works nor lasts; every man at some time becomes 'the hindmost,' if not
before, at least in the hour of death for him or his; at that hour he
is hardly disposed, for himself or those he loves, to repeat his maxim.

II. ANTISTHENES AND THE CYNICS.--Aristippus, in his praises of pleasure
as the one good for man (see above, p. 126), remarks that there were
some who [209] refused pleasure "from perversity of mind," taking
pleasure, so to speak, in the denial of pleasure. The school of the
Cynics made this perverse mood, as Aristippus deemed it, the maxim of
their philosophy. As the Cyrenaic school was the school of the rich,
the courtly, the self-indulgent, so the Cynic was the school of the
poor, the exiles, the ascetics. Each was an extreme expression of a
phase of Greek life and thought, though there was this point of union
[215] between them, that _liberty_ of a kind was sought by both. The
Cyrenaics claimed liberty to please themselves in the choice of their
enjoyments; the Cynics sought liberty through denial of enjoyments.
[219] Both, moreover, were cosmopolitan; they mark the decay of the
Greek patriotism, which was essentially civic, and the rise of the
wider but less intense conception of humanity. Aristippus, in a
conversation with Socrates (Xenoph. _Memor_. II. i.) on the {129}
qualifications of those who are fitted to be magistrates, disclaims all
desire to hold such a position himself. "There is," he says, "to my
thinking, a middle way, neither of rule nor of slavery, but of freedom,
which leads most surely to true happiness. So to avoid all the evils
of partisanship and faction I nowhere take upon me the position of a
citizen, but in every city remain a sojourner and a stranger." And in
like manner Antisthenes the Cynic, being asked how a man should
approach politics, answered, "He will approach it as he will fire, not
too near, lest he be burnt; not too far away, lest he starve of cold."
And Diogenes, being asked of what city he was, answered, "I am a
citizen of the world." The Cynic ideal, in fact, was summed up in
these four words--wisdom, independence, free speech, liberty.

[214]

Antisthenes, founder of the school, was a native of Athens, but being
of mixed blood (his mother was a Thracian) he was not recognised as an
Athenian citizen. He was a student first under Gorgias, and acquired
from him a considerable elegance of literary style; subsequently he
became a devoted hearer of Socrates, an