The last two plays of Aristophanes show a world that for the first time in the development of Western civilization can reasonably be called secular. The secularity of Ecclesiazusae and Plutus lies in their presenting human individuality as containing in its activity the various aspects of the life of the polis, more thoroughly than the gods who presided over them. The gods do not thereby vanish...

To commit Euthyphro's fallacy is to endorse a pair of incompatible explanations, one constitutive and the other causal. Asked to explain the nature of piety, Euthyphro hazards that being pious consists in being an object of the gods' love. But asked what causes the gods to love what they do, he holds with the commonsensical thought that the gods love pious people because they are pious. As Socr...