Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes, Robert Gregg Bury (Translator), 3.24.188

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[188] Again, the Stoics declare that goods of the soul are certain arts, namely the virtues. And an art, they say, is ‟a system composed of co-exercised apprehensions,”¹ and the perceptions arise in the ruling principle. But how there takes place in the ruling principle, which according to them is breath,² a deposit of perceptions, and such an aggregation of them as to produce art, it is impossible to conceive, when each succeeding impression obliterates the previous one, seeing that breath is fluid and it is said to move as a whole at each impression.

Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes. Sextus Empiricus. Robert Gregg Bury (Translator). London. 1933.

Funding provided by Tisch Library, Tufts University.

Current edition First1KGreek

Outlines of Pyrrhonism (English) (Sextus Empiricus, Vol. 1. Bury, Robert Gregg, translator. London: William Heinemann Ltd.; New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1933.)

Editions (1)

Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes First1KGreek (Sextus Empiricus. Sexti Empiricii Opera, Volume 1. Mutschmann, Hermann, editor. Leipzig: Teubner, 1912.) — 3.24.188 focus

[188] Πάλιν οἱ Στωικοὶ (Stoic. fr. II 96 Arn.) περὶ ψυχὴν ἀγαθά φασιν εἶναι τέχνας τινὰς, τὰς ἀρετάς· τέχνην δὲ εἶναί φασι (Stoic. fr. I 73 Arn.) σύστημα ἐκ καταλήψεων συγγεγυμνασμένων , τὰς δὲ καταλήψεις γίγνεσθαι περὶ τὸ ἡγεμονικόν. πῶς οὖν ἐν τῷ ¹ ἡγεμονικῷ, πνεύματι κατ’ αὐτοὺς ὑπάρχοντι,
ἐναπόθεσις γίνεται καταλήψεων καὶ ἀθροισμὸς τοσούτων ὧς γενέσθαι τέχνην , οὐχ οἷόν τε ἐννοῆσαι, τῆς ἐπιγινομένης τυπώσεως ἀεὶ τὴν πρὸ αὐτῆς ἀπαλειφούσης, ἐπεὶ χυτόν τέ ἐστι τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ ἐξ ὅλου κινεῖσθαι λέγεται
καθ’ ἑκάστην τύπωσιν.

Notes on the current edition

Outlines of Pyrrhonism

1. Cf. Cic. Acad. iv. 7. 22 ‟ars . . . ex multis animi perceptionibus constat.” The virtues, said the Stoics, are ‟arts” because they are forms of knowledge and consist in the use or ‟exercise” of a large number of perceptions or ‟apprehensions” related to one another in a systematic way. These ‟apprehensions” are ‟deposited” in the mind which is conceived as an elastic fluid pneuma of which the whole moves when any part of it is moved. Cf. §§ 241, 251 infra.

2. Cf. i. 128, ii. 70.

Sextus Empiricus Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes 3.24.188

Robert Gregg Bury (Translator)

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