lism is the advocate of moral reversion. It is
recognized as the prophecy of the brute majority of life, of those
considerations of expediency and pleasure that are the warrant for its
secular moods rather than for its sustaining ideals. And that strand of
life is indeed its special province. For the naturalistic method of
reduction must find the key to human action among those practical
conditions that are common to man and his inferiors in the scale of
being. In short, human life, like all life, must be construed as the
adjustment of the organism to its natural environment for the sake of
preservation and economic advancement.

[Sidenote: Cynicism and Cyrenaicism.]

Sect. 121. Early in Greek philosophy this general idea of life was
picturesquely interpreted in two contrasting ways, those of the Cynic
and the Cyrenaic. Both of these wise men postulated the spiritual
indifference of the universe at large, and looked only to the _contact_
of life with its immediate environment. But while the one hoped only to
hedge himself about, the other sought confidently the gratification of
his sensibilities. The figure of the Cynic is the more familiar.
Diogenes of the tub practised self-mortification until his dermal and
spiritual callousness were alike impervious. From behind his protective
sheath he could without affectation despise both nature and society. He
could reckon himself more blessed than Alexander, because, with demand
reduced to the minimum, he could be sure of a surplus of supply. Having
renounced all goods save the bare necessities of life, he could neglect
both promises and threats and be played upon by no one. He was securely
intrenched within himself, an unfurnished habitation, but the citadel of
a king. The Cyrenaic, on the other hand, did not seek to make impervious
the surface of contact with nature and society, but sought to heighten
its sensibility, that it might become a medium of pleasurable feeling.
For the inspiration with which it may be pursued this ideal has nowhere
been more eloquently set forth than in the pages of Walter Pater, who
styles himself "the new Cyrenaic."

"Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the
end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a
variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is
to be seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass
most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the
fo