d thus it was to the dissections of
these two great men, helped indeed by opening the bodies of animals,
that the world owed almost the whole of its knowledge of the anatomy of
man, till the fifteenth century, when surgeons were again bold enough to
face the outcry of the mob, and to study the human body with the knife.

Hegesias of Cyrene was an early lecturer on philosophy at Alexandria.
His short and broken sentences are laughed at by Cicero, yet he was so
much listened to, when lecturing against the fear of death, and showing
that in quitting life we leave behind us more pains than pleasures, that
he was stopped by Ptolemy Soter through fear of his causing self-murder
among his hearers. He then wrote a book upon the same subject, for
though the state watched over the public teaching, it took no notice
of books; writing had not yet become the mightiest power on earth. The
miseries, however, of this world, which he so eloquently and feelingly
described in his lectures and writings, did not drive him to put an end
to his own life.

Philostephanus of Cyrene, the friend of Callimachus, was a naturalist
who wrote upon fishes, and is the first investigator that we hear of who
thought it desirable to limit his studies to one branch of the science
of natural history.

But Cyrene did not send all its great men to Alexandria. Plato had
studied mathematics there under Theodorus, and it had a school of its
own which gave its name to the Cyrenaic sect. The founder of this sect
was Aristippus, the pupil of Socrates who had missed the high honour of
being present at his death. He was the first philosopher who took money
from his pupils, and used to say that they valued their lessons more
for having to pay for them; but he was blamed by his brethren for
thus lowering the dignity of the teacher. He died several years before
Ptolemy Soter came into Egypt. The Cyrenaic sect thought happiness,
not goodness, was the end to be aimed at through life, and selfishness,
rather than kindness to others, the right spring of men's actions. It
would hardly be fair to take their opinions from the mouths of their
enemies; and the dialogues of Socrates, with their founder, as told to
us by Xeno-phon, would prove a lower tone of morality than he is likely
to have held. The wish for happiness and the philosophical love of self,
which should lead to goodness, though a far worse rule of life than the
love of goodness for its own sake, which is the grou