Readings

There are things which are within our power, and there are things which are beyond our power.Note. The Greek for within our power is eph’ hēmin, up to us. The whole handbook is built on this one sorting, which is stated here rather than argued for. Within our power are opinion, aim, desire, aversion, and, in one word, whatever affairs are our own. Beyond our power are body, property, reputation, office, and, in one word, whatever are not properly our own affairs.Note. Aim, desire and aversion are three Stoic terms of art — hormē, orexis, ekklisis — the impulse towards a thing, the wanting of it, and the turning away from it.

Now the things within our power are by nature free, unrestricted, unhindered; but those beyond our power are weak, dependent, restricted, alien. Remember, then, that if you attribute freedom to things by nature dependent and take what belongs to others for your own, you will be hindered, you will lament, you will be disturbed, you will find fault both with gods and men.Note. Enchiridion is Greek for a handbook, a thing kept in the hand. Epictetus, who had been a slave, wrote nothing himself; his pupil Arrian took down the lectures and then cut them to this.

Accordingly, seeing that our senses sometimes deceive us, I was willing to suppose that there existed nothing really such as they presented to us; and because some men err in reasoning, and fall into paralogisms, even on the simplest matters of geometry, I, convinced that I was as open to error as any other, rejected as false all the reasonings I had hitherto taken for demonstrations; and finally, when I considered that the very same thoughts (presentations) which we experience when awake may also be experienced when we are asleep, while there is at that time not one of them true, I supposed that all the objects (presentations) that had ever entered into my mind when awake, had in them no more truth than the illusions of my dreams.Note. Three grounds for doubt, each wider than the last: the senses, which sometimes deceive; reasoning, which sometimes slips — a paralogism is a mistake in reasoning its maker has not noticed; and dreaming, which counterfeits waking whole.

But immediately upon this I observed that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat;Note. Somewhat is the English of 1850 for something. The claim is only that the thinker must be some thing — not yet what kind of thing, which is the next question the Discourse asks. and as I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am (cogito ergo sum), was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the sceptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search.Note. The Latin in the parenthesis is not Descartes’: the Discourse of 1637 was written in French, je pense, donc je suis. Cogito ergo sum is the wording of the Principles of Philosophy of 1644, and the Meditations of 1641 drop the therefore altogether.

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.Note. The sentence before this one is about Cicero, who had left it on record that he studied his adversary’s case as hard as his own, or harder. Case keeps the courtroom in view: an opinion is on trial, and a trial has two sides. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment, and unless he contents himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side to which he feels most inclination.Note. Suspension of judgment is the old sceptics’ epochē: withholding assent while the arguments are level. Mill makes it the only honest resting place for someone who has heard one side. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. That is not the way to do justice to the arguments, or bring them into real contact with his own mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty.Note. A few pages earlier Mill has said what the alternative is: an opinion not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed is held as a dead dogma, not a living truth. Hearing the other side from someone who holds it is the cure.