illo vias aperit." – Id., Ep. 108: "Illud admoneo auditionem philosophorum, lectionemque, ad proposition beatæ vitæ trahendum."
The ethics of the Cynics also adopted this end of the happiest life, as the Emperor Julian expressly testifies (Orat. vi.): "(
Greek characters)" (Cynicæ philosophiæ ut etiam omnis philosophiæ, scopus et finis est feliciter vivere: felicitas vitæ autem in eo posita est, ut secundum naturam vivatur, nec vero secundum opiniones multitudinis.) Only the Cynics followed quite a peculiar path to this end, a path directly opposed to the ordinary one – the path of extreme privation. They start from the insight that the motions of the will which are brought about by the objects which attract and excite it, and the wearisome, and for the most part vain, efforts to attain these, or, if they are attained, the fear of losing them, and finally the loss itself, produce far greater pain than the want of all these objects ever can. Therefore, in order to attain to the life that is most free from pain, they chose the path of the extremest destitution, and fled from all pleasures as snares through which one was afterwards handed over to pain. But after this they could boldly scorn happiness and its caprices. This is the spirit of cynicism. Seneca distinctly expresses it in the eighth chapter, "De Tranquilitate Animi:" "Cogitandum est, quanto levior dolor sit, non habere, quam perdere: et intelligemus paupertati eo minorem tormentorum, quo minorem damnorum esse materiam." Then: "Tolerabilius est, faciliusque, non acquirere, quam amittere. ... Diogenes effecit, ne quid sibi eripi posset, ... qui se fortuitis omnibus exuit. ... Videtur mihi dixisse; age tuum negotium, fortuna: nihil apud Diogenem jam tuum est." The parallel passage to this last sentence is the quotation of Stobasus (Ecl. ii. 7): "(Greek characters)"
