The great Greek tragedies occupy a place in the development of the dialectic and the satisfying of the need of knowledge. Science, through the drama, transformed the old religious views and brought its new interpretation to the common people. The development of the fifth-century drama out of the epic of the sixth century was not merely a change in architectonic, but a transformation of its ethical and religious spirit. The germ was in the previous ethics, lyrics, and gnomics, yet it was fully amplified in the drama. Instead of a summary of deeds the tragic poet makes his characters talk, defend, refute, accuse, lament, etc. This gives rise to exigencies that require the dialectic. In the conflicting duties and in the justification of the wrong done by the wrong suffered, dialectical skill is called for in the drama to weigh the ethical motives in a manner that the epic does not demand. Thus the drama of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides was a link between the lyric and gnomic poetry of the sixth century B. C. and the dialogue literature of Plato.[15] 3. _The Critical Attitude of Mind._ The most important characteristic of this period is neither the intensified social curiosity nor the increased social needs. It is rather ethical in its character. It is the “critical” or “individualistic” attitude of mind. This began with the “free city feeling”――the consciousness of the free man in a free state――in the first half of the fifth century B. C., and developed rapidly into individualism and critical skepticism toward the end of that century.