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.