A Guide to Stoicism 3 ¶13–14 — St. George Stock (modern guide)

St. George Stock (modern guide), A Guide to Stoicism 3 ¶13–14

A notion which corresponds to our word concept was defined as a phantasm of the understanding of a rational animal. For a notion was but a phantasm as it presented itself to a rational mind. In the same way so many shillings and sovereigns are in themselves but shillings and sovereigns, but when used as passage money they become fare. Notions were arrived at partly by nature, partly by teaching and study. The former kind of notions were called preconceptions; the latter went merely by the generic name. Out of the general ideas which nature imparts to us, reason was perfected about the age of fourteen, at the time when the voice--its outward and visible sign--attains its full development, and when the human animal is complete in other respects as being able to reproduce its kind. Thus reason which united us to the gods was not, according to the Stoics, a pre-existent principal, but a gradual development out of sense. It might truly be said that with them the senses were the intellect.