The Greeks conceived of nature as following general rules, not acting according to the whims of gods or demons. They saw human beings as having a capacity for rational thought, a need for freedom, and a worth as individuals. Although the Greeks never dispensed with the Gods, they increasingly stressed the importance of human reason and human decisions. They came to assert that reason is the path to knowledge and that people –not the gods- are responsible for their own behavior. In this shift of attention from the gods to human beings, the Greeks broke with the myth-making orientations of the Near East and created the rational humanist outlook that is a distinctive feature of Western civilization.