e master's mode of life. [205] He in
course of time founded a school of his own, called the Cyrenaic from
his own place of birth, and from the fact that many subsequent leaders
of the school also belonged to Cyrene. Among his notable disciples
were his daughter Arete, her son named Aristippus after his
grandfather, Ptolemaeus the Aethiopian, Antipater of Cyrene, and a long
succession of others.

Aristippus was a man of considerable subtlety of mind, a ready speaker,
clever in adapting himself to persons and circumstances. On one
occasion, being {125} asked what benefit he considered philosophy had
conferred upon him, he answered, "The capacity of associating with
every one without embarrassment." Philosophy, in fact, was to
Aristippus a method of social culture, a means of making the best of
life as he found it. As Horace observes of him (_Epp_. i. 17. 23)--

Omnis Aristippum decuit color et status et res
Tentantem majora, fere praesentibus aequum.

"Every aspect and manner of life and fortune fitted Aristippus; he
aimed at what was greater, yet kept an even, mind whatever his present
condition."

[206]

As we have already said, this school was _incompletely_ Socratic,
inasmuch as philosophy was not an end in itself, knowledge whether of
oneself or of other matters had no intrinsic interest for them;
philosophy was only a means towards pleasurable living, enabling them
so to analyse and classify the several experiences of life as to render
a theory of satisfactory [207] existence possible. With them first
came into prominence a phrase which held a large place in all
subsequent Greek philosophy, the _End_ of existence, by which was meant
that which summed up the good in existence, that which made life worth
living, that which was good and desirable in and for itself, and not
merely as a means to something else. What then according to the
Cyrenaics was the End of life? {126} Their answer was that life had at
each moment its own End, in the pleasure of that moment. The past was
gone, the future not yet with us; remembrance of the one, fear or hope
of the other, might contribute to affect the purity of the present
pleasure, but such as it was the present pleasure was a thing apart,
complete in and for itself. Nor was its perfection qualified by any
question of the means by which it was procured; the moment's pleasure
was pleasurable, whatever men might say as to the manner of its [208]
procuring. This