328 ELEMENTS OF SCIENCE 



he was fatally misunderstood and condemned to die for 

 not recognising the gods which the State recognised. 

 Yet he was a devout man, and while dying from the cup 

 of hemlock given him, reminded a friend that they 

 owed the offering of a cock to the god Esculapius. His 

 martyrdom for the cause of philosophic morality gave a 

 wide-spread and most enduring influence to his teaching. 

 In the Socratic principle, that virtue depends on know- 

 ledge, much of the future course of philosophy was 

 indicated namely, an examination of ethics on the one 

 hand and of reasoning on the other. 



Euclid of Megara (not the geometrician), being imbued 

 with the notion of the school of Parmenides, that " the 

 one" is everything, taught that "the one" is really 

 " the good." He and his followers devoted themselves 

 to that side of the Socratic teaching which concerned 

 reasoning. 



Antisthenes (born 444 B.C.) and his disciples devoted 

 themselves to its ethical and practical side, which he 

 morbidly exaggerated. But he appears to have affirmed 

 the unity of God, despising the popular beliefs. From the 

 place, named Cynosarges, where he met his followers, 

 they acquired the surname of Cynics, of whom Diogenes 

 has become the accepted type. He proclaimed the need 

 not only of renouncing the luxuries but even the 

 decencies of life, and adopted an ostentatious asceticism 

 which in some of his followers became brutal and 

 indecent. 



Aristippus of Gyrene, a disciple of Socrates, laid stress 

 above all on the exercise of the will according to reason. 

 The Cynics sought for independence through the renun- 

 ciation of enjoyment; but Aristippus advocated self- 

 control in enjoyment, by which true pleasure was to be 

 attained. That such is the real end of life and the test 



