PHYSICAL SCIENCE 



The reader of the Q.N. need not, therefore, regard as 

 matter of surprise this curious medley of science and 

 morality, which is of the very essence of the author's 

 principles and purpose. Seneca performs this part of his 

 task with evident relish. He is always ready to improve 

 the occasion, and will even go out of his way to find it. 

 His censure of vice, his denunciation of luxury and self- 

 indulgence, his castigation of immorality, seem to afford 

 him a kind of morbid satisfaction. Even a note of 

 insincerity may sometimes be suspected. He is rather too 

 ready to display his own acquaintance with all the refine- 

 ments of the vices of " good society " : perhaps it was 

 the fault of his age to gloat over unsavoury details that a 

 moralist would now be more anxious to conceal than to 

 reveal. 1 



With Seneca as moralist, however, we are not here 

 directly concerned. But what attitude are we to assume 

 toward his Science? It need scarcely be said that of 

 Science in the twentieth century sense, the first century 

 of our era knew very little. Its greatest weakness was 

 that it possessed practically no means of interrogating 

 nature save those afforded by the human senses. The 

 sundial was known, but the thermometer, the barometer, 

 the telescope, and even the microscope, had still to be 

 invented. Experiment except in the most rudimentary 

 form was impossible. Observation was the only method 

 available, and it lost much of its value from the necessary 

 looseness and inaccuracy attaching to it. Seneca was 

 fully alive to the necessity of procuring correct data. He 

 records his own observation when digging among his 

 vines (117) ; he had visited the Sabine country to see a 

 floating island (139); he had evidently watched closely 

 rainbow, lightning, meteors, comets, etc., etc. He laid 



advocated on account of the abundance of figures of speech that may be drawn 

 from it ! Erasmus esteemed it because of the light it threw on the classics ; 

 his insensibility to the wonders of natural forces and processes provoked 

 Luther's remark that " Erasmus looks upon external objects as cows look 

 upon a new gate. " 



1 " There are pictures of voluptuous ease and jaded satiety which may be 

 the work of a keen sympathetic observation, but which may also be the 

 expression of repentant memory" (Dill, op. cit. p. 298). 



