CHAPTER II.

IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS OF SOCRATES.

§ 1.-THE CYRENAIC SCHOOL.

AFTER the death of Socrates, his doctrines were held and promulgated under various modifications of several distinct schools or parties among his disciples. From the general doctrine of Socrates, that happiness is the chief end of man, arose two diverging systems. The one, starting from the sensibilities or desires, places happiness in pleasure— either that of the present moment and present act merely, ýdový, as Aristippus and the Cyrenaics; or the systematic pleasure, which looks to the future, and regards consequences, as Epicurus. The other system, starting from the reason rather than the senses and desires, grounds happiness in virtue: either that of action, as Xenophon and Plato; or that of negation and apathy to all pleasure, as the Cynics. Each of these schools presents a side of Socrates, according to the view that each took of that great master.

Among these stands prominent the Cyrenaic.

The head of this school was Aristippus, a disciple of Socrates, but regarded by the stricter Socratists as an unworthy pupil of the great master. His doctrines, though they diverged widely from those of Socrates, yet are based upon his principles; diverge from his stand-point.

Aristippus was born at Cyrene in Africa, a colony of note and power, but given to luxury. He was of illustrious and wealthy origin, and followed the pleasures which such a position and such an age placed in his way. He had heard of Socrates, however, and curious to know and hear the man, embarked for Athens and became a pupil of the

great master, remaining with him till the death of the latter, 399 B. C.

He seems to have remained a man of pleasure, notwithstanding the teachings of Socrates on temperance, selfdenial, etc.; kept himself aloof from no corrupting influences, but relied on his own self-possession and self-control to extricate him from all dangers and difficulties; frequented the society of disreputable persons; lived with Lais, a celebrated courtesan; was intimate with Dionysius the tyrant, and practically carried out the principle that a man ought to control circumstances, not to be controlled by them.

His starting point was Socratic. He began with the fundamental tenet of the Socratic school, that the chief aim and end of all human life and action is happiness. This, however, Socrates would place, not in the gratification of sensual desires and in irrational pleasures, but in self-knowledge, self-control, temperance, virtue, etc., as being the true and most exquisite as well as real source of happiness to man. On this point Aristippus begins to diverge. Happiness is the great aim of man (rò réños), but happiness is pleasure (ýdový). Pleasure is the good. Pain is the evil (Cicero de Finibus, ii. 6, 7, 13, 34; De Offic. iii. 33). Whatever contributes to pleasure is a good thing, as wisdom, virtue, friendship-good for that reason only (Diog. L. ii. 91, 93; Cic. Off. iii. 33); whatever interferes with it, an evil thing. In order to happiness, the mind must retain its independence, indeed, of all other and foreign influences; must not be enslaved by its passions, etc. But this independence may be secured not only in the Socratic method, by regulating and controlling one's pleasures, but also by banishing desire. Only as one is superior to hope and fear and desire, is he in the enjoyment of the highest pleasure (Diog. Laert. ii. 89, 90). Pleasure is good, but not the desire of pleasure; it is this that subjects the soul to hope and fear, and interferes with its enjoyment.

A man ought not, then, to desire anything which he is not at the moment in possession of, and the wise man will not. Such the doctrine; and the life and character of the man corresponded. He was of a serene, happy temperament: never allowed himself to want what he did not possess, manifested perfect indifference to all good things which were not within his reach, gave himself up with ready assent to whatever circumstances happened to surround him, lived for the present, neither regretting the past nor caring for the future; for the present alone is ours, the past gone, the future uncertain. His maxim seems to have been, Be content with such things as you have, and by no means fret thyself on any account. An easy, goodnatured soul he must have been, and an easy time he must have had of it. Of course there could have been no great and elevated idea of what man might become or what he ought to be, no high moral purpose, no moral unity of life and purpose.

