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We know very little of those Sceptics, Cynics, Epicureans, Academics, Peripatetics, Stoics, of whom there has been so much talk, except at second-hand, through the Romans, from whom Stoicism in after ages received a new and not ignoble life.
Shade and sun spaces alike seemed to him full of happy crowds. The beautiful city laughed and murmured round him. Nature and man alike bore witness with his own rash heart that all is divinely well with the world let the cynics and the mourners say what they will. His hour had come, and without a hesitation or a dread he rushed upon it.
Neither Christians, nor Mohammedans, nor heathens need these agencies to summon them to their respective worldly enjoyments, so that, taken all in all, we are pretty much alike cynics, notwithstanding, to the contrary, we are little or no worse than the heathens.
Although this evidence had been pawed over by so many hands since the fifteenth century, by the phlegmatic and the fiery, by rhapsodists and cynics, he felt sure that Wheeler would not dismiss the case lightly. Indeed, Claude put a great deal of time and thought upon the matter, and for the time being it seemed quite the most important thing in his life.
I have known men proclaim themselves cynics for life, who have been making idiots of themselves with their own children in five years." Wingrave nodded gravely. "True enough," he answered. "But the one thing which no man can mistake is death. Listen, and I will quote some poetry to you. I think it is something like this:
Antisthenes, who was born 422 B.C., and especially Diogenes, went to the opposite extreme, and founded the school of Cynics, who looked with disdain, not only on luxuries, but on the ordinary comforts of life, and inured themselves to do without them. Their manners were often as savage as their mode of living.
But in the same instant the jester's hand caught her own. "Even so, lady," he said. "But the magic of fools has led to paradise before now." She laughed out bitterly: "A fool's paradise!" "Is ever green," he said whimsically. "Faith, it's no place at all for cynics. Shall we go hand in hand to find it then in case you miss the way?" She laughed again at the quaint adroitness of his speech.
The cause of this, perhaps, was that he knew nothing about books, and was one of those jeering cynics who are so common under one guise or another. Fine cynics are endurable, and give a certain zest often to society, which might become too civil without them; but your coarse cynic is not pleasant. Mr.
A man's friend likes him but leaves him as he is: his wife loves him and is always trying to turn him into somebody else. Women who are utter mystics in their creed are utter cynics in their criticism. Thackeray expressed this well when he made Pendennis' mother, who worshipped her son as a god, yet assume that he would go wrong as a man. She underrated his virtue, though she overrated his value.
We have more of the show of religion and less of the spirit in Russia than in any other country in the world. Here in Poland, it is a little different. Some of our women are as the idealists would have them to be. But there are others or the city would be intolerable." Alban had lived too long in a world of mean cynics that this talk should either surprise or entertain him.
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