Granted.
“What follows? Is it day?”
No, for I have already assented to the assumption that it is night.
“Let us assume that you believe that it is night.”
Granted.
“Now believe that it really is night.”
This does not follow from the hypothesis.
So too it is in life. “Let us assume that you are unfortunate.”
Granted.
“Are you then unfortunate?”
Yes.
“What then, are you in misery?”
Yes.
“Now, believe that you are in an evil case.”
I notice how the Stoics had a special fondness for employing hypothetical arguments, and I have found this incredibly useful in my own musings, because a broader view of the many possibilities in turn gives me a deeper appreciation for what must always remain the same. This could be totally different, and that could be completely turned around, but through it all Nature keeps to a steady course.
People of a liberal bent often encourage me to try everything, and people of a conservative bent often warn me to play it safe, so the advantage of mentally mulling over the options can provide me with most of the benefits and few of the risks. I do not, for example, have to become an adulterer to know something about why this wouldn’t be such a good idea.
I can consider the situation as if it were the case, and in the process I learn how my reactions continue to point me back to that same old moral compass. The range of potencies highlights the state of what persists as actual.
I can imagine that it is night, and so I will conjecture that it is not day, and I can imagine that it is day, and so I will conjecture that it is not night. If, however, you ask me to assert that it really is night at high noon, I must stand my ground—there is a clear line between contingency and necessity.
Far from being just an academic exercise, drawing that line has decidedly practical ramifications. By analogy, I can apply the contrast between hypothetical and factual arguments to the distinction between the variability of circumstances and the permanence of principles.
As I read that over, it sounds a bit highfalutin, so I’ll try again. The way things happen to me can, and most certainly will, change, sometimes radically and unexpectedly. My instincts are likely to respond with immediate feelings of fear, anger, or sorrow. Yet through all of that, there is absolutely nothing that forces me to modify my judgments about the true and the good.
Can I accept that this condition could be altered in an instant? Check.
Do I perceive how it may well bring me pain? Gotcha.
Do I now need to surrender my happiness? Hold your horses.
It is indeed possible for something to be taken away. It is indeed possible for impressions to be unpleasant, perhaps intensely so. Nevertheless, I am not required to abandon my thinking and my choices to the whims of fortune. Wherever I can act with sincere virtue, I preserve the source of my own happiness.
Whatever might be the case, the serene mind is under no obligation to call it ruinous—the good and the evil are in the estimation.
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