126 //-6 to //-9
Cicero Academica 2.144-5 [11-6]
144 .... First I shall expound those odious theories, in which you
[i.e., Stoics] say that all of those [ordinary people] who stand in the
assembly are exiles, slaves and madmen. Then I shall move on to the
theories which pertain not to the mass of people but to you yourselves
who are present now: Zeno and Antiochus deny that you know anything.
"How so?" you will ask, "for we hold that even an unwise man grasps
many things." 145. But you deny that anyone except the wise man knows
anything. And Zeno used to make this point by using a gesture. When
he held out his hand with open fingers, he would say, "this is what a
presentation is like." Then when he had closed his fingers a bit, he said,
"assent is like this." And when he had compressed it completely and
made a fist, he said that this was grasping (and on the basis of this
comparison he even gave it the name katalepsis [grasp], which had not
previously existed). But when he put his left hand over it and compressed
it tightly and powerfully, he said that knowledge was this sort of thing
and that no one except the wise man possessed it. But they themselves
are not in the habit of saying who is or has been wise.
Porphyry De Anima (in Stobaeus Anthology [11-7]
1.49.25, vol. 1 p. 349.23-27 W-H; SVF 2.74)
The Stoics did not make sense-perception consist in presentation alone,
but made its substance depend on assent; for perception is an assent to
a perceptual presentation, the assent being voluntary.
Sextus M 7.227-236 (SVF 2.56) [11-8]
- Since the Stoic doctrine remains, let us next speak of it. These
men, then, say that the graspable presentation is a criterion of truth. We
shall know this if we first learn what presentation is, according to them,
and what its specific differentiae are. 228. So, according to them, a
presentation is an impression in the soul. And they differed immediately
about this. For Cleanthes took "impression" in terms of depression and
elevation-just like the impression on wax made by seal-rings. 229. But
Chrysippus thought that such a view was absurd. For first, he says, this
will require that when our intellect has presentations at one time of a
triangle and a tetragon, the same body will have to have in itself at the
same time different shapes-triangular and tetragonal together, or even
round; which is absurd. Next, since many presentations exist in us at
the same time the soul will also have many configurations. This is worse