¹ Note that, at least in the case of indifference, I assign to Socrates a stronger thesis than he actually enunciates: he speaks of knowledge; in my version, judgment is enough.

² Descartes, it is true, held that deceit bespoke weakness; but that view is anomalous even in the seventeenth century, a century—incidentally—much given to reflection upon that subject.

³ I am putting what follows into a footnote because it is (a) an aside (b) a point whose proper making would require a defence which I am not about to provide. Among Anglo-Saxon philosophers, it is customary to regard Wittgenstein as the mighty anti-Cartesian, perhaps even the final dragon-slayer. Well, perhaps. Yet there can have been few men whose lives, thoughts and characters have been so remarkably parallel. Let me mention just one conjunction, which is relevant to our topic. We saw that in the months before his death Wittgenstein was concerned about what God might say to him. A more laically minded Descartes worries about his fellow men. In 1646, he writes to Chanut that he has now taken this verse of Seneca's as his motto (AT IV, 537): Iili mors gravis incubat, qui notus nimis omnibus, ignotus moritur sibi (‘A harsh death awaits that man who dies only too well known to everyone and unknown to himself’). Neither man has the tranquil assurance of a Hume—the philosopher, perhaps, who has had the least feel for counterprivacy.