88 THE GREEK SCHOOL PHILOSOPHY. 



possessing their invention, acuteness, and spirit of 

 system. 



In addition to the vagueness which was com- 

 bined with the more elevated trains of philoso- 

 phical speculation among the Greeks, the Romans, 

 introduced into their treatises a kind of declamatory 

 rhetoric, which arose probably from their forensic 

 and political habits, and which still further ob- 

 scured the waning gleams of truth. Yet we may 

 also trace, in the Roman philosophers to whom this 

 charge mostly applies (Lucretius, Pliny, Seneca), the 

 national vigour and ambition. There is something 

 Roman in the public spirit and anticipation of uni- 

 versal empire which they display, as citizens of the 

 intellectual republic. Though they speak sadly or 

 slightingly of the achievements of their own gene- 

 ration, they betray a more abiding and vivid belief 

 in the dignity and destined advance of human know- 

 ledge as a whole, than is obvious among the Greeks. 



We must, however, turn back, in order to de- 

 scribe steps of more definite value to the progress 

 of science than those which we have hitherto no- 

 ticed. 



