250 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



gave way to the suggestions of common sense and humanity, as may 

 be instanced in Panaetius and Antoninus ; yet Stoicism, as such, always 

 bore strong traces of its Cynical origin. It will be necessary, there- 

 fore, in developing the doctrines of the Porch, to premise a short 

 account of the parent school, that of the Cynics. 



Antisthenes. Antisthenes, the founder of this sect, was born in the year 420 B.C. 

 at Athens, of a Thracian mother. In his early youth he studied the 

 art of eloquence under Gorgias ; but his admiration of the independence 

 and severe morality of Socrates, induced him to quit the rhetorician, 

 that he might become a pupil of the philosopher. That love of singu- 

 larity and perverse ambition, which formed a remarkable trait in the 

 character of Antisthenes, and which attempted to disguise itself under 

 the show of mortification and peculiar homeliness of apparel, did not 

 escape the observation of his new master. " I can spy," said he, 

 " the wearer's pride peeping out through the holes of those ragged 

 garments." It does not appear whether he quitted Athens on the 

 occasion of the death of Socrates, as other disciples of that philosopher 

 did ; but a sarcasm of his is recorded, as having contributed to accele- 

 rate the punishment of those who effected that judicial murder. Some 

 foreigners, unapprised of the event, are said to have asked Antisthenes 

 where they could find Socrates' house : he assured them that Socrates 

 was not worth inquiring after, but that he could refer them to a far 

 superior and more accomplished personage; and he directed them 

 accordingly to the house of Anytus. Soon after his master's death, 

 Antisthenes seems to have given full scope to the peculiarities of his 

 own character ; and whether he happened to select a place which had 

 been previously called the Dogs from some incident now unknown, 1 or 

 that he first obtained the name of dog, and that the place was so 

 called in honour of his Academy, certain it is, that he inveighed and 

 scoffed in ' Cynosarges ;' and that his adherents and imitators were 

 with great propriety termed Cynics, or the School of Barkers. Little 

 more is known of the particulars of his history. It cannot be doubted 

 that his own conduct must have been irreproachable, and that he 

 must have had a robust sort of satirical wit, to have atoned for, and 

 sanctioned, the absurdities and extravagances of his outward demeanour. 

 He was a man in many respects superior to the generality of his 

 followers. Instead of decrying science and literature, he was himself 

 an author ; and he is said to have left behind him ten volumes of his 

 works, though they have all now perished. We learn from Cicero, 

 that he maintained the unity of the Supreme Being, in opposition to 

 the polytheism of the vulgar, 2 and that his writings were valuable, as 

 monuments rather of his sagacity than of his erudition. 3 It is probable 

 that some of the tales related of him by the followers of his school 

 are mere fictions ; and, in fact, only descriptions of a Cynical model, 



vv6ffap'yi .. ., 



rives Kal rfyv KVISLK^V tyi\offofyiav tya-criv ti/revBev bvop-affQ^vai. Diog 

 Laert. vi. 13. 2 De Nat. Deor. i. 13. ' 3 Ad Att. xii. 38. 



