Asceticism appears most frequently as a subordinate motive in some general condemnation of the world on religious grounds, and must receive further consideration in that connection. Its proper meaning as a purely prudential formalism is best exhibited in the Greek Cynics. These philosophers were moved to mortify the flesh, and to deny their social interests, by extreme caution. They discovered that the safest method of adjustment was simplification. If one permits one's self no desires, one need not suffer {93} from their conflict, nor need one treat with the desires of others. Now this would be a very perfect solution of the problem of adjustment, if only there were something left to adjust. If a Cynic can attain to a state of renunciation in which he wants nothing, he will be sure of having what he wants; only, unfortunately, it will be nothing. Epictetus has thus represented the Cynic's boast: Look at me, who am without a city, without a house, without possessions, without a slave; I sleep on the ground; I have no wife, no children, no praetorium, but only the earth and heavens, and one poor cloak. And what do I want? am I not without sorrow? Am I not without fear? Am I not free? Now it is clear that the sum of the Cynics' attainments is not large. It consists, indeed, almost wholly in a certain hardened complacency, and a freedom to make faces at the world. To the onlooker, whose comment Epictetus also records, their aspect is mean: No: but their characteristic is the little wallet, and staff, and great jaws; the devouring of all that you give them, or storing it up, or the abusing unseasonably all whom they meet, or displaying their shoulder as a fine thing.[10] In other words, since the Cynic continues to live after having rejected the proper instruments and forms of life, he must make a living out of the charitable curiosity excited by his very unfitness. {94} And asceticism of this prudential type tends always to be both empty and monstrous; empty because it denies life, and monstrous because life is not really denied, but only perverted and awkwardly obstructed. There is a materialistic evil corresponding to the prudential organization of life which is known as meanness, vulgarity, or _sordidness_. It denotes a failure to recognize anything better than the fulfilment of the simple interests in their severalty. Although guarded and adjusted these still determine the general tone of life. The controlling motive, the standard of attainment, is never anything higher than the elementary desire with its attendant satisfaction. In its negative aspect this is termed _aimlessness_, and is identical with the Christian vice of idleness, so graphically described by Jeremy Taylor: