"I should not ask it of you, Euripides," said Socrates gently.
He had a real love for Euripides, a real admiration for the mind which through its own tumult and discord had come at last into the possession of peace, and to the vision of a clear hope.
"If mankind with its blind follies makes me doubt the existence of a God," continued Euripides, "its miseries make me believe in one. I am not an enemy of knowledge; I have sought it with diligence all the days of my life; but we have other needs. We suffer with one another; there is a trouble and perplexity in the world from which we cannot escape, and to which we cannot refuse sympathy, pity, and love. Religion does not take into sufficient account the fact, that however diverse are the activities of men, all suffer alike. We have the corporate religious unity of the State, and it presents to us the noble and lofty ideas of the Olympian deities. Do you remember, Socrates, the fable which Protagoras made for you, describing how at first men had only the arts, and warred among themselves until Zeus sent them the gifts of justice and reverence?"
"Yes; I remember it. I cannot, of course, remember all that Protagoras said," answered Socrates. "Long speeches puzzle me. But I remember that it was beautiful."
"It was at my house," said Callias, with some pride.
"Well, Socrates, it seems to me that justice and reverence were not enough. Man needed something more. So the worship of Demeter and Dionysos was revealed to him. I have sometimes meditated writing a play about Dionysos, the enthusiasm of wine, of poetry, the Deliverer, who uplifts the heart of man; or about Demeter, the Earth, the herbage and the ripe corn, through whom we are kin, not only with each other but with the beasts of the field, the cattle grazing in their fat pasture, and the young fawn couched among the briars and thickets of the forest. These divinities seem closer to us than the ruler of the sun or the lord of the sea. They move gently among us, coming and going with the seasons, filling our granaries and wine-jars with their mystical gifts; corn and wine, their very bodies and blood, through which we enter into a close and intimate communion with them, and become indeed their children, or even themselves, as when their spirit possesses us entirely, and with a wild enthusiasm we range through the wooded hills, clothed in spotted fawn-skins, crowned with dark ivy, shaking the thyrsus in the air, and leaping to the sound of timbrels and pipes, and the brazen cymbals of the Great Mother.