light in the moral darkness. Hegesias, a pessimist,
considered that positive enjoyment is impossible of attainment. In
practice the sole end of life which can be realized is the avoidance
of pain.

The Megarics.

Euclid of Megara was the founder of this school. His principle was a
combination of Socraticism with Eleaticism. Virtue is knowledge, but
knowledge of what? It is here that the Eleatic influence became
visible. With Parmenides, the Megarics believed in the One Absolute
Being. All multiplicity, all motion, are illusory. {163} the world of
sense has in it no true reality. Only Being is. If virtue is
knowledge, therefore, it can only be the knowledge of this Being. If
the essential concept of Socrates was the Good and the essential
concept of Parmenides Being, Euclid now combined the two. The Good is
identified with Being. Being, the One, God, the Good, divinity, are
merely different names for one and the same thing. Becoming, the many,
Evil, are the names of its opposite, not-being, Multiplicity is thus
identified with evil, and both are declared illusory. Evil has no real
existence. The Good alone truly is. The various virtues, as
benevolence, temperance, prudence, are merely different names for the
one virtue, knowledge of Being.

Zeno, the Eleatic, had shown that multiplicity and motion are not only
unreal but even impossible, since they are self-contradictory. The
Megarics appropriated this idea, together with the dialectic of Zeno,
and concluded that since not-being is impossible, Being includes all
possibility. Whatever is possible is also actual. There is no such
thing as a possible something, which yet does not exist.

As the Cynics found virtue in renunciation and negative independence,
the Cyrenaics in the hedonistic pursuit of pleasure, so the Megarics
find it in the life of philosophic contemplation, the knowledge of
Being.

{164}

CHAPTER XII

PLATO

None of the predecessors of Plato had constructed a system of
philosophy. What they had produced, and in great abundance, were
isolated philosophical ideas, theories, hints, and suggestions. Plato
was the first person in the history of the world to produce a great
all-embracing system of philosophy, which has its ramifications in all
departments of thought and reality. In doing this, Plato laid all
previous thought under contribution. He gathered the entire harvest of
Greek philosophy. All that was best in the Pythagoreans, the Eleat