ue wisdom to be sought after as such by men: and in one point
he came nearer the precepts of Christianity than any of the ancients, when
he asserted the indispensableness of the morality of the thoughts to
virtue, and declared it to be the same thing, whether a person cast
longing eyes on the possessions of his neighbour, or attempted to possess
himself of them by force.

_Antisthenes_ was older than Plato; though the exact time of his birth is
uncertain: but he fought at the battle of Tanagra, B.C. 420, though then
very young. He became a disciple of Gorgias, and afterwards of Socrates,
at whose death he set up a school in the Cynosarges, a gymnasium for the
use of Athenians born of foreign mothers, near the temple of Hercules,
from which place of assembly his followers were called Cynics. He lived to
a great age, though the year of his death is not known, but he certainly
was alive after the battle of Leuctra, B.C. 371.

In his philosophical system, which was almost confined to ethics, he
appears to have aimed at novelty rather than truth or common sense. He
taught that in all that the wise man does he conforms to perfect virtue,
and that pleasure is so far from being necessary to man, that it is a
positive evil. He is reported also to have gone the length of pronouncing
pain and infamy blessings rather than evils, though when he spoke of
pleasure as worthless, he probably meant that pleasure which arises from
the gratification of sensual or artificial desires; for he praised that
which arises from the intellect, and from friendship. The _summum bonum_
he placed in a life according to virtue.

In a treatise in which he discussed the nature of the Gods he contended
for the unity of the Deity, and asserted that man is unable to know him by
any sensible representation, since he is unlike any being on earth; and
demonstrated the sufficiency of virtue for happiness, by the doctrine that
outward events are regulated by God so as to benefit the wise and good.

_Diogenes_, a native of Sinope in Pontus, who was born B.C. 412, was one
of his few disciples; he came at an early age to Athens, and became
notorious for the most frantic excesses of moroseness and self-denial. On
a voyage to AEgina he was taken by pirates and sold as a slave to Xeniades,
a Corinthian, over whom he acquired great influence, and was made tutor to
his children. His system consisted merely in teaching men to dispense with
even the simplest necessaries