ὄρεξις, ἔκκλισις, ὁρμή, ἀφορμή.—Pursuit, avoidance, desire, aversion. According to Simplicius (Comment. Ench. i.), ὄρεξις and ἔκκλισις were used by the Stoics to express the counterparts in outward action of the mental affections, ὁρμὴ and ἀφορμή, and were regarded as consequent upon the latter.
προαίρεσις.—The Will; but as used in Epictetus, this word implies much more than the mere faculty of volition. Literally, it means a choosing of one thing before another; in Epictetus, the power of deliberately resolving or purposing, the exercise of the reflective faculty being implied. It is hardly to be distinguished from τὸ ἡγεμονικόν, q. v.
προλήψεις.—“Natural Conceptions.” See Preface, xxviii., xxix. The “primary truths” of Lord Herbert of Cherbury.
Συγκατατίθεσθαι.—To assent to or acquiesce in anything, to ratify by the judgment the emotions produced by external things or events, such as the sense of dread, or pleasure, or reprobation, which they arouse in us. To be on one’s guard against the hasty yielding of this assent is one of Epictetus’s main injunctions to the aspirant in philosophy.
Ταράσσεσθαι.—To be troubled; ἀ-ταραξία, tranquillity. Ταράσσειν is primarily to stir up, confuse, throw into disorder.
φαντασία.—An appearance; with the Stoics, any mental impression as received by the perceptive faculty before the Reason has pronounced upon it, a bare perception.
INDEX OF REFERENCES.
[The references in the right-hand column are to the books, chapters, and verses of the Dissertations, to the chapters of the Encheiridion, and to the Fragments, in Schweighäuser’s edition of Epictetus.]