Book III. (110), “how much is unaccomplished of my plan, though not of

my life,” seems inapplicable to a work that was not begun or merely beginning. There was a remnant of the work and a remnant of life, but they were disproportionate, the one large, the other small. This was a reminder to hurry on to completion a work with which, _ex hypothesi_, some progress had already been made.

When all has been said, we must, for practical purposes, accept the book as it has been handed down to us and make what we can of it. The difficulties are not exhausted even when the pristine order is restored. What is true of the work as a whole is true of it also in detail. The text is full of uncertainties and corruptions. The work was popular and was frequently copied, and this naturally gave rise to variations, which, being improved upon by succeeding generations of copyists, in course of time rendered the text in many places very obscure if not unmeaning. The nature of the subject matter, frequently little understood, no doubt facilitated and hastened the process of corruption. Hence the translator has at every turn to decide first _what_, and then _how_, he shall translate.[13]

[13] Gercke says (Preface, xlvi) that the traditional text of the _Q.N._ is utterly corrupt and still requires the united efforts of many earnest scholars for its restoration. He writes as recently as two years ago (1907), and has himself probably made the most considerable contribution of all the editors to the correction of the text; but he modestly calls himself only a pioneer.

An added difficulty is the form of address to Lucilius. The adoption of the epistolary style, whatever its other advantages, has not, it must be admitted, conduced to the lucidity of the argument. Science does not readily lend itself to exposition by dialogue, and the trouble is aggravated when, in addition to the correspondent, an imaginary opponent is from time to time introduced and indifferently addressed in the second person, or referred to in the third. To make matters still worse, the author frequently conceals himself behind the mask of one or other of the disputants, irrespective of pronouns. Finally, he employs “we” sometimes of himself and his correspondent, sometimes of his philosophic sect, the Stoics, sometimes of his nation, the Romans, sometimes of his kind, man in general!

IV. SENECA’S METHOD OF TREATMENT OF SUBJECT

In order to appreciate Seneca’s treatment of his subject we must understand something of his philosophical tenets. He was in the main a Stoic, but with such a strong tendency toward independence that he may be considered an Eclectic. The Stoics, whether or not they originated, at any rate recognised and adopted the threefold division of philosophy--Physics, Ethics, Logic[14]--which was originated among the Greeks and handed down by them to the Romans, who were in this department their pupils. Seneca is typical of the Stoics in regarding Ethics as of supreme importance. On Logic he did not apparently set any great store, though he must have been a diligent student of the cognate branch, Rhetoric. Physics, as we have seen, did not claim much attention from him in early life; only as he approached the mature age of threescore did his study of it become more detailed and systematic. No clear line of demarcation existed in his mind, or for the matter of that in his age, between philosophy and science. Yet there is considerable internal evidence in the _Q.N._ that his pursuit of such studies was in part an outcome of the true scientific spirit, and that he possessed in no ordinary degree the scientific imagination. Still, when all due allowance is made for this, it remains true that Seneca was moralist first and physicist or scientist afterwards. Physics led to theology,[15] and had thus a direct bearing on man’s destiny and fate. Had there been no Ethics, whose interests were involved in a knowledge of the universe, its parts, its function, and its author, the impelling motive for the study of Physics would have been removed. Possibly when his political career was closed by the death of Burrus in 63, Seneca might in any case have devoted some of his leisure to a subject which offered such opportunities of exalted contemplation. But it was his ethical aims that added the chief zest to the pursuit.[16] As the various departments of knowledge had not assumed definite divergent forms, there was nothing incongruous to his mind in the mixture, or as he might have regarded it, the union, of what to us seem so different from one another as Physics and Ethics. The facts of nature had, in his view, to be brought into connection with the lessons that may be derived from them. In so many words he tells us (102) that every study must have a moral attached to it, or to put it otherwise, that physical phenomena must be made the occasion for driving home some general truth, establishing some ethical position, clinching an argument, reprobating a vice. The conclusion of each Book of the _Q.N._ contains the practical application of the lessons to be derived from its subject: there are not infrequent digressions, too, for the same or a cognate purpose. The author’s moral zeal sometimes ran off with him, and he felt constrained to break off for the time his discussion of scientific truths and to assume the rôle of the moralist and reformer.[17]

[14] See Professor Davidson’s _The Stoic Creed_, p. 42, where it is pointed out that each of these may be subdivided so as to bring the number up to six--Physics and Theology, Ethics and Politics, Logic and Rhetoric. See also Seneca, Epist. lxxxix., where the division is discussed. For further information on the subject, the article on the Stoics in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ and any of the histories of philosophy, _e.g._ Erdmann or Zeller, may be consulted.

