Three tasks were left by Socrates to his successors: to determine more exactly the content of the rationally useful; to give the world the most universal general-notion of the good; and to think ethics into a complete world-view. What conclusions are come to by those who concern themselves with the first question, and seek to determine the rationally useful from a corresponding experience of pleasure? As soon as the notion of pleasure is brought into connexion with ethics it shows disturbances, as the magnetic [pg 036] needle does in the neighbourhood of the poles. Immediate pleasure shows itself as incapable in every respect of being reconciled with the demands of ethics, and it is therefore given up. Lasting pleasure is called on to take its place, but this retreat does not suffice. Lasting pleasure, interpreted seriously, can be nothing but pleasure of the mind. Even this position, however, is not tenable. Reflexion upon the ethic which is to produce happiness sees itself compelled at last to give up the positive notion of pleasure in any form. It has to reconcile itself to the negative notion which conceives pleasure as somehow or other a liberation from the need of pleasure. Thus the individualistic, utilitarian ethic, also called Eudæmonism, destroys itself as soon as it ventures to be consistent. This is the paradox which reveals itself in the ethics of antiquity. Instead of coming to maturity in the following generations, the ethically-rational life-ideal put forward by Socrates succumbs to an incurable decline, because the notion of pleasure, which lives in it, denies itself as soon as it makes any attempt to think itself out. Aristippus (_c._ 435-355 B.C.), the founder of the Cyrenaic school, Democritus of Abdera (_c._ 450-360 B.C.), the author of the atomic theory, and Epicurus (341-270 B.C.) seek to retain as much as possible of the positive notion of pleasure. The Cynic school of Antisthenes (born _c._ 440 B.C.), and the Stoicism which originated with Zeno, a native of Kittium in Cyprus (_c._ 336-264 B.C.), keep from the very beginning to the negative notion._(_6_)_ But the final result is the same with both. Epicurus sees himself compelled at last to exalt the [pg 037] absence of desire for pleasure as being itself the purest pleasure, landing thereby on the shore of resignation where the Stoics take their exercise. The fundamental difference between the two great philosophical schools of antiquity does not lie in what they offer to men as ethical. About what the “wise man” does and leaves undone, they both frequently express themselves in the same way. What separates them is the world-view with which their ethic is combined. Epicureanism accepts the atomistic materialism of Democritus, is atheistic, asserts that the soul perishes, and is in every respect irreligious. Stoicism is pantheistic.