The school of Aristippus regarded pleasure and pain as something positive; pleasure was not merely the gratification of a want, not merely the removal of pain, nor was pain the absence of a pleasure merely, but both were emotions, or motions of the soul; the absence of both is a state of rest or sleep, as it were. As to their idea of virtue, it was this : all actions in themselves are morally indifferent, the only question being as to its result, pleasure or pain. They agreed with the Sophists that no action is in itself either good or evil, but only as established and regulated by law and custom (Diog. Laertus, ii. 98. 99). Yet they maintained the general expediency of doing that which is just, on the ground that injustice will not pay. Whatever is a means to pleasure, that is virtue in the estimation of this school.

Pleasure, pain, and entire indifference, or absence of either, are the three states of the mind, analogous to gentle motion, violent motion, and rest, or to a gentle breeze, a

tempest, and a sea-calm. Pleasure is the sensation produced by gentle motion, pain, that produced by violent motion. In order to the highest enjoyment of pleasure, self-control is necessary, and this art of controlling pleasure is to be acquired only by knowledge and culture. The pleasure of the moment is not the highest goal.

Reason is the regulating principle, the chief element of virtue, which teaches how to avoid what might interfere with the pursuit of true pleasure. They did not limit pleasure to the bodily gratifications merely, but took into account the pleasures of the mind, and the spiritual part of man, though the former they held to be the stronger of the two (Diog. Laert. ii. 89, 90).

Aristotle reproaches Aristippus with having neglected all mathematical learning on the ground that it does not treat of the good and the evil, the only things worth knowing. Yet the Cyrenaic school seems to have cultivated logic, and even to some extent physics. Aristippus taught his doctrines to his daughter, Arete, who instructed her son, Aristippus junior. He also taught Antipater, who became one of the leaders of the school. Theodorus, the the pupil of the younger Aristippus, was another prominent teacher in the school. It is doubtful if Aristippus the elder ever taught public, or published his doctrines. His. disciples carried out the system to its farthest divergence from the Socratic ground. Theodorus, according to Sextus Empiricus (adv. Math. vii.), held the entire subjectivity of our knowledge; things are sweet, bitter, etc., not in themselves but merely as they so seem to us; we know nothing but our own sensations; hence there is out of us no criterion of truth; the changes, successions, of our own feeling are all that we are conscious of, all that we know (Diog. Laert. ii. 92; Cic. Acad. ii. 46, 142). This is carrying out the doctrine of Aristippus, who, according to the same authority, held that we knew our sensations, but not the occasion or source of them, i. e., not the qualities of bodies which produce them.

§ 2. THE CYNIC SCHOOL.

The chief of this school was Antisthenes, of Thracian descent by the mother; pupil in earlier life of Gorgias the Sophist, but subsequently pupil of Socrates, at an age when his moral and philosophical opinions were already somewhat matured. From this and other causes he seems to have bat partially understood the Socratic system, viewing it in a one-sided light. He was by nature a one-sided man, for nature produces; such a man of narrow views, and of coarse illiberal; stern, moreover, as such men are apt to be, harsh, censorious, yet conceited withal, placing undue estimate upon his own superior powers, and cherishing a vain desire of the admiration of others. Hence his love of exaggeration. It was not till after the death of Socrates that he opened a school of his own in the Cynosarges (whence the term Cynic), a gymnasium for the Athenians of foreign extraction. By his descent he was excluded from all participation in politics. He was poor, moreover, and he gloried in both these things, as sources of independence. He was above the world, that was so far above him. Assuming the mendicant's staff and wallet, negligent of attire, coarse and slovenly in appearance, he walked his round as proud a man, as scornful, as self-sufficient, as unamiable and uncomfortable a character as one could find in all Athens-a genuine radical reformer, ready to quarrel with society and with anybody that came in his way. The age was one of increasing luxury and civilization. Athens was fast coming to be a pleasure-loving city. Antisthenes, in the true spirit of an anti, set himself against all this. He must forsooth bring men back to the primitive simplicity in dress, manners, etc. So, like a wise fool, but a true anti, as he was, he goes over to the opposite extreme, and seeks to correct an amiable fault, a pardonable sin, by committing himself an unpardonable one. Here you have the cynic, the man Antisthenes, as contemporaries have