Note 20 — Chapter VI · THE STUDY OF NATURE. FUNDAMENTAL POSITIONS.

(3) Consequences of the Stoic materialism. Herefrom it would appear to follow that only individual perceptions are true, and that all general conceptions without exception must be false. If each notion (λεκτὸν) is incorporeal, and consequently unreal,20 will not absence of reality in a much higher degree belong to the notion of what is general? (a) Individual perceptions alone true; yet a higher truth assigned to general conceptions. Individual notions refer directly to perceptions, i.e. to things incorporeal; nevertheless they indirectly refer to the things perceived, i.e. to what is material. But general notions do not even indirectly refer to anything corporeal; they are pure fabrications of the mind, which have nothing real as their object. This the Stoics explicitly maintained.21 It was therefore a gross inconsistency to attribute notwithstanding to these general conceptions, to which no real objects correspond, a higher truth and certainty than belongs to the perceptions of individual objects, but an inconsistency which the Stoic system made not the slightest attempt to overcome.