It was in due accordance with the principles of his school, as well as with his own natural temperament, that Seneca should continually be led to draw ethical lessons from the physical phenomena which he discussed. The interpolation of some of these reflections may occasionally seem to a modern reader rather irrelevant and far-fetched, but there can be no question as to the spirit of reverence with which he approached his subject. Like other philosophers who had preceded him, he maintained this spirit, while at the same time he had discarded the crowded and confused polytheism of the prevalent mythology. But he here keeps this antagonism in due restraint, only occasionally expressing his dissent from the popular creed. He would not admit that even the old philosophers could have been so foolish as to credit the gods with some of the acts which had been popularly attributed to them. He refused to believe that the guardian and ruler of the Universe hurled thunderbolts with his own hand. Still less could he suppose that the gods had lighter bolts with which they amused themselves in play. His expression (fulminibus lusoriis, 91) recalls the bitter irony of Lucretius and the sarcasm of his question whether, when the gods aim at lonely places or at the sea, they are only at practice to strengthen their arms.[106] But Seneca held with Lucretius that in the contemplation of nature we obtain the courage and elevation of mind which fit us for the trials of life and the coming of death (113). [106] an tum bracchia consuescunt firmantque lacertos?--vi. 397. In the treatment of scientific problems Seneca displays the same unhesitating assurance of the truth of his opinions, which was characteristic of the philosophers of antiquity. These writers had hardly a glimmering conception of nature’s infinite complexity, of the extreme diversity and intricacy of natural processes, of the unbroken and endlessly ramifying relations of cause and effect, of the long and patient investigation by which alone these relations could be unravelled, and of the caution and diffidence with which conclusions regarding them should at least for a time be formulated. Seneca frequently passes caustic criticisms on the views expressed by his predecessors. He styles the philosophers, as a body, “a credulous folk.” Some of them he even goes so far as to accuse of perpetrating deliberate falsehoods (276, 286, 289). Nor does he hesitate to banter his brethren of the Stoic School, whose “absurdities,” as he calls them, he cannot refrain from quoting.