Note 118.1 — Chapter IV · THE THIRD PERIOD, 500-338 B.C.

Whether he individually exercised any immediate religious influence upon the popular religious mind, for good or for harm, is not easy to decide with precision; for there were other exponents than he of the same freer and more advanced thought, which began to express itself early in the sixth century. As a result we are able to discern the religious view of human life and conduct, becoming what we should term more spiritual, more inward. The moral judgment begins to look to the soul or the inner principle; the doctrine begins to be proclaimed that God as a spiritual power can read the heart of man and judges him by that; that sin lies not in the external act alone; that external ritualistic purity is of less avail than purity of soul. Such thoughts as these which could serve as the foundation-stones of a new religion and which helped to shape the later religious history of Europe were mainly a heritage from the speculation of the sixth century and were in the air of the fifth. We cannot think that they were confined to the philosophic circles until Euripides gave them publicity; for the notable oracle quoted and commented on by Herodotus had proclaimed to the people the novel view that a sinful purpose was the same in the sight of God as a sinful act;118.1 Epicharmos, the Sicilian poet of the earlier fifth century, had preached the higher ideal of purity—“if thou art pure in mind, thou art pure in thy whole body.” It was probably in the latter part of the same century that some rhetorician of the school of Gorgias interpolated the proem of Hesiod’s Works and Days, which reveals an exalted view of the High God.118.2