NOTES 311 



perceive resemblances rather than differences. Analogies 

 are readily observed and, in default of knowledge of 

 the facts involved, are mistaken for identical sequences 

 of cause and effect Throughout the interpretations of 

 natural phenomena given by the philosophers of antiquity, 

 it is remarkable to what a large extent the meaning of 

 one appearance is explained by comparing it with another 

 to which in reality it may bear no resemblance. Seneca s 

 volume abounds in examples of this use of analogy. 



The authority of great names exercised a wonderful 

 fascination on the minds of the early investigators of 

 nature. Generation after generation of writers were led 

 to accept with little or no modification the dicta of 

 eminent philosophers who had preceded them. An ob 

 server might sometimes recognise the erroneousness of the 

 opinion of a predecessor, and yet lack the means of 

 detecting the falsity of his own, which nevertheless he 

 propounded with full assurance of its truth. In such 

 circumstances criticism had no secure foundation, while 

 credulity, rampant in the world outside, could hardly fail 

 to show itself in philosophic circles. Even the most 

 cautious and truth-seeking inquirer might easily and almost 

 inevitably be led to accept statements which did not seem 

 to him unreasonable, and which no previous experience of 

 his own or others warranted him to disbelieve or even to 

 suspect. 



It behoves us, therefore, to be on our guard lest, from 

 our much higher standard of knowledge, we may be 

 tempted to look with amused contempt on the puerile 

 conceptions of nature to be met with in the writings of 

 the ancients the grave assertion of absurdities as actual 

 facts, the inept analogies, the confident explanations which 

 are no explanations at all, and the complete absence of 

 any attempt to test by examination or experiment the 

 validity of statements which with but little trouble could 

 have been disproved. 



These evidences of the exceedingly imperfect knowledge 

 of his time are fully illustrated in Seneca s chapters. He 

 quotes some two dozen of previous writers who had dealt 



