ion of others was, like
his independence of possessions, not an end in itself. He did not
interpret it to mean that he was wantonly to offend public opinion.
But the Cynics, to show their indifference, flouted public opinion,
and gave frequent and disgusting exhibitions of indecency.

Virtue, for the Cynics, is alone good. Vice is the only evil. Nothing
else in the world is either good or bad. {160} Everything else is
"indifferent." Property, pleasure, wealth, freedom, comfort, even life
itself, are not to be regarded as goods. Poverty, misery, illness,
slavery, and death itself, are not to be regarded as evils. It is no
better to be a freeman than a slave, for if the slave have virtue, he
is in himself free, and a born ruler. Suicide is not a crime, and a
man may destroy his life, not however to escape from misery and pain
(for these are not ills), but to show that for him life is
indifferent. And as the line between virtue and vice is absolutely
definite, so is the distinction between the wise man and the fool. All
men are divided into these two classes. There is no middle term
between them. Virtue being one and indivisible, either a man possesses
it whole or does not possess it at all. In the former case he is a
wise man, in the latter case a fool. The wise man possesses all
virtue, all knowledge, all wisdom, all happiness, all perfection. The
fool possesses all evil, all misery, all imperfection.

The Cyrenaics.

For the Cyrenaics, too, virtue is, at least formally, the sole object
of life. It is only formally, however, because they give to virtue a
definition which robbed it of all meaning. Socrates had not
infrequently recommended virtue on account of the advantages which it
brings. Virtue, he said, is the sole path to happiness, and he had not
refrained from holding out happiness as a motive for virtue. This did
not mean, however, that he did not recognize a man's duty to do the
right for its own sake, and not for the sake of the advantage it
brings. "Honesty," we say, "is the best policy," {161} but we do not
mean thereby to deny that it is the duty of men to be honest even if
it is not, in some particular case, the best policy. Socrates,
however, had not been very clear upon these points, and had been
unable to find any definite basis for morality, other than that of
happiness. It was this side of his teaching which Aristippus now
pressed to its logical conclusions, regardless of all other claims.
Doubt