Antisthenes declared virtue to be the End for men to aim at--and to be sufficient _per se_ for conferring happiness; but he also declared that virtue must be manifested in acts and character, not by words. Neither much discourse nor much learning was required for virtue; nothing else need be postulated except bodily strength like that of Sokrates.[88] He undervalued theory even in regard to Ethics: much more in regard to Nature (Physics) and to Logic: he also despised literary, geometrical, musical teaching, as distracting men's attention from the regulation of their own appreciative sentiment, and the adaptation of their own conduct to it. He maintained strenuously (what several Platonic dialogues call in question) that virtue both could be taught and must be taught: when once learnt, it was permanent, and could not be eradicated. He prescribed the simplest mode of life, the reduction of wants to a minimum, with perfect indifference to enjoyment, wealth, or power. The reward was, exemption from fear, anxiety, disappointments, and wants: together with the pride of approximation to the Gods.[89] Though Antisthenes thus despised both literature and theory, yet he had obtained a rhetorical education, and had even heard the rhetor Gorgias. He composed a large number of dialogues and other treatises, of which only the titles (very multifarious) are preserved to us.[90] One dialogue, entitled Sathon, was a coarse attack on Plato: several treated of Homer and of other poets, whose verses he seems to have allegorised. Some of his dialogues are also declared by Athenæus to contain slanderous abuse of Alkibiades and other leading Athenians. On the other hand, the dialogues are much commended by competent judges; and Theopompus even affirmed that much in the Platonic dialogues had been borrowed from those of Antisthenes, Aristippus, and Bryson.[91] [Footnote 88: Diog. L. vi. 11.] [Footnote 89: Diog. L. vi. 102-104.] [Footnote 90: Diog. L. vi. 1, 15-18. The two remaining fragments--[Greek: Ai)/as, O)/dusseu\s] (Winckelmann, Antisth. Fragm. pp. 38-42)--cannot well be genuine, though Winckelmann seems to think them so.]