The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

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72 THE STOIC CREED
greatest proof of a thing s being perspicuous
that it
is found to be necessary even for him who denies it
to make use of it at the same time. For instance, if
a man should deny that there is anything universally
true, it is evident that he must make the contrary
negation, that nothing is universally true. Slave !
not even this. For what else is this than to affirm
that if there is
anything universal it is false ?
also bursts forth indignantly against the Academics
who have failed "to cast away or blind their own
senses, though they have tried with all their might
to do it." "What! is there not a miscarriage?" he
exclaims. A man, when he has received from nature
measures and rules for knowing the truth, does not
further strive to add to these and to make up what
is lacking, but, quite the contrary, tries to take away
and to destroy whatever is fitted to give us a knowledge
of the truth
He
(Diss. ii. 20). So Antipater in reply to
Carneades, in Cicero s Academica (ii. 9): "Whoever
asserts that nothing can be known with certainty
must, at any rate, believe that he can with certainty
know this." The Stoics saw with clearness that, on
the assumption of absolute nescience, fixed principles
and consistent action were alike impossible, intellect
and will both became paralyzed, the ban was laid on
thought and on conduct too.
(2) Analysis and Estimate
Now, with regard to this teaching, it may be
remarked :
First, in laying the origin of knowledge in sense-