The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

thoroughly
LOGIC: THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 83
understood that to criticize reason itself
is impossible ; for that would imply possession of a
reason above reason,
and another reason above that,
and so on ad infinitum?- whereas absolute distrust of
reason is both intellectual and volitional imbecility.
Naturally, their doctrine of sense-perception was, in
many ways, immature ;
but their clear recognition of
the fact that reality is
given in perception, and their
distinction between hasty inference and calm un
prejudiced assent, assent, too, that is not forced
upon the mind by compulsion, but is voluntarily
rendered, are points of the greatest importance for
theory of 2
knowledge, significant for all time.
1
See Epictetus, Diss. \. 17.
2 In a wider sense, it is interesting to compare this doctrine of
assent with Cardinal Newman s position in The Grammar of
Assent, and with Professor James s Will to Believe.