The breach with the state-religion which was latent in Socrates was displayed without disguise by the Cynics. Antisthenes, following in the track of the ardent Xenophanes, declared that the popular gods were many, but the god of nature was one[81]; he denounced the use of images[82]; and he and his followers naturally acquired the reproach of atheism[83]. Equally offensive to the Athenians was their cosmopolitanism[84], which treated the pride of Hellenic birth as vain, and poured contempt on the glorious victories of Marathon and Salamis. Nor did the Cynics consider the civilization of their times as merely indifferent; they treated it as the source of all social evils, and looked for a remedy in the return to a ‘natural’ life, to the supposed simplicity and virtue of the savage unspoilt by education. Thus they formulated a doctrine which especially appealed to those who felt themselves simple and oppressed, and which has been well described as ‘the philosophy of the proletariate of the Greek world[85].’ [Sidenote: Cynic intuitionism.] =52.= The destructive criticism of the Cynics did not stop with its attack upon Greek institutions; it assailed the citadel of reason itself. Socrates had renounced physics; the Cynics considered that dialectic was equally unnecessary[86]. For the doctrine of general concepts and the exercise of classification they saw no use; they were strict Nominalists; horses they could see, but not ‘horsiness.’ In their ethics they held to the chief doctrines of Socrates, that ‘virtue is knowledge,’ ‘virtue can be taught’ and ‘no one willingly sins’; and they laid special stress on the ‘sufficiency’ (αὐτάρκεια) of virtue, which to produce happiness needs (according to them) nothing in addition to itself except a Socratic strength of character (Σωκρατικὴ ἰσχύς)[87]. But in reality they identified virtue with this will-power, and entirely dispensed with knowledge; virtue was to them a matter of instinct, not of scientific investigation. They appear therefore as the real founders of that ethical school which bases knowledge of the good on intuition, and which is at the present time, under ever-varying titles, the most influential of all. In practice, the virtue which specially appealed to the Cynics was that of ‘liberty,’ the claim of each man at every moment to do and say that which seems to him right, without regard to the will of sovereigns, the conventions of society, or the feelings of his neighbour; the claim made at all times by the governed against their rulers, whether these are just or unjust, reckless or farseeing. [Sidenote: Limits of Cynism.]