"You give liberally and I take valiantly from you, neither grovelling nor demeaning myself
basely nor grumbling." * A very convenient doctrine. Popular Cynicism did not teach
abstinence from the good things of this world, but only a certain indifference to them. In the
case of a borrower, this might take the form of minimizing the obligation to the lender. One can
see how the word "cynic" acquired its every-day meaning.
What was best in the Cynic doctrine passed over into Stoicism, which was an altogether more
complete and rounded philosophy.
Scepticism, as a doctrine of the schools, was first proclaimed by Pyrrho, who was in
Alexander's army, and campaigned with it as far as India. It seems that this gave him a
sufficient taste of travel, and. that he spent the rest of his life in his native city, Elis, where he
died in 275 B.C. There was not much that was new in his doctrine, beyond a certain
systematizing and formalizing of older doubts. Scepticism with regard to the senses had
troubled Greek philosophers from a very early stage; the only exceptions were those who, like
Parmenides and Plato, denied the cognitive value of perception, and made their denial into an
opportunity for an intellectual dogmatism. The Sophists, notably Protagoras and Gorgias, had
been led by the ambiguities and. apparent contradictions of sense-perception to a subjectivism
not unlike Hume's. Pyrrho seems (for he very wisely wrote no books) to have added moral and
logical scepticism to scepticism as to the senses. He is said to have maintained that there could
never be any rational. ground for preferring one course of action to another. In practice, this
meant that one conformed to the customs of whatever countryone inhabited. A modern disciple
would go to church on Sundays and. perform the correct genuflexions, but without any of the
religious beliefs that are supposed to inspire these actions. Ancient Sceptics went through the
whole pagan ritual, and were even sometimes priests; their Scepticism assured them that this
behaviour could not be proved wrong, and their common sense (which survived their
philosophy) assured them that it was convenient.
Scepticism naturally made an appeal to many unphilosophic minds. People observed the
diversity of schools and the acerbity of their disputes, and decided that all alike were pretending
to knowledge which
* The Hellenistic Age ( Cambridge, 1923), p. 86.