[15] Cf. Professor Burnet’s _Early Greek Philosophy_ for illustration of this in earlier times.

[16] Cf. footnote 2 to p. xxxiv.

[17] The method was not obsolete for many centuries, even if it is yet wholly dead. On more than one occasion the study of Natural History has been 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.”

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 refinements 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.[18]

[18] “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).

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 friends like Lucilius under contribution, and he insists on the necessity for keeping records of observation, especially when the phenomenon is comparatively rare, as a Comet (274). Besides, he draws not only upon the history of his country, but also upon the learning of other nations--Greeks, Babylonians, and Egyptians--records which for the most part are no longer extant. The _Q.N._ thus embodies many out-of-the-way facts which otherwise would be unknown to us. Accuracy is nearly always a relative term: approximate accuracy is the most we can look for in that age. Seneca’s contribution of data is curious, interesting, and valuable.

Again, in arguing from facts, or supposed facts, Seneca is entitled to credit for his method if not always for his results. A great merit is that he endeavours to account for the phenomena observed, he habitually raises the causal issue, and he is not satisfied until he has passed in review all the considerations involved in the observation or problem. He is scrupulous in always giving the other side a hearing, and in discussing views with which he disagrees, even though only to reject them. On the negative side he is generally fairly convincing, and succeeds in showing the fallacies involved in a proposition. But on the constructive side he is many times ingeniously perverse, curiously blind to the inadequacy of the theories which he himself advances, and which he would readily have confuted in an opponent. Sometimes he adopts an error already current, as old as Aristotle or older; sometimes he advances a fresh one of his own. But even his errors are instructive, and represent a phase of progress. The line of progress is zigzag. Only after errors have been exhausted does the truth emerge and advance become possible.

The amenities of ancient science seem to have been somewhat scanty. A mistake, a false inference, an erroneous view, is met with the lie direct. The moral stigma of falsehood is, at any rate in certain instances, attached to such a deviation from fact. Nor is this all. The whole character must be bad if a man has “lied.” The authors, whom Seneca calls chroniclers, and particularly Epigenes, are in one passage quite fiercely attacked (289). In justice to Seneca it must be said that he is hardly more polite toward himself. The words on p. 154, § 2, rendered, “I can give my own word, etc.,” read literally, “I’m a liar if water does not meet us, etc.” Perhaps, therefore, it is only a manner of speaking. In the early days of public education in Britain a Government report recorded as a proof of moral progress the substitution in some parts of the country of “I beg your pardon” for “You’re a liar!” The child seems to have here re-lived the history of the race.

Seneca had a wide outlook, too, and a splendid scientific faith. With prophetic eye he sees the day when an astronomer will arise to demonstrate the nature and orbit of Comets[19] (299); he is content to let posterity have a share of the credit! Nor is his humility less than his confidence. His lessons may still usefully be taken home; we imagine we have pierced to nature’s inmost sanctum, yet we are still loitering round her outer court (306); let us not despise the day of small things, the investigation of nature’s marvels requires generations of workers and ages of work; there will come a day when all will be revealed, when posterity will smile at our feeble and clumsy efforts and wonder how we missed such obvious truths (298). The ancients must be treated leniently; it was a large contribution to discovery to have conceived the hope of its possibility (231). Seneca maintained and promoted this belief in ultimate success. He displays throughout the same alert, buoyant, enthusiastic confidence, together with patient, reverent search for truth in nature and truth about God.

[19] The fulfilment, or at least the beginning of the fulfilment, of this prediction may be dated from Newton in 1680.

Seneca nowhere gives us a reasoned connected exposition of the views entertained by him regarding the Universe as a whole or the relation of its parts. Only “by parcels” and inference can we glean them from scattered remarks and comments that he makes in the course of his work. In Physics even more than in Ethics he was an Eclectic; he criticises freely, and occasionally rejects entirely, the opinions of his own school, the Stoics, at one point going so far as to call them silly (181, cf. 295). He claims authority, too, for his own research, and asserts the right to hypothesise for himself: he is hopeful, if not certain, of discovery (304). He frequently quotes rival opinions without indicating his own. He is familiar with conflicting theories which he does not attempt, or fails in his attempt, to harmonise. And in the end one is tempted to ask whether he himself had reached any consistent comprehensive cosmical scheme. There is much that is quaint and interesting and ingenious, but it seems doubtful whether an attempt to construct from the _Q.N._ a complete cosmology would in the end repay the labour. The scheme might prove self-contradictory; it would in any case be full of error, and there would in no case be the assurance that it was all Seneca’s own. This seems sufficient reason for declining the task. If one care to pursue it further, helpful information may be obtained from Bernhardt’s _brochure_ (_Die Anschauung, etc._) already referred to, while a discussion of the whole subject will be found in Crouslé’s Thesis, written in Latin, _De L._ _Annaei Senecae Nat. Quaest_., which for fulness and fairness leaves nothing to be desired.[20] In the Commentary and Notes at the end of the volume Seneca’s scientific opinions and methods are discussed by Sir Archibald Geikie.

