 In some ways, the Stoics have an easier time with skepticism abut knowledge than contemporary non-skeptics do. At bottom what the Stoics are committed to is the two-fold view that it is within our power to avoid falling into error and that there is a kind of impression which reveals to us the world as it really is and which is different from those impressions which might not so reveal the world. They are manifestly not committed to defending our ordinary intuitions about the range of knowledge: that most people in fact know most of the things that they and everyone else thinks that they know. Recall our observations about the difference between knowledge considered as a system of assents to cognitive impressions that is secure and unshakeable by reason and mere opinion – which may get matters right and may even involve assent to a cognitive impression, but still falls short of knowledge. In short, the Stoics set the bar for knowledge very high and were perfectly willing to accept that knowing was the exception, not the rule, in human affairs. The only person we can be sure has any knowledge is the Stoic sage and sages are as rare as the phoenix (Alex. Aph., 61N). Everyone else is equally ignorant. This absolute distinction between the wise and the ignorant is a consequence of the Stoic definition of knowledge as the “cognition which is secure and unchangeable by reason” (Arius Didymus, 41H). Either one’s cognition is like this or it is not. By making opinion a kind of ignorance (contrast Plato, Rep V. 474a ff), they do not allow room for an intermediate state between the wise man and all the rest of us.