The breach with the state-religion which was latent in Socrates was displayed without disguise by the Cynics. Antisthenes, following in the track of the ardent Xenophanes, declared that the popular gods were many, but the god of nature was one[81]; he denounced the use of images[82]; and he and his followers naturally acquired the reproach of atheism[83]. Equally offensive to the Athenians was their cosmopolitanism[84], which treated the pride of Hellenic birth as vain, and poured contempt on the glorious victories of Marathon and Salamis. Nor did the Cynics consider the civilization of their times as merely indifferent; they treated it as the source of all social evils, and looked for a remedy in the return to a ‘natural’ life, to the supposed simplicity and virtue of the savage unspoilt by education. Thus they formulated a doctrine which especially appealed to those who felt themselves simple and oppressed, and which has been well described as ‘the philosophy of the proletariate of the Greek world[85].’
Cynic intuitionism.
52. The destructive criticism of the Cynics did not stop with its attack upon Greek institutions; it assailed the citadel of reason itself. Socrates had renounced physics; the Cynics considered that dialectic was equally unnecessary[86]. For the doctrine of general concepts and the exercise of classification they saw no use; they were strict Nominalists; horses they could see, but not ‘horsiness.’ In their ethics they held to the chief doctrines of Socrates, that ‘virtue is knowledge,’ ‘virtue can be taught’ and ‘no one willingly sins’; and they laid special stress on the ‘sufficiency’ (αὐτάρκεια) of virtue, which to produce happiness needs (according to them) nothing in addition to itself except a Socratic strength of character (Σωκρατικὴ ἰσχύς)[87]. But in reality they identified virtue with this will-power, and entirely dispensed with knowledge; virtue was to them a matter of instinct, not of scientific investigation. They appear therefore as the real founders of that ethical school which bases knowledge of the good on intuition, and which is at the present time, under ever-varying titles, the most influential of all. In practice, the virtue which specially appealed to the Cynics was that of ‘liberty,’ the claim of each man at every moment to do and say that which seems to him right, without regard to the will of sovereigns, the conventions of society, or the feelings of his neighbour; the claim made at all times by the governed against their rulers, whether these are just or unjust, reckless or farseeing.
Limits of Cynism.
53. Cynism is in morals what Atomism is in physics; a doctrine which exercises a widespread influence because of its extreme simplicity, which is extraordinarily effective within the range of ideas to which it is appropriate, and fatally mischievous outside that range. Nothing is more alien from Cynism than what we now call cynicism; the Cynics were virtuous, warm-hearted, good-humoured, and pious. In their willing self-abnegation they equalled or surpassed the example set by Buddhist monks, but they were probably much inferior to them in the appreciation of natural beauty and the simple pleasures of life. As compared with their master Socrates, they lacked his genial presence, literary taste, and kindly tolerance; and they were intensely antipathetic to men of the type of Plato and Aristotle, whose whole life was bound up with pride in their country, their birth, and their literary studies[88].
Xenophon.
54. The Cynics themselves seem to have made no effective use of literature to disseminate their views; but in the works of Xenophon of Athens (440-circ. 350 B.C.) we have a picture of Socrates drawn almost exactly from the Cynic standpoint. Xenophon was a close personal friend of Antisthenes, and thoroughly shared his dislike for intellectual subtleties. He was possessed of a taste for military adventure, and his interpretation of Socratic teaching entirely relieved him of any scruples which patriotism might have imposed upon him in this direction, leaving him free at one time to support the Persian prince Cyrus, and at another to join with the Spartan king Agesilaus against his own countrymen. From adventure he advanced to romance-writing, and his sketches of the expedition of the Ten Thousand Greeks (in which he took part in person) and of the life of Cyrus the Great have an interest which in no way depends upon their accuracy. The account which he gives of Socrates in his Memorabilia (ἀπομνημονεύματα) is not always to be depended upon; it is at the best a revelation of one side only of the historic philosopher; but it is to a large extent confirmed by what we learn from other sources, and is of special interest to us because of the great influence it exercised over Latin literature.
The Cyrenaics.
55. In the opposite direction Aristippus of Cyrene shared the sympathetic tone of Socrates, but could not adopt his moral earnestness or his zeal for the good of others. He refused altogether the earnest appeal of Socrates that he should take part in politics. ‘It seems to me,’ he says, ‘to show much folly that a man who has quite enough to do to find the necessities of life for himself, should not be satisfied with this, but should take upon himself to provide his fellow-citizens with all that they want, and to answer for his action in the courts if he is not successful.’ Aristippus revolted altogether from the ascetic form in which the Cynics represented his master’s teaching, and held that the wise man, by self-restraint and liberal training, attained to the truest pleasure, and that such pleasure was the end of life. The Cyrenaics (as his followers were called) were the precursors in ethics of the school of Epicurus; and the bitter opposition which was later on to rage between Stoics and Epicureans was anticipated by the conflict between the Cynics and the Cyrenaics.
The Megarians.