appealing to individuals
to take thought for the salvation of their souls, a