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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

Reading language

Book I Chapter 50

21.1 · Epicurus on perception and belief

Epicurus holds that every perception and every impression is true, but that some beliefs are true and others false.¹⁹³²

21.2 · A difficult explanatory addition

And perception is made false in one way, in relation to objects of thought, whereas impression [is understood] in two ways; for there is an impression both of perceptible things and of objects of thought.¹⁹³³

22 · The fit between object and passage

Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Epicurus, and Heraclides hold that the particular senses perceive their appropriate objects through the commensurability of the passages, each perceptible object fitting its corresponding sense.¹⁹³⁴

23 · The faculties of the sense organs

The Peripatetics hold that this occurs through the faculties of the sense organs.¹⁹³⁵

24.1 · Nature and convention

Others hold that perceptible things exist by nature; Leucippus, Democritus, and Diogenes that they exist by convention, that is, through our own opinion and affection.¹⁹³⁶

24.2 · Atoms, void, and compounds

Nothing is true or apprehensible except the primary elements, atoms and void. For these alone exist by nature, while the things composed of them, differing from one another in position, arrangement, and shape, are incidental.¹⁹³⁷

25 · Appetite and deficiency

⟨Aëtius.⟩

Parmenides and Empedocles hold that appetite arises from a lack of nourishment.¹⁹³⁸

26 · Mixture and predominance

⟨Aëtius.⟩

Those who posit atoms, those who posit things with like parts, and those who posit partless things and minima hold that all perceptible things are mixed in all things and none is unmixed. Each is called this or that according to what predominates and according to its abundance of radiance.¹⁹³⁹

27 · Senses and elements

Pythagoras and Plato hold that each perceptible thing is pure, proceeding from its respective element. The ethereal is naturally suited to sight, the pneumatic to hearing, the fiery to smell, the moist to taste, and the earthy to touch.¹⁹⁴⁰

28 · Pleasures and pains as perceptible

Epicurus counts ⟨the⟩ pleasures, and pains as well, among perceptible things.¹⁹⁴¹

29 · Pleasures and pains as objects of thought

The Peripatetics count them among objects of thought; for the same things do not appear pleasant and painful to everyone, as they do white and black.¹⁹⁴²

30 · Pleasure in general and in particular

Chrysippus holds that the pleasant in general is an object of thought, but the particular pleasant thing that impinges upon us is perceptible.¹⁹⁴³

31 · Pleasure through likeness and replenishment

⟨Aëtius.⟩

Empedocles holds that pleasures arise with like things [of like things] and, where something is deficient, in relation to replenishment, so that what is deficient has an appetite for what is like it. Pains arise with opposites; for things differing in composition and in the blending of their elements are alien to one another.¹⁹⁴⁴

32 · Perception accompanied by pain

Anaxagoras holds that every perception is accompanied by pain.¹⁹⁴⁵

33 · Pleasure or pain added afterward

Others hold that either pleasure or pain supervenes and is not inherent from the outset.¹⁹⁴⁶

34 · Recognizing the wise person

The Stoics hold that the wise person can be apprehended by perception, inferentially from appearance; the Academics that the wise person is known by reason; Epicurus that the wise person is known only to a wise person.¹⁹⁴⁷

35 · Perception in dead bodies

Democritus holds that dead bodies perceive.¹⁹⁴⁸

36.1 · Pleasure and pain joined together

From Plato’s Phaedo.

“How strange, gentlemen,” he said, “this thing that people call pleasant seems to be! How remarkably it is related to what is thought to be its opposite, the painful: the two refuse to visit a person together, yet if someone pursues and obtains one, he is almost always compelled to obtain the other as well, as though they were two creatures attached to a single head.”¹⁹⁴⁹

36.2 · An imagined fable of Aesop

“And I think,” he said, “that if Aesop had thought of them, he would have composed a fable: the god wanted to reconcile them in their quarrel, but, unable to do so, fastened their heads together; and for this reason, whenever one visits someone, the other follows afterward.”¹⁹⁵⁰

36.3 · Relief after the fetter

“That seems to be what has happened to me too: because the fetter caused pain in my leg, pleasure now seems to have arrived in its wake.”¹⁹⁵¹

37.1 · Appearance and perception

From Plato’s Theaetetus.

“Appearance and perception, then, are the same in the case of hot things and all such things; for as each person perceives them, so they seem likely to be for that person. . . . .”¹⁹⁵²

1932.Doxai, beliefs or opinions, form the fallible category in this report. The words every perception and every impression are explicit and are both retained. The next sentence creates a difficulty for this claim; its textual status is discussed in the following note.

