The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

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more to
LOGIC: THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 75
the form or 1
wording
matter or substance.
of it than to the actual
True, the phrase is an ambiguous
one, and is of doubtful interpretation. There is, first,
"
the difficulty of correctly rendering the term appre
hending" (K.a.raXt]7rrLKrj).
Are we to take it as active,
or as passive, or as both ? And what is it that the
mind apprehends ? Is it the impression or representa
tion ;
or is it the object, the reality ? Some view it one
way, others another. 1 But, supposing these points
settled, there next comes the difficulty of the term
representation" (^avrao-ta). If this be regarded as
designating an intervening "idea" or tertium quid
between the percipient and the object perceived, then
all the objections that the Scottish philosophers, headed
by Thomas Reid, and nobly aided by
Sir William
Hamilton, have brought against representationism or
"the ideal system would apply here. In particular,
it may be urged that if we know only the representation
tor intervening idea and yet maintain, as Zeno did, that
it "comes from the object and agrees with it,"
still
more, if we assert that it "resembles" the object, as
the impression stamped on wax resembles the figure
on the seal, we must know both things. If we are
ignorant of either, then the assertion that the one
comes from and "agrees
with" or "resembles" the
other is a mere assumption, a begging of the question. 2
Yea more, if we lay stress upon the point that the
perceiving mind, as well as the object perceived, was
1
Zeller takes one view here, Hirzel another, Ueberweg another,
and Stein another.
2
Compare Case s criticism of selected representational theories,
mutatis mutandis, in his -Physical Realism-, also, S. Bailey s Letters
on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, ist and 2nd scries.