which transcends life; but with the Cynics it is only the conviction that it is easier to reduce their wishes and their wants to the minimum, than to attain to the maximum in their satisfaction, which indeed is impossible, for with their satisfaction the wishes and wants grow ad infinitum; therefore, in order to reach the goal of all ancient ethics, the greatest happiness possible in this life, they took the path of renunciation as the shortest and easiest: "(
Greek characters)" (Unde Cynismum dixere compendiosam ad virtutem viam.) Diog. Laert., vi. 9. The fundamental difference between the spirit of cynicism and that of asceticism comes out very clearly in the humility which is essential to the ascetic, but is so foreign to the Cynic that, on the contrary, he is distinguished beyond everything else for pride and scorn: –
"Sapiens uno minor est Jove, dives,
Liber, honoratua, pulcher, rex denique regum." – Hor.
On the other hand, the view of life held by the Cynics agrees in spirit with that of J. J. Rousseau as he expounds it in the "Discours sur l'Origine de l'Inégalité." For he also would wish to lead us back to the crude state of nature, and regards the reduction of our wants to the minimum as the surest path to happiness. For the rest, the Cynics were exclusively practical philosophers: at least no account of their theoretical philosophy is known to me.
Now the Stoics proceeded from them in this way – they changed the practical into the theoretical. They held that the actual dispensing with everything that can be done without is not demanded, but that it is sufficient that we should regard possessions and pleasures constantly as dispensable, and as held in the hand of chance; for then the actual deprivation of them, if it should chance to occur, would neither be unexpected nor fall heavily. One might always have and enjoy everything; only one
