harp; the sound thereof no sooner ceased or was
drowned by some louder noise, but every beast returned to his own
nature; wherein is aptly described the nature and condition of men, who
are full of savage and unreclaimed desires of profit, of lust, of
revenge, which, as long as they give ear to precepts, to laws, to
religion, sweetly touched by eloquence and persuasion of books, of
sermons, of harangues, so long is society and peace maintained; but if
these instruments be silent, or that sedition and tumult make them not
audible, all things dissolve into anarchy and confusion."[263]

Of the Orphic doctrines we are able to give a somewhat better account. As
far back as the sixth century before Christ, there were scattered through
Greece hymns, lyrical poems, and prose treatises, treating of theological
questions, and called Orphic writings. These works continued to be
produced through many centuries, and evidently met an appetite in the
Greek mind. They were not philosophy, they were not myths nor legends, but
contained a mystic and pantheistic theology.[264] The views of the
Pythagoreans entered largely into this system. The Orphic writings
develop, by degrees, a system of cosmogony, in which Time was the first
principle of things, from which came chaos and ether. Then came the
primitive egg, from which was born Phanes, or Manifestation. This being is
the expression of intelligence, and creates the heavens and the earth. The
soul is but the breath which comes from the whole universe, thus
organized, and is imprisoned in the body as in a tomb, for sins committed
in a former existence. Life is therefore not joy, but punishment and
sorrow. At death the soul escapes from this prison, to pass through many
changes, by which it will be gradually purified. All these notions are
alien to the Greek mind, and are plainly a foreign importation. The true
Greek was neither pantheist nor introspective. He did not torment himself
about the origin of evil or the beginning of the universe, but took life
as it came, cheerfully.

The pantheism of the Orphic theology is constantly apparent. Thus, in a
poem preserved by Proclus and Eusebius it is said:[265]--

"Zeus, the mighty thunderer, is first, Zeus is last,
Zeus is the head, Zeus the middle of all things.
From Zeus were all things produced. He is both man and woman;
Zeus is the depth of the earth, and the height of the starry heavens;
He is