intellectual interest confined to human affairs, but free within the
range of these. All Greeks were not, of course, equally humanistic in
this sense. Among them, as in all societies, there were found
temperaments to which transcendental speculation appealed, and these
increasing in number, as with the loss of their freedom the city-states
ceased to stand for the realization of the highest possible good in this
world, made Orphism and other mystic cults prevail ever more and more in
Hellas. But when Alexander carried Hellenism to Asia it was still
broadly true that the mass of civilized Hellenes regarded anything that
could not be apprehended by the intellect through the senses as not only
outside their range of interest but non-existent. Further, while nothing
was held so sacred that it might not be probed or discussed with the
full vigour of an inquirer's intelligence, no consideration except the
logic of apprehended facts should determine his conclusion. An argument
was to be followed wherever it might lead, and its consequences must be
faced in full without withdrawal behind any non-intellectual screen.
Perfect freedom of thought and perfect freedom of discussion over the
whole range of human matters; perfect freedom of consequent action, so
the community remained uninjured--this was the typical Hellene's ideal.
An instinctive effort to realize it was his habitual attitude towards
life. His motto anticipated the Roman poet's "I am human: nothing human
do I hold no business of mine!"

By the time the Western conquest of Asia was complete, this attitude,
which had grown more and more prevalent in the centres of Greek life
throughout the fifth and fourth centuries, had come to exclude anything
like religiosity from the typical Hellenic character. A religion the
Greek had of course, but he held it lightly, neither possessed by it nor
even looking to it for guidance in the affairs of his life. If he
believed in a world beyond the grave, he thought little about it or not