Cynics, a sect of Greek philosophers, disciples of Antisthenes, who was a disciple of Socrates, but carried away with him only part of Socrates' teaching and enforced that as if it were the whole, dropped all regard for humanity and the universal reason, and taught that “virtue lay wholly in the avoidance of evil, and those desires and greeds that bind us to enjoyments,” so that his disciples were called the “Capuchins of the Old World.” These in time went further than their master, and conceived a contempt for everything that was not self-derived; they derived their name from the gymnasium in Athens, where their master taught.
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Cynewulf * Cyprian, St.