There are those who say it shall be!-that they know the nation--it may be the very men-through whom the great emancipation shall be wrought out; and they believe that the hour is at hand.

There are those, too, who cannot share these cheering anticipations, who have no belief in Nesta's remedy :

Trade

Which, pushed with blood, shall end in peace and wealth.

Well, at all events, we are successful sailors, and accomplished cartographers. Ithobal's Lybia has been circumnavigated a thousand times; but the great Islandcontinent is still a land of violence and cruel habitations. The "grave of reputations" may yet be the grave of contending empires. Ages and thrones and dominations have passed away since the Tyrian sailors essayed their great adventure, steering their frail barques by the gleam of familiar or unknown stars; and to-day, as then, "Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa." Still do we await the voice that may at some supreme moment vindicate

The long patience of the waiting gods.

175

THE CYNICS.

BY JOHN MACCUNN, M.A., LL.D.

"OTHER dogs," once said Diogenes, punning upon the designation of his School, "bite their enemies: I bite my friends for their salvation"; and it may be confidently affirmed that he and his friends were admirably fitted for the friendly office. Gifted with impressive intellectual force, with unbounded capacity of contempt, and with a pungent humour, they did not know how to spare either men or institutions. The retort of Diogenes to his fellow citizens of Sinope is typical. He was told that they had condemned him to banishment. "And I," was the rejoinder, "condemn them-to live in Sinope." The attitude of Diogenes to the men of Sinope was the attitude of the Cynic school to society at large. Like most ascetic systems it had its roots, in part at least, in revolt against the world. Nothing pleased them. With a trenchant dichotomy that reminds one of Carlyle, they divided mankind into the handful of wise men and innumerable fools. "Of what am I guilty," once exclaimed Antisthenes, "that I should be praised?" And the words came well from one to whom popularity was but "the babble of madmen." Even the most cherished ideas of the Athenian served only to point corrosive retort. Was it civic patriotism? "Why should I be proud of belonging to the soil of Attica with the worms and the slugs." Was it the warlike spirit— that spirit that Plato, even in his idealised Greek state, weds so closely to philosophy? "Let a man apply him

self to philosophy till he has come to regard the leaders of armies as the drivers of asses." Was it popular election (and the Athenians, it will be remembered, were so democratic that they elected even their generals)? "They might as well nominate their asses to be horses." So all along the line. Political institutions, property, the family, luxury in all modes, culture at least in many aspects-all serve but as targets for Cynic projectiles. Even the Athenian attachment to ceremonial religion-so singularly tenacious despite all the free thought of the Sophistic era-finds short shrift in the blunt declaration that a temple is no holier than any other place.

It might seem that views like these have at any rate the merit of being unambiguous. And it would not do to accuse the Cynics of saying anything they did not think, or of thinking anything they did not say. Yet for this very reason there is possibility of misconception. This in two directions. For (1) we must not take these Cynic utterances too solemnly. The Cynics were philosophers; but they were also satirists and humourists. Like all the masters of vituperation, they had a zest in the commination service. And this being so, it would betray a lack of humour to read all these flings, flouts, sneers, sarcasms, as if they were meant for philosophic formulae. Once, it appears, Diogenes was shewn some ingenious kind of dial; "Not a bad contrivance," was the rejoinder, "to avoid missing one's meals." We may take this seriously if we like. But it may be safer to put it alongside of Antisthenes' asseveration (wrung from him possibly in some moment of exasperation with dilettantism) that "a wise man will not learn to read so as not to be troubled by trifles." One must beware of the pedantic literalism of the men who cannot laugh.

(2) There is, however, a second possible misinterpre

tation. The Cynics, it must be already evident, were men of extreme opinions and unbridled speech. That element of "measure," "proportion," "symmetry," so dear to the Greeks, to them was wanting. And as they had the virtue of living up to their doctrines, it was equally wanting in their eccentric and sometimes indecent lives. Hence the temptation to dismiss Cynicism as a travesty of philosophy, and the Cynics as no better (if one may borrow the phrase) than spiritual clowns.

For two reasons any such misinterpretation would be grossly unjust. (a) One is that the Cynic revolt against society was far from unprovoked. In our gratitude for what Greece has done for us (and what has it not done for us ?), we must not forget that even the Greece of Pericles had its blots. It was devastated by constant wars, and it could be ruthless in its manner of waging them. It was split up into little municipal states which hated each other with a perfect hatred, as Athens hated Thebes or Sparta, or as Thebes hated Athens. It was built upon slaverythe horrible slavery of the mines as well as the milder bondage of the household; and it grew into slavery rather than out of it. Beautiful in so much, even as its own Parthenon, Greek civilisation could as little assimilate this servile substratum as could the Parthenon transmute into frieze and columns the native rock of the Acropolis. And then these little States were torn by those intestine rivalries, and cursed by those unscrupulous ambitions which led to the political inferno described in lurid pages by Thucydides. Add to this the perennial vices that may only too surely be reckoned upon where wealth has grown, and luxury increased, and command of leisure and facilities for culture borne their usual harvest of dilettantism. Who will say that such a society did not need its censors and satirists? There was a word of advice once

given by Diogenes. It may be commended to all those, whether individuals or nations, who wince under the lash of their critics: "Associate with your enemies: they will be the first to tell you of your faults." (b) The second point-the second consideration which forbids us to take Cynicism too lightly-is that, despite all its extravagances it rested on a principle. Disgust with social life was part of it. But it was not the main part, nor would it ever have been so bitter had it not found inspiration elsewhere in the life, and in the doctrine, of Socrates.

It sometimes happens that a great man, though himself far enough from being sectarian, becomes the founder of sects. He cannot help it. He is so great that his followers, being lesser men, and quite unable to see around him, come to mistake the part for the whole, to fashion their god in their own imperfect image, and to subsist each of them upon his own favourite fragment of the master's example and teaching. This, at least, was what happened to Socrates. None of the world's great thinkers has ever gathered into discipleship men of such varied types; and never did philosopher trouble himself less than did this philosophic genius to keep all his utterances formally consistent, or to hand on to successors the doubtful legacy of a dogmatic system. The result followed. When he passed away, it was Plato alone who reproduced him in his splendid many-sidedness. For the rest, the varied aspects of truth that had found unity in the Socratic personality fell asunder into fragments, which were portioned out among followers who, as usual, all claimed the true apostolic succession, and all repudiated every succession but their own. Hence arose those schools so fitly called the incomplete Socratics; and among them, arrogant in their incompleteness, the Cynics.