History of Western Philosophy,  p. 39) this condition of the 
Greek world in the early throes of dichotomy and the trauma of 
literacy:

     Not all of the Greeks, but a large proportion of them, were 
     passionate, unhappy, at war with themselves, driven 
     along one road by the intellect and along another by the 
     passions, with the imagination to conceive heaven and 
     the willful self-assertion that creates hell. They had a 
     maxim “nothing too much”, but they were in fact 
     excessive in everything—in pure thought, in poetry, in 
     religion, and in sin. It was the combination of passion and 
     intellect that made them great, while they were great. . . . 
     There were, in fact, two tendencies in Greece, one 
     passionate, religious, mystical, other worldly, the other 
     cheerful, empirical, rationalistic, and interested in