But there is one thought which often recurs in Euripides in plays of all periods, and is specially thrown in his teeth by Aristophanes. That satirist, when piling up Euripides' theatrical iniquities, takes as his comic climax "women who say Life is not Life." The reference is to passages like fr. 833, from the _Phrixus_: Who knoweth if the thing that we call death Be Life, and our Life dying--who knoweth? Save only that all we beneath the sun Are sick and suffering, and those foregone Not sick, nor touched with evil any more. (_Cf._ fr. 638, 816; also _Helena_, 1013; _Frogs_, 1082, 1477). The idea recurs again and again, as also does the thought that death is "some other shape of life" in the _Medea_ and even in the _Ion_ (_Med._, 1039; _Ion_, 1068). Nay, more, death may be the state that we unconsciously long for, and that really fulfils our inmost desires: "There is no rest on this earth," says a speaker in the _Hippolytus_ (191 f.), "And whatever far-off state there be, Dearer than Life to mortality, The hand of the Dark hath hold thereof And mist is under and mist above: and thus," she continues, "we cling to this strange thing that shines in the sunlight, and are sick with love for it, because we have not seen beyond the veil." A stirring thought this, and much nearer to the heart of mysticism than any mere assertion of human immortality. Thus it is not from any position like what we should call "dogmatic atheism" or "scientific materialism" that the child of the Sophists started his attacks on the current mythology. The Sophists themselves had no orthodoxy.