The Book closes with a vivid description of the probable catastrophe by which the end of the world will be brought about. That the present condition of things will be swept away to make room for another and better race of men he assumes as a matter of certainty, and he tries to picture by what physical means the destruction will probably be effected. He is certain that it will be by no one agency, but that all the energies of the world will be called forth to compass the destruction of the human race, nothing being difficult to nature, especially when she is hurrying towards her end. The picture which is given of the progress of the great deluge forms by far the most striking piece of writing in the volume. It ends somewhat inartistically in some gibing criticism of a quotation from Ovid. But the poetic afflatus had not been quite quenched. The author immediately returns to the subject in the succeeding and final chapters, and after enumerating the different agencies that may be called out to effect the destruction of the world, he draws a lurid scene when a single day will see the burial of the whole human race.[114] After this act of divine wrath has been accomplished, the waters will disappear below ground, the sea will retire to its own abode, and on the renovated earth every animal will be created afresh, and a new race of men will be installed, ignorant of sin and born under better auspices. [114] So Lucretius: ... maria ac terras caelumque-- una dies dabit exitio. --_De Rer. Nat._ v. 92, 94. BOOK IV This section of the treatise begins with a denunciation of flattery and ends with another against luxury. Neither the preface nor the concluding chapter have any obvious connection with the text between them. It is curious to note that while Seneca here warns his friend Lucilius against flatterers, and inculcates how their approaches are to be met, he himself in this very volume perpetrates four pieces of flattery to the despicable but all-powerful Nero. He quotes a prosaic line from a poem of the emperor’s, which he characterises as “most elegant” (_disertissime_, 25). He refers to Nero as most devoted to truth as well as to the other virtues (235); he refers to the advent of a comet which appearing in Nero’s reign had redeemed these heavenly bodies from their evil repute (290), and he describes that reign as “most joyous” (_laetissimus_, 294). The old courtier, so long habituated to the language of flattery, was perhaps hardly conscious that he was here making use of it, or he may naturally have reflected that at a time when the emperor had ceased to bear him any good will, the absence of the customary adulation might cause as much offence as if a direct insult were intended.