The Cynic (1-5)

Lycinus Give an account of yourself, my man. You wear a beard and let your hair grow; you eschew shirts; you exhibit your skin; your feet are bare; you choose a wandering, outcast, beastly life; unlike other people, you make your own body

the object of your severities; you go from place to place sleeping on the hard ground where chance finds you, with the result that your old cloak, neither light nor soft nor gay to begin with, has a plentiful load of filth to carry about with it. Why 4s it all?

Cynic It meets my needs. It was easy to come by, and it gives its owner no trouble. It is the cloak for me.

Pray tell me, do you not call extravagance a vice?

Lycinus Oh, yes.

Cynic And economy a virtue?

Lycinus Yes, again.

Cynic Then, if you find me living economically, and others extravagantly, why blame me instead of them?

Lycinus I do not call your life more economical than other people’s; I call it more destitute—destitution and want, that is what it is; you are no better than the poor who beg their daily bread.

Cynic That brings us to the questions, What is want, and what is sufficiency? Shall we try to find the answers?

Lycinus If you like, yes.

Cynic A man’s sufficiency is that which meets his necessities; will that do?

Lycinus I pass that.

Cynic And want occurs when the supply falls short of necessity —does not meet the need?

Lycinus Yes.

Cynic Very well, then, I am not in want; nothing of mine fails to satisfy my need.

Lycinus How do you make that out?

Cynic Well, consider the purpose of anything we require; the purpose of a house is protection?

Lycinus Yes.

Cynic Clothing—what is that for? protection too, I think.

Lycinus Yes.

Cynic But now, pray, what is the purpose of the protection, in turn? the better condition of the protected, I presume.

Lycinus I agree.

Cynic Then do you think my feet are in worse condition than yours?

Lycinus I cannot say.

Cynic Oh, yes; look at it this way;; what have feet to do?

Lycinus Walk.

Cynic And do you think my feet walk worse than yours, or than the average man’s?

Lycinus Oh, not that, I dare say.

Cynic Then they are not in worse condition, if they do their work as well.

Lycinus That may be so.

Cynic So it appears that, as far as feet go, I am in no worse condition than other people.

Lycinus No, I do not think you are.

Cynic Well, the rest of my body, then? If it is in worse condition, it must be weaker, strength being the virtue of the body. Is mine weaker?

Lycinus Not that I see.

Cynic Consequently, neither my feet nor the rest of my body need protection, it seems; if they did, they would be in bad condition; for want is always an evil, and deteriorates the thing concerned. But again, there is no sign, either, of my body’s being nourished the worse for its nourishment’s being of a common sort.

Lycinus None whatever.

Cynic It would not be healthy, if it were badly nourished; for bad food injures the body.

Lycinus That is true.

Cynic If so, it is for you to explain why you blame me and depreciate my life and call it miserable.

Lycinus Easily explained. Nature (which you honour) and the Gods have given us the earth, and brought all sorts of good things out of it, providing us with abundance not merely for our necessities, but for our pleasures; and then you abstain from all or nearly all of it, and utilize these good things no more than the beasts. Your drink is water, just like theirs; you eat what you pick up, like a dog, and the dog’s bed is as good as yours; straw is enough for either of you. Then your clothes are no more presentable than a beggar’s. Now, if this sort of contentment is to pass for wisdom, God must have been all wrong in making sheep woolly, filling grapes with wine, and providing all our infinite variety of oil, honey, and the rest, that we might have food of every sort, pleasant drink, money, soft beds, fine houses, all the wonderful paraphernalia of civilization, in fact; for the productions of art are God’s gifts to us too. To live without all these would be miserable enough even if one could not help it, as prisoners cannot, for instance; it is far more so if the abstention is forced upon a man by himself; it is then sheer madness.