IV Seneca’s Method of Treatment of Subject
In order to appreciate Seneca’s treatment of his subject we must understand something of his philosophical tenets. He was in the main a Stoic, but with such a strong tendency toward independence that he may be considered an Eclectic. The Stoics, whether or not they originated, at any rate recognised and adopted the threefold division of philosophy—Physics, Ethics, Logic14—which was originated among the Greeks and handed down by them to the Romans, who were in this department their pupils. