6. _On the Shortness of Life._ In which the proper employment of time and the acquisition of wisdom are eloquently enforced as the best employment of a fleeting life. 7. _On a Happy Life._ In which he inculcates that there is no happiness without virtue. An excellent treatise. 8. _On Kindnesses._ 9. _Epistles to Lucilius._ 124 in number. They abound in lessons and precepts in morality and philosophy, and, excepting the _De Irâ_, have been the most read, perhaps, of all Seneca’s productions. 10. _Questions on Natural History._ In seven books. Besides these moral and philosophic works, he composed several tragedies. They were not intended for the stage, but rather as moral lessons. As in all his works, there is much of earnest thought and feeling, although expressed in rhetorical and declamatory language. What especially characterises Seneca’s writings is their remarkably _humanitarian_ spirit. Altogether he is imbued with this, for the most part, very modern feeling in a greater degree than any other writer, Greek or Latin. Plutarch indeed, in his noble _Essay on Flesh Eating_, is more expressly denunciatory of the barbarism of the Slaughter House, and of the horrible cruelties inseparably connected with it, and evidently felt more deeply the importance of exposing its evils. The Latin moralist, however, deals with a wider range of ethical questions, and on such subjects, as, _e.g._, the relations of master and slave, is far ahead of his contemporaries. His treatment of _Dietetics_, in common with that of most of the old-world moralists, is rather from the spiritual and ascetic than from the purely humanitarian point of view. “The judgments on Seneca’s writings,” says the author of the article on Seneca in Dr. Smith’s _Dictionary of Greek and Latin Biography_, “have been as various as the opinions about his character, and both in extremes. It has been said of him that he looks best in quotations; but this is an admission that there is something worth quoting, which cannot be said of all writers. That Seneca possessed great mental powers cannot be doubted. He had seen much of human life, and he knew well what man is. His philosophy, so far as he adopted a system, was the stoical; but it was rather an eclecticism of stoicism than pure stoicism. His style is antithetical, and apparently laboured; and where there is much labour there is generally affectation. Yet his language is clear and forcible--it is not mere words--there is thought always. It would not be easy to name any modern writer, who has treated on morality and has said so much that is practically good and true, or has treated the matter in so attractive a way.”