Yet it must not be supposed now that the ancients were _without thoughts_, just as the most spiritual man is not to be conceived of as if he could be without life. Rather, they had their thoughts about everything, about the world, man, the gods, etc., and showed themselves keenly active in bringing all this to their consciousness. But they did not know _thought_, even though they thought of all sorts of things and "worried themselves with their thoughts." Compare with their position the Christian saying, "My thoughts are not your thoughts; as the heaven is higher than the earth, so are my thoughts higher than your thoughts," and remember what was said above about our child-thoughts.
What is antiquity seeking, then? The true _enjoyment of life_! You will find that at bottom it is all the same as "the true life."
The Greek poet Simonides sings: "Health is the noblest good for mortal man, the next to this is beauty, the third riches acquired without guile, the fourth the enjoyment of social pleasures in the company of young friends." These are all _good things of life_, pleasures of life. What else was Diogenes of Sinope seeking for than the true enjoyment of life, which he discovered in having the least possible wants? What else Aristippus, who found it in a cheery temper under all circumstances? They are seeking for cheery, unclouded _life-courage_, for _cheeriness_; they are seeking to "be of good _cheer_."
The Stoics want to realize the _wise man_, the man with _practical philosophy_, the man who _knows how to live_,--a wise life, therefore; they find him in contempt for the world, in a life without development, without spreading out, without friendly relations with the world, _i. e._ in the _isolated life_, in life as life, not in life with others; only the Stoic _lives_, all else is dead for him. The Epicureans, on the contrary, demand a moving life.
The ancients, as they want to be of good cheer, desire _good living_ (the Jews especially a long life, blessed with children and goods), _eudaemonia_, well-being in the most various forms. Democritus, _e. g._, praises as such the calm of the soul in which one "_lives_ smoothly, without fear and without excitement."
So what he thinks is that with this he gets on best, provides for himself the best lot, and gets through the world best. But as he cannot get rid of the world,--and in fact cannot for the very reason that his whole activity is taken up in the effort to get rid of it, that is, in _repelling the world_ (for which it is yet necessary that what can be and is repelled should remain existing, otherwise there would no longer be anything to repel),--he reaches at most an extreme degree of liberation, and is distinguishable only in degree from the less liberated. If he even got as far as the deadening of the earthly sense, which at last admits only the monotonous whisper of the word "Brahm," he nevertheless would not be essentially distinguishable from the _sensual_ man.