312 PHYSICAL SCIENCE 



with the same or cognate subjects. It is needless to say 

 that they were Greeks, no place having yet been found 

 in Latin literature for treatises on Science. The author 

 most frequently cited by him is Aristotle, whose Meteoro- 

 logica he had evidently studied with care. He gives 

 frequent quotations from that work, but even where he 

 does not specifically quote, his views generally accord 

 with those of the great philosopher and naturalist. 1 Almost 

 the only quotations from the works of his own countrymen 

 are verses from some of the poets, especially from Virgil 

 and Ovid. It is remarkable that he makes only one 

 quotation from Lucretius, although he would have found 

 in that poet s noble work many passages more apposite 

 to his subject than those which he has taken from the 

 Aeneid, the Georgics, and the Metamorphoses. We may 

 suppose that these works were favourites with him, and 

 that he knew much of them by heart, but that he was less 

 familiar with the De Rermn Natura. 



It is manifest from the present volume that its author, 

 like Lucretius before him, had a lofty conception of the 

 dignity and moral influence of the study of nature. This 

 pursuit seemed to him to raise us above the sordid things 

 of life and to withdraw the mind from the body a 

 dissociation so eminently beneficial to our higher aspira 

 tions. He believed that in the study of the hidden 

 phenomena of the universe a mental alacrity is developed 

 which will be found to be not without practical utility in 

 the conduct of affairs that lie nearer the surface (113). 



With this clear recognition of the importance of his 

 theme he resolved in his old age to enter upon a task 

 which other less worthy pursuits had hindered him from 

 pursuing. He would now attempt to survey the universe, 

 unravel its secrets, and give the results of his studies to 

 the world (109). It was not, however, his aim to compose 

 a systematic treatise on Natural Philosophy, but rather 

 to take up some special subjects and deal with them in 



1 Seneca s indebtedness to Aristotle is emphatically expressed by Barthelemy 

 Saint-Hilaire in the Dissertation prefixed to his translation of the Meteorc- 

 logica (Mttorologic d&quot;* Aristote, 1863, pp. Ixix-lxx). 



