because the
contrast was less pronounced, existed in classical Greece. The more
highly developed, self-conscious Hellenic genius, shrinking from
promiscuous intercourse, had systematised the instinct and set up a new
ideal in Platonic love. But below the surface raged the unbridled
natural force, and in perfect harmony with the Greek spirit--it was not
hysterically hidden, but assigned a place in the new system. Wrapped in
the obscurity of the Mysteries, concealed from the gaze of the new gods
of light, it attempted to assuage its inextinguishable thirst. The
Mysteries were the annual tribute paid as a ransom by Apollo-worshipping
Hellas to chaotic Asia, so that she might be free to pursue her higher
psycho-spiritual aims. The brilliant civilisation of Athens was based on
the dark cult of the Mysteries. On the festivals of the hermaphroditic
Dionysus and Demeter, which are identical with the cults of Adonis and
Mylitta, the impersonal, generative elements were worshipped. Thus,
below the surface of the Greek State, founded on masculine values and
attempting to restrict intercourse for the benefit of a more
systematised progeniture, flourished the orgiastic cult of the ancient
Eastern deities, who had vouchsafed to mortals a glimpse of the great
secret of life in the ardour of procreation and conception. The women
upheld the religion of passion as an end in itself; bacchantes, men in
female attire, emasculated priests, sacrificed to the blindly bountiful
gods. We are told that Dionysus conquered even the Amazons and converted
them to his worship. Euripides described in the _Bacchantes_--the
subject of which is the war between the uncontrolled sexual impulse and
the new order of things--how Dionysus traversed all Asia and finally
arrived in Hellas accompanied by a crowd of abandoned women. But his
religion was more than a cult of wine and sensual pleasure, it embraced
a gentle worship of nature, throwing down the barrier between man and
beast--impassable by the spirit of civilisation--and lovingly including
every living creature. We read in the _Bacchantes_ that the women who
had fled from the town to follow the irresistible stranger, Dionysus,
dwelled in the mountains, binding their hair with tame adders, carrying
in their arms the cubs of wolves and the young deer, and feeding them
with the milk of their breasts; that milk and wine welled up when they
struck the earth with the thyrsus; and so on. Dionysus implores
Penth