hills, dances which stimulated ecstasy, and in an intoxication perhaps partly alcoholic, but mainly
mystical. Husbands found the practice annoying, but did not dare to oppose religion. Both the
beauty and the savagery of the cult are set forth in the Bacchae of Euripides.
The success of Bacchus in Greece is not surprising. Like all communities that have been civilized
quickly, the Greeks, or at least a certain proportion of them, developed a love of the primitive, and
a hankering after a more instinctive and passionate way of life than that sanctioned by current
morals. To the man or woman who, by compulsion, is more civilized in behaviour than in feeling,
rationality is irksome and virtue is felt as a burden and a slavery. This leads to a reaction in
thought, in feeling, and in conduct. It is the reaction in thought that will specially concern us, but
something must first be said about the reaction in feeling and conduct.
The civilized man is distinguished from the savage mainly by prudence, or, to use a slightly wider
term, forethought. He is willing to endure present pains for the sake of future pleasures, even if
the future pleasures are rather distant. This habit began to be important with the rise of agriculture;
no animal and no savage would work in the spring in order to have food next winter, except for a
few purely instinctive forms of action, such as bees making honey or squirrels burying nuts. In
these cases, there is no forethought; there is a direct impulse to an act which, to the human
spectator, is obviously going to prove useful later on. True forethought only arises when a man
does something towards which no impulse urges him, because his reason tells him that he will
profit by it at some future date. Hunting requires no forethought, because it is pleasurable; but
tilling the soil is labour, and cannot be done from spontaneous impulse.
Civilization checks impulse not only through forethought, which is a self-administered check, but
also through law, custom, and religion. This check it inherits from barbarism, but it makes it less
instinctive and more systematic. Certain acts are labelled criminal, and are punished; certain
others, though not punished by law, are labelled wicked, and expose those who are guilty of them
to social disapproval. The institution of private property brings with it the subjection of women,
and usually the creation of a slave class. On the one hand the purposes of the community are
enforced upon the individual, and, on the other hand the individual, having acquired