The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

PREDECESSORS OF STOICS IN ETHICS 133
brusquely replied: "Only
that you stand out of
my sunshine." Certainly, good manners did not
characterize the sage from Sinope. 1
Further, the Cynic, bound up in his self-sufficiency,
was narrow-minded and despised things of the intellect.
He contemned learning, and spurned speculation. But,
worst of all, in reducing his creed to practice, he set
conventionality at defiance, gave his tongue undue
licence, and gloried in offensive bodily habits,
forget
ting that "cleanliness is next to godliness." Diogenes
lived in a tub ;
the decencies of life were scarcely
observed by him or by others of his persuasion ;
and
opponents had just ground for the attacks that they
made in this connexion. Moreover, the Cynics were
a kind of" mendicant order in philosophy,"
and begged
their bread. The wallet was their badge. No very
high conception of independence here !
But take the Cynic doctrine of self-sufficiency at its
highest and best, stripped of the debasing aberrations
which attended the attempt to carry it out into practice,
often rendering the nobility of it unrecognizable (just
as the shell-fish and seaweed and pebbles and other
marine things that gathered
around Glaucus and ad
hered to him transformed the sea-god almost past
recognition 2 ),
and we see that its nature is to purify
and ennoble him who entertains it and tries to mould
his life accordingly. With true Socratic earnestness
(and the leading Cynics were earnest),
it inculcates
patience and endurance and a contempt
for selfindulgence
and for pleasure that produces strength
1
See Cicero, Tusc. Disp. v. 32 ;
and Arrian, Anabasis, vii. i.
3 See Plato, Republic, x. n.