Hellenism, however, had, by this time, not only a political implication but also moral and intellectual implications which were partly effects, partly causes, of its political energy. As has been well said by a modern historian of the Seleucid house, Hellenism meant, besides a politico-social creed, also a certain attitude of mind. The characteristic feature of this attitude was what has been called Humanism, this word being used in a special sense to signify intellectual interest confined to human affairs, but free within the range of these. All Greeks were not, of course, equally humanistic in this sense. Among them, as in all societies, there were found temperaments to which transcendental speculation appealed, and these increasing in number, as with the loss of their freedom the city-states ceased to stand for the realization of the highest possible good in this world, made Orphism and other mystic cults prevail ever more and more in Hellas. But when Alexander carried Hellenism to Asia it was still broadly true that the mass of civilized Hellenes regarded anything that could not be apprehended by the intellect through the senses as not only outside their range of interest but non-existent. Further, while nothing was held so sacred that it might not be probed or discussed with the full vigour of an inquirer's intelligence, no consideration except the logic of apprehended facts should determine his conclusion. An argument was to be followed wherever it might lead, and its consequences must be faced in full without withdrawal behind any non-intellectual screen. Perfect freedom of thought and perfect freedom of discussion over the whole range of human matters; perfect freedom of consequent action, so the community remained uninjured--this was the typical Hellene's ideal. An instinctive effort to realize it was his habitual attitude towards life. His motto anticipated the Roman poet's "I am human: nothing human do I hold no business of mine!" By the time the Western conquest of Asia was complete, this attitude, which had grown more and more prevalent in the centres of Greek life throughout the fifth and fourth centuries, had come to exclude anything like religiosity from the typical Hellenic character. A religion the Greek had of course, but he held it lightly, neither possessed by it nor even looking to it for guidance in the affairs of his life. If he believed in a world beyond the grave, he thought little about it or not at all, framing his actions with a view solely to happiness in the flesh. A possible fate in the hereafter seemed to him to have no bearing on his conduct here. That disembodied he might spend eternity with the divine, or, absorbed into the divine essence, become himself divine--such ideas, though not unknown or without attraction to rarer spirits, were wholly impotent to combat the vivid interest in life and the lust of strenuous endeavour which were bred in the small worlds of the city-states.