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Updated: May 26, 2025
Although Cimon, loving Iphigenia as he did, might exceed in certain things, as young men in love very often do, nevertheless Aristippus, considering that Love had turned him from a dunce into a man, not only patiently bore with the extravagances into which it might whiles lead him, but encouraged him to ensue its every pleasure.
It happens only too often that Epicurus is confounded with Aristippus, who places sensual pleasure above intellectual enjoyment, as he holds that bodily pain is harder to endure than mental anguish.
Pleasure might have been a fit enough word in the mouth of Aristippus, a semi-oriental untouched by the least sense of responsibility, or even on the lips of humanists in the eighteenth century, who, however sordid their lives may sometimes have been, could still move in imagination to the music of Mozart, in the landscape of Watteau or of Fragonard.
One day Aristippus proposed a captious question to Socrates, meaning to surprise him; and this by way of revenge, for his having before put him to a stand: but Socrates answered him warily, and as a person who has no other design in his conversations than the improvement of his hearers.
"Cincinnatus is a better model than Aristippus: confess it," said I, smiling. "But if the senators come hither to summon you to power, will you resemble the Roman, not only in being found at your plough, but in your reluctance to leave it, and your eagerness to return?" "What shall I say to you?" replied Bolingbroke. "Will you play the cynic if I answer no?
It is in this argument that he recites the well-known apologue called the choice of Herakles; in which, Virtue on the one hand, and Pleasure with attendant vice on the other, with their respective consequences, are set before a youth in his opening career. The whole argument with Aristippus was purely prudential; but Aristippus was not convinced nor brought over to the Sokratic ideal.
Is not this a great neglect? and do you not think that a man who is to command others ought to inure himself to all these hardships?" "I think he ought," answered Aristippus. "Therefore," replied Socrates, "if they who are patient and laborious, as we have said, are worthy to command, may we not say that they who can do nothing of all this, ought never to pretend to any office?"
A great temperament can carry off a rough philosophy. Rebellion and license may distinguish honourable souls in an age of polite corruption, and a grain of sincerity is better, in moral philosophy, than a whole harvest of conventionalities. The violence and shamelessness of Aristippus were corrected by Epicurus; and a balance was found between utter despair and utter irresponsibility.
Plato was the only one I missed, but I was told that he was living in his own Utopia, working the constitution and laws which he had drawn up. For popularity, Aristippus and Epicurus bore the palm, in virtue of their kindliness, sociability, and good-fellowship. Aesop the Phrygian was there, and held the office of jester.
It is but a hearty laugh at our expense, and Mrs. Grundy is content. If you don't want her to pity or backbite, let her laugh. She is a she-Cerberus, she wants to eat you; well stop her mouth with a cake. "Yes," continued this better sort of Aristippus, so wise under all his seeming levities, "the cue thus given, everything favors it.
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