Other phenomena of the seventh and sixth centuries require our notice at this point. We saw in the preceding lecture that the gaze of the Homeric man was fixed on this world with its victories and its defeats, that he viewed splendid action on the field and wise counsel in the assembly of the princes as the individual’s highest province and his supreme happiness. The world beyond this had no rewards comparable with those of this life; the greatest boon man could hope from the future was that his exploits here might become the subject of song for coming generations. Suffering he regarded as necessary that a higher purpose might be attained. “The will of Zeus was accomplished” was the explanation beyond which man might not go; he must find his comfort in such unity as that thought gave to the world. Hence arises that pathos and sadness which strike us again and again in Homer. But the new age sought relief by shifting its gaze from this world to the next and by expecting there the recompenses and balances which make life just and complete; for it the future life furnished an escape from the sufferings of this present existence. Moreover under the manifold influences which I have tried to sketch above, men began to be impressed with the unity which apparently underlay the variety of the phenomenal world. This is the problem of philosophy. It is true that the early Greek philosophers devoted themselves chiefly to the material world, of which they regarded man as a part; but in religion there resulted a tendency to pantheism, which saw behind the multitude of divinities one all-embracing god. Moreover there were not lacking thinkers to struggle with the question as to the way in which man could bring himself into accord with the unity of the world. So in spite of the individualism of this age we find it also an age of mysticism—which is the very opposite of individualism. The mystic always holds in greater or less degree the belief that by destroying that which sets off the individual from his fellows, that is, by uprooting personality through the destruction of the passions, or by some ecstatic state which takes one out of himself, man may attain to union with god and therefore to salvation. This belief may lead even to a religion without gods, or it may be bound to a belief in divinity. In Greece these tendencies were not fully developed for a considerable time, but we can see that in the seventh and sixth centuries the longing for future happiness, the desire for salvation, and the mystic means thereto were already potent elements in Greek thought. They showed themselves in various ways; one outlet for the religious longing was found in the religion of Dionysus, especially as it was incorporated in the beliefs of the Orphic sect.