swept over Hellas in the sixth century B.C.," together with the shifting of the scene from Ionia to
the West. "The religion of continental Hellas," he says, "had developed in a very different way
from that of Ionia. In particular, the worship of Dionysus, which came from Thrace, and is barely
mentioned in Homer, contained in germ a wholly new way of looking at man's relation to the
world. It would certainly be wrong to credit the Thracians themselves with any very exalted
views; but there can be no doubt that, to the Greeks, the phenomenon of ecstasy suggested that the
soul was something more than a feeble double of the self, and that it was only when 'out of the
body' that it could show its true nature....
"It looked as if Greek religion were about to enter on the same stage as that already reached by the
religions of the East; and, but for the rise of science, it is hard to see what could have checked this
tendency. It is usual to say that the Greeks were saved from a religion of the Oriental type by their
having no priesthood; but this is to mistake the effect for the cause. Priesthoods do not make
dogmas, though they preserve them once they are made; and in the earlier stages of their
development, the Oriental peoples had no priesthoods either in the sense intended. It was not so
much the absence of a priesthood as the existence of the scientific schools that saved Greece.
"The new religion--for in one sense it was new, though in another as old as mankind--reached its
highest point of development with the foundation of the Orphic communities. So far as we can
see, the original home of these was Attika; but they spread with extraordinary rapidity, especially
in Southern Italy and Sicily. They were first of all associations for the worship of Dionysus; but
they were distinguished by two features which were new among the Hellenes. They looked to a
revelation as the source of religious authority, and they were organized as artificial communities.
The poems which contained their theology were ascribed to the Thracian Orpheus, who had
himself descended into Hades, and was therefore a safe guide through the perils which beset the
disembodied soul in the next world." Burnet goes on to state that there is a striking similarity
between Orphic beliefs and those prevalent in India at about the same time, though he holds that
there cannot have been any contact. He then comes on to the original meaning of the word "orgy,"
which was used