The freedom of non-judgment. One of the terse formulas of the discipline of assent: "DOGMAit is in your power (ἔξεστι) to hold no opinion (μηδὲν ὑπολαμβάνειν)" — and then the TERMsoul will not be "stirred up" (ὀχλεῖσθαι). Between the thing and the disturbance stands the judgment (TERMὑπόληψις); remove the judgment, and you remove the disturbance too. The governing discipline is assent.

Things do not judge for us. The ground: "things themselves have no nature productive (ποιητικὴν) of our judgments." The external does not enter the mind with a ready-made valuation — the valuation is added by us. So the trouble does not come "from" the object; it arises in the act of assent and can be cancelled there. Hence the practice of ἐποχή — the withholding of hasty opinion (cf. the famous Med. 8.49: "add nothing of yourself to what the impression announces").

Parallels. TERMJudgment as the source of disturbance — 06-51; Med. 4.3 ("things do not touch the soul; they stand outside, motionless; the disturbance is only from the inner opinion"); 5.19; 11.11; 12.22; the DOGMAdichotomy of control; the critique of impressions.