NOTES 319 



and that a thousand stars might be put together without 

 equalling his mass (284, 288). He thought the heavens 

 to be so vast as to afford space for the swiftest of the 

 planets to rush along with uninterrupted speed during 

 full thirty years (7). He showed his enlightened outlook 

 upon astronomical possibilities when he surmised that 

 comets may have orbits that carry them far beyond the 

 Zodiac, and when he conjectured that other planets than 

 those then known remained to be discovered (296-299). 

 And yet, sharing these more enlarged conceptions, he 

 clung with curious pertinacity to some of the old childish 

 faith which was natural in the infancy of mankind. 

 He knew that some philosophers held that it is the 

 earth which revolves and not the heavens, and though 

 he does not deliberately reject this opinion, it is evident 

 that he still held that the heavens circle round the 

 earth. 1 Again and again he expresses his conviction 

 that the force which sustains the energy of the sun 

 and the stars consists of the exhalations that arise from 

 the surface of the earth. These exhalations, he says, 

 are the pasturage of the heavenly bodies, the breath of the 

 world. It would be impossible, he asserts, for the earth 

 to furnish so ample a store of nourishment to bodies 

 larger than itself unless it were full of breath which is 

 passing off from every part of its surface both by day and 

 night. To the obvious objection that the supply of this 

 energy would soon become exhausted, he has the reply 

 that this exhaustion would certainly take place were it 

 not that the elements are in a condition of continual 

 transformation, issuing in one form, passing into each 

 other, and returning to their original positions, thence to 

 begin their cycle anew (55, 198, 244-5). ^ n this uni- 

 versal transmutation water passes into air, air into water ; 

 air likewise is changed into fire, fire into air, while earth 

 is formed from water, and water from earth (120). 



In his general conception of the universe, Seneca, as a 

 Stoic philosopher, recognised a principle of evolution. 

 He believed that the world embraces in its constitution 



1 Seefostea, Notes on Book VII. 





