This high morality of the Greek religion reached its culmination in the worship of the Delphian Apollo. In truth, the history of Delphi is a large part of the history of Greek morality. It reflected from age to age the deepening moral perceptions of the race. The oracle thus stood in close relation with the great teachers of Greece. The ethical impulse of Pythagoreanism seems to have gone forth from Delphi. Apollo gave a religious sanction to the emancipation of the slave, and thus promoted social morality. The slave given his freedom by his master at Delphi became, as a freedman, sacrosanct.[434] Apollo stimulated also political morality. Through the Delphic Amphictyony his influence was exerted in mitigating the barbarities of war between Greek and Greek, and in creating an Hellenic fraternity. Thus through religion was the narrow sphere embraced by the ordinary moral feelings of the Greeks broadened and brought to cover wide federations of cities and tribes. Greek religion also exercised a stimulating influence upon morality through the Mysteries, especially through those of Eleusis. The greater number of these religious fraternities had an ethical aim--“the aim of worshiping a pure god, the aim of living a pure life, and the aim of cultivating a spirit of brotherhood.”[435] [Sidenote: Significance for Greek morality of the absence of a priestly caste] But the most noteworthy fact concerning Greek religion in its relations to Greek morality is this--that it was a religion practically without a priesthood. For there never arose in Greece a priestly class like that in Egypt, in Persia, in India, and in Judea. This is a fact of supreme importance in the history of Greek morals. It prevented the growth of a theocratic morality, with its artificial ritual duties and its conservative tendencies. It is interesting to note that it was the early rise of philosophy in the Greek cities of Ionia that saved Hellas from the domination of a sacerdotal caste. For at the time this philosophy arose the Orphic doctrines were overspreading Greece. Now this was a priestly religion, that is, a religion interpreted and administered by priests. Its triumph in Greece would have meant the establishment of a powerful national priesthood. This misfortune was prevented by the intellectual and philosophical movement in Ionia. It is this fact which leads Professor Bury to pronounce the rise of the study of philosophy in the Ionian cities one of the most important facts in the history of Hellas; for “it meant the triumph of reason over mystery; it led to the discrediting of the Orphic movement; it insured the free political and social progress of Hellas.”[436] And all this meant the keeping of the ground clear for the upgrowth and development of an essentially lay or secular morality, a morality that found its sanctions alone in the human reason and conscience. [Sidenote: The doctrine of race election; Hellenes and Barbarians]