an ancient philosophical sect, so called from Cyrene, the birthplace of Aristippus its founder. Like the Cynic and Megarian schools, it emerged directly from the Socratic philosophy; and while these schools afterwards combined to form the system of Stoicism, the Cyrenaics, after receiving modifications from the hands of Hegesias, Anni- ceris, and Theodorus, was ultimately merged in the kindred philosophy of Epicurus.

With them the summum bonum was pleasure, and that not merely as identical with a general tranquillity of mind, but as composed of a great variety of individual plea- sant sensations. The choice, then, of what is individually pleasurable, and the rejection of what is individually pain- ful, becomes the great practical rule of life and action; and it is the intellectual faculty which strikes the balance and determines the choice. In this way, the Cyrenaic philoso- phy was a one-sided development of the Socratic, being based on the doctrine of that great sage in regard to the connection of reason and intellect with virtue; while the Cynic school confined its view almost exclusively to his rigid discipline.