ces at the world. To the onlooker, whose
comment Epictetus also records, their aspect is mean:

No: but their characteristic is the little wallet, and staff, and great
jaws; the devouring of all that you give them, or storing it up, or the
abusing unseasonably all whom they meet, or displaying their shoulder
as a fine thing.[10]

In other words, since the Cynic continues to live after having rejected
the proper instruments and forms of life, he must make a living out of
the charitable curiosity excited by his very unfitness. {94} And
asceticism of this prudential type tends always to be both empty and
monstrous; empty because it denies life, and monstrous because life is
not really denied, but only perverted and awkwardly obstructed.

There is a materialistic evil corresponding to the prudential
organization of life which is known as meanness, vulgarity, or
_sordidness_. It denotes a failure to recognize anything better than
the fulfilment of the simple interests in their severalty. Although
guarded and adjusted these still determine the general tone of life.
The controlling motive, the standard of attainment, is never anything
higher than the elementary desire with its attendant satisfaction. In
its negative aspect this is termed _aimlessness_, and is identical with
the Christian vice of idleness, so graphically described by Jeremy
Taylor:

Idleness is called _the sin of Sodom and her daughters_, and indeed is
_the burial of a living man_, an idle person being so useless to any
purposes of God and man, that he is like one that is dead, unconcerned
in the changes and necessities of the world; and he only lives to spend
his time, and eat the fruits of the earth: like a vermin or a wolf,
when their time comes they die and perish, and in the meantime do no
good; they neither plough nor carry burdens; all they do is either
unprofitable or mischievous.[11]

Thus aimlessness denotes a failure to attain anything of worth; a lack
of consecutiveness and {95} unity. The correction of this fault lies
in a new principle of organization.

IV

This new principle of organization consists in the _incorporation of
interests_, that is, their subordination to a _purpose_ that embraces
them, unifies them, and carries the whole to a successful issue. The
incorporation of interests is peculiarly an intellectual process. It
is this to which Socrates refers when he says that _knowledge is
virtue_. Purpose requires,