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April 8th

THE COST OF ACCEPTING COUNTERFEITS

“When it comes to money, where we feel our clear interest, we have

an entire art where the tester uses many means to discover the

worth... just as we give great attention to judging things that

might steer us badly. But when it comes to our own ruling

principle, we yawn and doze off, accepting any appearance that

flashes by without counting the cost.”

—EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 1.20.8; 11

hen coins were much more rudimentary, people had to spend a lot of
time testing them to confirm the currency they’d just received was
genuine. The Greek word dokimazein means “to assay” or check the quality
of a mineral ore. Merchants were often skilled enough that they could test
coinage by throwing it against a hard surface and listen to the note it rang.
Even today, though, if someone were to hand you a hundred-dollar bill, you
might rub it between your fingers or hold it up to the light, just to confirm it
wasn’t a fake.
All this for an imaginary currency, an invention of society. The point of
this metaphor is to highlight how much effort we put into making sure
money is real, whereas we accept potentially life-changing thoughts or
assumptions without so much as a question. One ironic assumption along
these lines: that having a lot of money makes you wealthy. Or that because
a lot of people believe something, it must be true.
Really, we should be testing these notions as vigilantly as a money
changer. For, as Epictetus reminds us, “the first and greatest task of the
philosopher is to test and separate appearances, and to act on nothing that is
untested.”