[20] Ideler’s _Meteorologia veterum Graecorum et Romanorum_, which forms the Prolegomena to his edition of Aristotle’s _Meteorology_, but is printed as a separate volume, also contains much curious information on this recondite subject.

V. SOME OF SENECA’S PREDECESSORS AND CONTEMPORARIES

The history of ancient Science is a very tangled and abstruse subject, a portion of the history of ancient Philosophy, which lies as much outside the scope of the present work as beyond the powers of the writer. Still, Seneca cannot be altogether detached from what preceded him. In order to throw light upon his work, it may be permissible to pass in rapid review a few of the chief sources from which he drew. Our starting-point may be Aristotle.

Aristotle is with good reason named “the master of those who know” (Dante, _H._ iv.). He may be said to have summed up the knowledge of the ancient world, at least as far as Greece is concerned, on all subjects. If not the founder of Science any more than of Philosophy, he recapitulated so fully all that went before that he became the fountain-head and source from which all succeeding workers mainly drew. He systematised the existing materials, adding his own criticisms and observations, and illuminating the whole with the strong light of his unrivalled powers. He drew upon many authorities whose works are now lost, the leading names among them being familiar from the _Q.N._--Thales, Anaximander, Pythagoras, and the rest. The extent and variety of the material may, perhaps, best be understood from a work like Professor Burnet’s _Early Greek Philosophy_, to which reference should be made. A reasoned consecutive account will there be found of the individual contributions made to philosophy (including science) by the early Greek thinkers. Long before Aristotle’s time numerous physical theories had been propounded, and had been supported by their authors with great acuteness of argument; hardly any question had been left unasked that related to matter, motion, or mind. “We may smile, if we please, at the strange medley of childish fancy and true scientific insight.... But we shall do well to remember at the same time that even now it is just such hardy anticipations of experience that make scientific progress possible, and that nearly every one of the early inquirers ... made some permanent addition to the store of positive knowledge, besides opening up new views of the world in every direction” (_op. cit._ 29).

Seneca probably possessed fuller details of the investigations and speculations of these early workers than we now do. The existing materials are contained in Professor Diels’ _Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker_, with which his other great work, the _Doxographi Graeci_, should be compared.[21]

[21] These are, of course, only for the classical scholar.

The chief work of Aristotle upon which Seneca drew was the _Meteorologica_. The extent to which its subject coincided with that of the _Q.N._ may be inferred from a glance at its contents. The _Meteorologica_ is divided into four Books, arranged thus:--

I. Scope and relations of Meteorology. The four elementary bodies--earth, water, fire, air--and their relations. Celestial fires. Shooting stars. Comets. The Milky Way. Clouds. Fog. Dew. Hoar-frost. Rain. Snow. Hail. Wind. Formation of rivers. Change in land through action of rivers: effects on movements of races.

II. The sea and its salinity. Theory of the winds, their varieties, positions, etc. Earthquakes and their explanation. Lightning and thunder.

III. Lightning, thunder, and similar phenomena. Halo and rainbow. Mock sun and cognate appearances. Exhalation and its influence.

IV. Theory of the elements (= ingredients or first principles); two active--hot and cold, two passive--dry and moist. Their effect on bodies. Cohesion, Liquefaction, Solidification, Coagulation, Fusion, Solubility, and other properties. Homogeneous and non-homogeneous bodies. Effects of temperature. Place of this work in author’s scheme.

Another work that goes under Aristotle’s name, but is now generally considered spurious, is the _De Mundo_ (_the Universe_), which in part repeats the subjects of the latter part of the _Meteorology_. Seneca may also have drawn on the _De Coelo_ (_the Heavens_), whose subject covers portions of the _Q.N._ He refers more than a dozen of times to Aristotle by name, but it was not customary to refer to individual works. There are numerous instances in which Aristotle is his authority, though no specific mention of him occurs.

Theophrastus, the pupil of Aristotle, and, his successor as head of the Academy, is also frequently referred to in the _Q.N._ His master bequeathed to him his library and original manuscripts, and Theophrastus was himself also a voluminous writer.