1933.The sense and attachment of this sentence are uncertain. The apparatus records Usener’s view that it is a gloss belonging to the preceding Stoic report. Wachsmuth prints it here, rejecting only noeîtai, is understood; those brackets are preserved. The verb after whereas remains elliptical when the rejected words are removed. The English is provisional and does not conceal the tension with the preceding assertion.

1934.Poroi are pores or passages, and symmetriai are correspondences of measure or proportion. The mechanism is explained through a fit between the object and the receptive passage. The report groups six names together without giving each thinker a separate version of this account.

1935.This occurs supplies the activity stated in excerpt 22, the particular senses’ perception of their appropriate objects. The brief contrast shifts the explanation from proportional passages to the capacities belonging to the organs themselves.

1936.Nomōi is convention, here immediately explained through our opinion and what we undergo. The English retains this explanatory gloss rather than treating convention solely as an agreed social rule. Perceptible things is the printed expression, though the contrast concerns the status of what appears to our senses.

1937.The claim continues the account attributed to the three named thinkers in excerpt 24.1. Position, arrangement, and shape are distinct terms in the source and remain distinct here. Symbebēkota is rendered incidental, retaining the contrast with what exists by nature rather than supplying an unprinted account of compounds as unreal.

1938.The editor supplies Aëtius IV.9.14, Diels p. 399. Orexis is appetite or desire directed toward something; here the lack of nourishment specifies its setting. No missing text is marked after this brief sentence, although an earlier editor had proposed a gap there.

1939.The supplied attribution covers excerpts 26-30: Aëtius IV.9.9-13, Diels p. 397 and following. Posit supplies the verb understood with the opening groups, as the apparatus explains. Homoiomerē means things with like parts. The final polyaugeia literally suggests abundant radiance or brightness; its precise role here is unclear, and the translation is provisional.

1940.This report contrasts pure elemental sources with the mixtures of excerpt 26. Pneumatic means pertaining to breath or pneuma. All five printed correspondences are retained, including the ethereal with sight and the fiery with smell; they have not been exchanged to fit another elemental scheme.

1941.The supplied article is marked. The brief report classifies pleasure and pain by the way they are apprehended. The following two excerpts distinguish objects of thought from particular sensible experiences.

1942.Them refers to pleasures and pains. The argument contrasts variability in what gives pleasure or pain with the assumed agreement about white and black. That assumption belongs to this short report and should not be imposed upon the later Plato passage examining variation in appearances.

1943.The printed attribution is Chrysippus; the apparatus records a different name in the manuscript. Genikon and eidikon distinguish the general from the specific or particular. Prospipton stresses the immediate occurrence or impact of the particular experience.

1944.The supplied attribution covers excerpts 31-35: Aëtius IV.9.15-20, Diels p. 398 and following, as printed. The rejected tōn homoiōn, of like things, remains bracketed. The opening syntax is compressed and provisionally translated. Synkrisis is composition or combination; krasis is blending. The account links affinity with pleasure and unlike composition with pain.

1945.Ponos can denote pain, distress, or exertion. Pain fits the contrast with pleasure in the adjoining reports. The sentence asserts accompaniment, not that pain and perception are identical.

1946.Epigignesthai means to come upon or be added afterward; sympephykenai suggests having grown together by nature. The printed correction distinguishes an added accompaniment from an inseparable original feature. The unnamed others contrast with Anaxagoras in excerpt 32.

1947.Tekmēriōdōs indicates recognition by evidence or signs, qualifying the Stoic appeal to visible appearance. The final known is understood from the Academic clause, as the editor explains; no gap or new Greek verb is inserted. The three claims concern recognition of wisdom, not merely recognition of a person’s bodily identity.

1948.The terse report gives neither explanation nor qualification. The Greek says that dead bodies perceive; it does not specify which senses or how long such perception would persist. This closes the sequence of short reports before the extended quotations from Plato.

1949.The edition identifies Phaedo 60b-c. The speaker’s bodily experience is disclosed at the end of the excerpt. The Greek dual forms make pleasure and pain a pair; the imagined creatures and joined head personify their close succession, despite their refusal to be present together.

1950.This is an imagined fable that Aesop might have composed, not an assertion that he actually wrote one. The conditional form is preserved. The joining of heads supplies a playful explanation for the succession of pleasure and pain described in the preceding paragraph.

1951.The personal example explains the preceding reflection: release from the painful fetter brings a pleasant bodily sensation. The source prints to algein, the experiencing of pain, rather than the alternative adjective recorded in the apparatus. The English retains the sequence rather than treating pleasure and pain as simultaneous.

1952.The edition gives Theaetetus 152c and 153d-154b: the five printed points mark the omission between the two selections. Phantasia is rendered appearance here because the argument concerns how things appear to each perceiver. The passage explores a position in dialogue; it should not simply be labeled Plato’s final conclusion.