(from κύων, a dog) a sect of ancient philosophers, deriving their name either from their snarling habits, or from the Cynosarges, in which Antisthenes, the founder of the school, used to lecture. It is not at all improbable that even the name of the place was derived from the characteristic mood of its occupants. The Cynics form one of the three great branches of the Socratic philosophy, the schools of Aristippus of Cyrene and Euclid of Megara being the other two. Its founder was Antisthenes; its prodigy, Diogenes; while, as secondary expounders of its doctrines, or rather mimic patterns of its discipline, we have Onesicritus, Monimus, and Crates. Perhaps no sect in ancient times was more indebted to the peculiar idiosyncrasy of its originators. Indeed, it originated entirely in their own inverted ambition, and, like all professional ribaldry and scoffing, it quickly changed its rude and caustic pantomime for open indecency and licentiousness. Mistaking the Socratic doctrine of man's superiority to circumstances, the Cynics not only gloried in the contempt of pleasure, but in an utter disregard of social distinctions, and a perfect insensibility to the decencies and charities of life. In this they seem to have imitated the discipline to the neglect of the doctrine of Socrates; and the entire absence of dogmatic principles may fairly entitle us to challenge their claim to the appellation of moral philosophers at all. Regarding themselves as out of the pale of civilized society, they aimed their taunts and sneers at all the minor moralities of life, and in their caricature of what they regarded as factitious they systematically destroyed the external defences of virtue. Their philosophy is of importance principally as furnishing the historical antecedents of Stoicism, which, while supplanting it, was deeply imbued with its misanthropical and unearthly morality. For the characteristic eccentricities of the leading Cynics, see their biographies.