interests. With what evidence then am I satisfied? With that which belongs to the matter in hand.[1] How indeed perception is effected, whether through the whole body or any part, perhaps I cannot explain: for both opinions perplex me. But that you and I are not the same, I know with perfect certainty. How do you know it? When I intend to swallow any thing, I never carry it to your mouth, but to my own. When I intend to take bread, I never lay hold of a broom, but I always go to the bread as to a mark.[2] And you yourselves (the Pyrrhonists), who take away the evidence of the senses, do you act otherwise? Who among you, when he intended to enter a bath, ever went into a mill?
What then? Ought we not. with all our power to hold to this also, the maintaining of general opinion,[3] and fortifying ourselves against the arguments which are directed against it? Who denies that we ought to do this? Well, he should do it who is able, who has leisure for it; but as to him who trembles and is perturbed and is inwardly broken in heart (spirit), he must employ his time better on something else.
- ↑ "The chief question which was debated between the Pyrrhonists and the Academics on one side, and the Stoics on the other, was this, whether there is a criterion of truth; and in the first place, the question is about the evidence of the senses, or the certainty of truth in those things which are perceived by the senses."—Schweighaeuser.
The strength of the Stoic system was that "it furnishes a groundwork of common sense, and the universal belief of mankind, on which to found sufficient certitude for the requirements of life: on the other hand, the real question of knowledge, in the philosophical sense of the word, was abandoned." Levin's Six Lectures, p. 70. - ↑ ὡς πρὸς σκοπόν, Schweighaeuser's emendation in place of ὡς προκόπτων.
- ↑ For the word συνήθειαν, which occurs in s. 20, Schweighaeuser suggests ἀλήθειαν here, and translates it by "veritas." See his notes on this chapter, s. 15 and s. 20.
