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And this, said I, the Cyrenaics may use as a strong argument against you Epicureans, that all the sense of pleasure which arises from the working of any object on the ear or eye is not in those organs, but in the intellect itself. Thus the continual cackling of a hen or cawing of a crow is very ungrateful and disturbing; yet he that imitates those noises well pleases the hearers.
"Put a nosegay to his nostrils burn perfumes before him crown him with roses and woodbine"! But perfumes and garlands can do little in such case; pleasures may divert, but they can scarcely console. Again, the Cyrenaics bring at the best but Job's comfort.
These hapless caricaturists of the dialectic of Plato, and the logic of Aristotle, careless of any vital principles or real results, ready enough to use fallacies each for their own party, and openly proud of their success in doing so, were assisted by worthy compeers of an outwardly opposite tone of thought, the Cyrenaics, Theodorus and Hegesias.
The exact character of the development which the Socratic teaching received from Euclides and his school is a matter of considerable doubt. The allusions to the tenets of the school in Plato and others are only fragmentary. We gather, however, from them that Euclides was wholly antithetical to the personal turn given to philosophy, both by the Cyrenaics and the Cynics.
XXII. What remains is the opinion of the Cyrenaics, who think that men grieve when anything happens unexpectedly. And that is indeed, as I said before, a great aggravation of a misfortune; and I know that it appeared so to Chrysippus "Whatever falls out unexpected is so much the heavier."
And thirdly, while the Cyrenaics maintained that bodily pleasures and pains were the keenest, Epicurus claimed these characteristics for the pleasures of the mind, which intensified the present feeling by anticipations of the future and recollections of the past. And thus the wise man might be happy, even on the rack. Better indeed was it to be unlucky and wise, than lucky and foolish.
Horace professed himself a follower of the doctrines of Epicurus, which he took as a reasonable mean between the harshness of stoicism and the low morality of the Cyrenaics. In his odes, especially those written on public occasions, he uses, as all public men did, the language of the national religion.
They agreed with the Cyrenaics as to the end; they differed as to the means. Plato's writings and teachings were held in low esteem. Physical training, self-denial and endurance, and literary or Rhetorical cultivation, comprise the items taught by Diogenes when he became a slave, and was made tutor to the sons of his master.
With them first came into prominence a phrase which held a large place in all subsequent Greek philosophy, the End of existence, by which was meant that which summed up the good in existence, that which made life worth living, that which was good and desirable in and for itself, and not merely as a means to something else. What then according to the Cyrenaics was the End of life?
The Cyrenaics denied that there is anything just, or honourable, or base, by nature; all depended on the laws and customs. These laws and customs the wise man obeys, to avoid punishment and discredit from the society where he lives; doubtless, also, from higher motives, if the political constitution, and his fellow citizens generally, can inspire him with respect.
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