Note 159 — Chapter XII · THE LAW FOR HUMANITY.

‘Heracles was the model whom [Antisthenes] and the other Cynics held up for imitation, the patron saint, so to speak, of the school. Antisthenes wrote a dialogue entitled “Heracles” and, with this for guidance, his followers delighted to tell again the story of the hero’s laborious and militant life, identifying, by ingenious allegories, the foul monsters which he vanquished with the vices and lusts that beset the souls of men’ Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, ii p. 151; ‘the more generous Cynics aver that the great Heracles also, as he became the author of other blessings, so also left to mankind the chief pattern of this (Cynic) life’ Julian, Or. vi p. 187, 3 (Mayor on Juv. Sat. x 361). So also in Buddhism: ‘besides the ideal King, the personification of Power and Justice, another ideal has played an important part in the formation of early Buddhist ideas regarding their master. It was the ideal of a perfectly Wise Man, the personification of Wisdom, the Buddha’ Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, p. 141.