the habit of viewing his life as a whole, increasingly sacrifices his present to his future.
It is evident that this process can be carried too far, as it is, for instance, by the miser. But
without going to such extremes, prudence may easily involve the loss of some of the best things
in life. The worshipper of Bacchus reacts against prudence. In intoxication, physical or spiritual,
he recovers an intensity of feeling which prudence had destroyed; he finds the world full of
delight and beauty, and his imagination is suddenly liberated from the prison of every-day
preoccupations. The Bacchic ritual produced what was called "enthusiasm," which means,
etymologically, having the god enter into the worshipper, who believed that he became one with
the god. Much of what is greatest in human achievement involves some element of intoxication,
- some sweeping away of prudence by passion. Without the Bacchic element, life would be
uninteresting; with it, it is dangerous. Prudence versus passion is a conflict that runs through
history. It is not a conflict in which we ought to side wholly with either party.
In the sphere of thought, sober civilization is roughly synonymous with science. But science,
unadulterated, is not satisfying; men need also passion and art and religion. Science may set
limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination. Among Greek philosophers, as
among those of later times, there were those who were primarily scientific and those who were
primarily religious; the latter owed much, directly or indirectly, to the religion of Bacchus. This
applies especially to Plato, and through him to those later developments which were ultimately
embodied in Christian theology.
The worship of Bacchus in its original form was savage, and in many ways repulsive. It was not
in this form that it influenced the philosophers, but in the spiritualized form attributed to
Orpheus, which was ascetic, and substituted mental for physical intoxication.
Orpheus is a dim but interesting figure. Some hold that he was an actual man, others that he was
a god or an imaginary hero. Traditionally, he came from Thrace, like Bacchus, but it seems
more probable that he (or the movement associated with his name) came from Crete. It is
certain that Orphic doctrines contain much that seems to have its first source in Egypt, and it
was chiefly through Crete that
* I mean mental intoxication, not intoxication by alcohol.