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.