THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

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walks upright during the day; for he does not settle in the vicinity of conditions over which he has no power.
Aristippus and the exemplary scroungers
But parallel to this ran the lure of the merry life which goes short of nothing. The original golden age was then conceived not as that of frugal equality but as that of lavish
equality. Instead of a rugged bohemia, one of pleasure and scrounging here fills a proper existence. It taught that pleasure is the human share, enjoyment for its own
sake, independently of stilling our needs, that is what distinguishes man from the animals. The power of enjoyment, it was affirmed here, elevates man above dogs,
above animals, above the satisfied ascetic (Marx would by no means have denied this). Human wishes unlike animal ones ultimately aim at orgy, and they are
completely natural in this respect. Thus Aristippus, the head of the Hedonists, taught that not absence of needs but the unlimited, shrewd capacity for enjoyment was the
natural human condition; and that it should be cultivated. A Hedonist breed thus arose, in contrast to the Cynic one, and its state is dreamed as one of mutual or
patronizing egoists. The best of all communities is that which is least of a hindrance to the highest possible pleasure of its citizens. The Hedonist group demands no
individual sacrifice, recognizes neither family nor fatherland, least of all prohibitions which hamper an individual's desire for happiness or even simply determine it from
the start. This links Cynics and Hedonists, the freethinkers of absence of needs and of pleasure; they are both anarchic. Their own lives are to be the state that is
organized, social life is to be unobtrusive like strolling in the marketplace. Aristippus delighted in his social independence which allowed him to wear the beggar's cloak
and fine clothes with equal propriety. He delighted, as Xenophon relates, in the political independence of his roving life, in his ubi bene, ibi patria, and he set it up as an
example. Dependence was allowed at most within friendship, a later Hedonist by the name of Annikeris even taught that a city of friends should be established, not
because of its usefulness but because of the self­generating goodwill and the pleasure that results from it. The democratization of this essentially aristocratic image of
enjoyment was furthered by the fact that even the poorer citizen benefited from slavery; on this basis a commune of enjoyment could be generally conceived. But above
all, the Hedonistic image corresponded much more exactly than the Cynic one to the