The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

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LOGIC: THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 77
and we make carefully planned experiments to test our
perceptive powers, and bring- our scientific knowledge
to bear, so as to correct for the personal equation.
Our methods are far more exact, and our knowledge
of the fallacies of sense-perception far more precise and
fuller, 1 but the principle that underlies this procedure
is precisely that of the Stoics, who, from the time of
Zeno, clearly laid down the nature of false or unfounded
sense-impressions, and, in doing so, implicitly defined
the foolish man as the hasty, the careless, the prejudiced
percipient, or as a man suffering from mental disorder;
while the wise man is he of unclouded mind, calm,
careful, deliberate, unprejudiced.
Impressions equally
affect the wise and the unwise ; but, while the latter
may give an occasional or accidental assent to them,
the former has the characteristic of yielding- a free,
consistent, and unerring assent, and of stamping them
with his approval.
as in a balance the scale
must needs fall down if
weights are placed in it, so
the mind must yield to things perspicuous ;
for just as
no animal can resist
to its nature (the Greeks call it
seeking for what appears suited
otKctoi/),
so it is not
possible to refuse assent to an object that is per
spicuous
(Cicero, Acad. ii. 37). Moreover, as Epictetus
said (Diss.
ii.
20), it is the greatest proof of
a thing- s "that it
being perspicuous,
is found to be
necessary even for him who denies it to make use of
it at the same time." And if even a wise man may
sometimes seem to
be mistaken, the story of Sphaerus
may show us how the Stoic surmounted this difficulty.
It is recorded of Sphaerus, a disciple of Cleanthes, that,
1
See Professor Sully, Illusions.