D. But I shall die, whether you will or no.
A. How should one learn to be content?
D. Unlearn to covet.
A. (to Hephæstion.) Hephæstion, were I not Alexander, I would wish to be Diogenes.
H. He is dogged, but shrewd; he has a sharpness, mixed with a kind of sweetness; he is full of wit, yet too wayward.
A. Diogenes, when I come this way again, I will both see thee and confer with thee.
D. Do.
We are told that the philosopher was seen one day carrying a lantern through the streets of Athens: on being asked what he was looking after, he answered, “I am seeking an honest man.” Thinking he had found among the Spartans the greatest capacity for becoming such men as he wished, he said, “Men, I have found nowhere, but children, at least, I have seen in Lacedæmon.” Being asked, “What is the most dangerous animal?” his answer was, “Among wild animals, the slanderer; among tame, the flatterer.” He expired 323 B. C., at a great age, and, it is said, on the same day that Alexander died. When he felt death approaching, he seated himself on the road leading to Olympia, where he died with philosophical calmness, in the presence of a great number of people who were collected around him.
None of the works of Diogenes are extant; in these he maintained the doctrines of the Cynics. He believed that exercise was of the greatest importance, and capable of effecting everything. He held that there were two kinds of exercise,—one of the body, and one of the mind,—and that one was of little use without the other. By cultivation of the mind, he did not mean the accumulation of knowledge or science, but a training which might give it vigor, as exercise endows the body with health and strength.