Chapter VI.
[1.] Chap. VI. i. is a passage from the lost Fifth Book of the Discourses, preserved for us in a rather obscure Latin translation by Aulus Gellius. During a storm at sea, a certain Stoic on board was observed by him to look pale and anxious, though not indeed showing the signs of panic exhibited by the other passengers. Questioned afterwards by Gellius on this apparent feebleness in his professed faith, the Stoic produced the Fifth Book of Epictetus, and read this passage.
[2.] The third Earl of Shaftesbury, an enthusiastic student of Epictetus, had this dish of water and ray of light engraved, and placed, with the inscription, πάντα ὑπόληψις—All is Opinion—as an emblem at the front of his Characteristics. The passage, though interesting, is obscure. At one time the “appearances,” φαντασίαι, are compared to the ray of light; at another, the doctrines (literally “arts,” i. e., arts of life taught by philosophy) and virtues. Probably the explanation is to be found in the view of the Stoics that at birth the human soul is a tabula rasa, or blank sheet; all our knowledge coming from without; that is, from the “appearances” which surround us. Moral and philosophic convictions are thus, like all other mental states, the result of external impressions.
Chapter VII.
[1.] The school of Plato was continued at Athens under the title of the Academy. In its later days it produced little except logical puzzles.
[2.] “Friend, if indeed, escaping from this war, we were destined thereafter to an ageless and deathless life, then neither would I fight in the van nor set thee in the press of glorious battle. But now, since death in a thousand kinds stands everywhere against us, which no man shall fly from nor elude, we go; either we shall give glory to another, or he to us.”—Sarpedon’s speech, Iliad, xii. 322-8.
[3.] General consent.—The well-known philosophic doctrine, that what all men unite in believing must be true, which has so often been made the basis of arguments against Skepticism in various forms.