Among his extant works on Science, we have treatises or tracts dealing with Fire; Winds; Stones; Signs of Rain, Wind, Storm, and Fine Weather; not to mention Colours, Odours, etc., and an extensive work on Plants and their History. His work on Perception and Percepts is said to be a chapter of a larger work on the history of philosophy. At any rate, it records and discusses the opinions of earlier writers on the subjects to which the title refers. For his further views on Physics, and the lost treatise on the subject, see Diels, _Dox. Graec._ 119 _et sqq._, and 473 _et sqq._

Aratus, who flourished about 280–270 B.C., wrote two poems (in Greek) entitled respectively _Phaenomena_,[22] an introduction to the knowledge of the constellations; and _Prognostics_, a method of forecasting the weather from astronomical phenomena. Aratus scarcely ranks as a scientific writer, but Seneca refers to his opinions on one occasion in the _Q.N._ He was apparently held in high esteem by the Romans, for he found a translator (in part) in Cicero, and an imitator in Virgil (_Georgics_).

[22] It is from this poem (l. 5) that Paul quotes (Acts xvii. 28), “For we are also his offspring.” Aratus was a native of Soli in Cilicia, and therefore a compatriot of Paul.

Plutarch stands in a somewhat different relation to Seneca. He was a little subsequent in date, but there is a sort of parallelism between the two, both in their scientific and their more general interests. Besides the _Physical Causes_, already referred to, Plutarch made a compilation in five Books--at least it goes under his name--of the Tenets of the Philosophers (_Placita Philosophorum_) regarding a vast number of physical, especially astronomical and physiological, subjects. Diels (_op. cit._ 65) scouts the idea of the genuineness of the “wretched epitome,” and assigns it to the middle of the second century. Whether this be so or not does not much affect its value for us. The existence of the work shows the nature of the material which was available in Seneca’s age. The work is a kind of distant echo of Theophrastus’ lost treatise and preserves many opinions of the older philosophers, of which, to say the least of it, we should otherwise have been less fully informed. The parallelism of the _Placita_ to the _Q.N._ will appear from a few of the titles. Books II. and III. of the former reproduce a long array of opinions of Thales, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Diogenes, Anaximenes, Democritus, Xenophanes, Xenocrates, not to mention Plato, Aristotle, the Pythagoreans, the Stoics, etc., etc., regarding such subjects as Eclipses, the Milky Way, Comets, Earthquakes, Clouds, Winds, Thunder and Lightning, etc., etc.

Plutarch also has questions regarding Aratus _Prognostics_, and a Miscellanea of discussions on allied subjects.

Of Latin writers two have special bearing on Seneca. Lucretius (95–51 B.C.), in his great poem on Nature (_De Rerum Natura_), has expounded the Epicurean view of the universe. In so far as science is capable of metrical and poetical exposition, he ranks high among scientific writers; while the recent resuscitation of the atomic theory lends special interest to his views. The Romans were always a practical and not a speculative nation, and any deviation from the type, such as Lucretius or Seneca, becomes especially noteworthy and valuable. Numerous parallelisms between them have been brought out in the Commentary and Notes appended to this Translation.

Pliny the Elder stands in respect of date in much the same relation to Seneca as Plutarch does. His great work on Natural History, which was addressed to the reigning Emperor, Vespasian, was published in the year 77, that is, about a dozen years after Seneca’s death. We have already glanced at the bearing of this date upon that of the publication of the _Q.N._ We are now concerned rather with the relation of the contents of the two works. Gibbon (_Decline and Fall_, chap. xiii.) speaks of “that immense register where Pliny has deposited the discoveries, the arts, and the errors of mankind.” Nor is the description unjust. The work is of portentous length, extending to thirty-seven Books; it treats of an enormous variety of subjects, physical, geological, geographical, ethnographical, botanical, medical, etc., many of which are now quite dissociated from the title, _Natural History_. Pliny seems to have read everything that existed in writing on the various subjects included, and his array of authorities attached to the contents of each Book is very imposing.[23] But unfortunately his judgment does not appear to have been equal to his industry. Everything is recorded, credible and incredible, whether derived from trustworthy literature or based on mere report: a more uncritical congeries of truth and error it would be difficult to imagine.

[23] He claims to have read about 2000 volumes of 100 choice authors, but his lists seem to include a much larger number of names--146 Roman and 327 foreign writers. See Teuffel, _Rom. Lit._ vol. ii., under Pliny the Elder. Cf. Dill, _op. cit._ p. 146 and _note_.