1. Thales.--2. Pythagoras.--3. Solon.--4. Chilon.--5. Periander.--6. Bias.--7. Cleobulus.--8. Pittacus.--9. Hippias.--10. The Bambycatii.--11. The Gynæcosmi.--12. Anacharsis.--13. Anaxagoras.--14. Heraclitus.--15. Democritus.--16. Socrates.--17. Plato.--18. Antisthenes.--19. Xenocrates.--20. Bion.--21. Demonax.--22. Diogenes.--23. Crates.--24. Aristotle.--25. Mandanis.--26. Zeno.--27. Seneca.--28. Epictetus. I. Thales, an ancient Greek philosopher, being asked by a person that had committed adultery if he might swear, answered, "By no means; for perjury is no less sinful than adultery; and so thou wouldst commit two sins to cover one." Being asked what was the best condition of a government, answered, "That the people be neither rich nor poor:" for he placed external happiness in moderation. He would say, "That the hardest thing in the world was to know a man's self; but the best to avoid those things which we reprove in others;" an excellent and close saying, "That we ought to choose well and then to hold fast. That the felicity of the body consists in health, and that in temperance; and the felicity of the soul in wisdom." He thought "That God was without beginning or end; that he was the searcher of hearts; that he saw the thoughts as well as actions: for being asked of one if he could sin and hide it from God, he answered, 'No: how can I when he who thinks evil cannot?'" II. Pythagoras, a famous and virtuous philosopher of Italy, being asked when men might take the pleasure of their passions, answered, "When they have a mind to be worse." He said the world was like a comedy, and the true philosophers the spectators. He would say, "That luxury led to debauchery, and debauchery to violence, and that to bitter repentance: that he who taketh too much care of his body makes the prison of his soul more insufferable: that those who do reprove us are our best friends; that men ought to preserve their bodies from diseases by temperance, their souls from ignorance by meditation, their will from vice by self-denial, and their country from civil war by justice: that it is better to be loved than feared; that virtue makes bold: but," saith he, "there is nothing so fearful as an evil conscience." He said, "That men should believe in a Divinity, that he _is_, and that he overlooks them, and neglecteth them not; there is no being nor place without God." He told the senators of Croton, being two thousand, praying his advice, "That they received their country as a depositum, or trust from the people; wherefore they should manage it accordingly, since they were to resign their account, with their trust to their children; that the way to do it was to be equal to all citizens, and to excel them in nothing more than justice; that every one of them should so govern his family that he might refer himself to his own house as to a court of judicature, taking great care to preserve