regarded and explained as entirely inventions of the human
imagination.

CHAPTER IX

At the very beginning of this inquiry it was emphasised that its theme
would in the main be the religious views of the upper class, and within
this sphere again especially the views of those circles which were in
close touch with philosophy. The reason for this is of course in the first
place that only in such circles can we expect to find expressed a point of
view approaching to positive atheism. But we may assuredly go further than
this. We shall hardly be too bold in asserting that the free-thinking of
philosophically educated men in reality had very slight influence on the
great mass of the population. Philosophy did not penetrate so far, and
whatever degree of perception we estimate the masses to have had of the
fact that the upper layer of society regarded the popular faith with
critical eyes--and in the long run it could not be concealed--we cannot fail
to recognise that religious development among the ancients did not tend
towards atheism. Important changes took place in ancient religion during
the Hellenistic Age and the time of the Roman Empire, but their causes
were of a social and national kind, and, if we confine ourselves to
paganism, they only led to certain gods going out of fashion and others
coming in. The utmost we can assert is that a certain weakening of the
religious life may have been widely prevalent during the time of
transition between the two ages--the transition falls at somewhat different
dates in the eastern and western part of the Empire--but that weakening was
soon overcome.

Now the peculiar result of this investigation of the state of religion
among the upper classes seems to me to be this: the curve of intensity of
religious feeling which conjecture leads us to draw through the spiritual
life of the ancients as a whole, that same curve, but more distinct and
sharply accentuated, is found again in the relations of the upper classes
to the popular faith. Towards the close of the fifth century it looks as
if the cultured classes that formed the centre of Greek intellectual life
were outgrowing the ancient religion. The reaction which set in with
Socrates and Plato certainly checked this movement, but it did not stop
it. Cynics, Peripatetics, Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics, in spite of
their widely differing points of view, were all entirely unable to share
the religious ideas of their countr