"To me as an old Hellene it seemed a thing quite beyond comprehension, why people should go out of their way to salary a person for making them feel creepy at the same place, and on the same day of the week, by repeating the same admonitions in nearly the same words hundreds of times a year. Evidently their lives on the other days of the week are so spiritless, dull and dry, that they want to get at least on Sundays some moral hair-friction with spiritual _eau de Cologne_. We Hellenes never thought of doing such things. It would have struck us as a personal insult to suppose that we needed such perpetual moralisation at stated times. "Hippocrates told me that some constitutions do need the constant use of purgative waters. But do all people suffer from ethical constipation? "I could not help smiling at the idea of my preaching like that to the Athenians of my time. They would have handed me the goblet with hemlock long before they did do it. Each householder would have considered my pretensions to moralise them as a slander on his private life. Each of them tried to make his own house a chapel full of constantly practised piety, dutifulness, and humanity. What need had he of my sermons? When he joined the great festivals of the city, it was to do his duty by the other Athenians, just as he joined the army on land, or the navy on sea, for the same purpose. "We knew of no dogmas. We did not think that a man need stake all his soul on the belief in certain abstract dogmas. If he did not feel inclined to linger on one story told of Zeus, he might lovingly dwell on any other of the numberless stories told of him. If some said that Zeus was born in Crete, others maintained that he was born elsewhere. It seemed to us immaterial whether this fact or that was or was not historically exact. "Not so the little ones. For them religion is viewed as a matter of documentary evidence, like a bill of sale. They constantly clamour for 'evidence,' 'proofs' and 'verifications.' Their theologians are solicitors and barristers, but not religious men. If I had asked Pericles for 'evidences' of the religious cult practised by his family or _gens_, the Alcmæonidæ, he would have indignantly told his slaves to put me out of the house, just as if I had asked him to give me 'evidences' of his wife's virtue. "We held that Religion is not a matter of 'evidences,' any more than Life, Health, Sleep, or Dreams stand in need of being 'proved' by 'evidences.' We know that we live, or that we are in good health; we do not care to listen to long-winded arguments proving it. "On my rambles in England I met many a clergyman. I remember one who occupied a high position at Canterbury, and was a very learned man. I was rather curious to learn what he thought of the religion of the Greeks. He treated me to the following remarks: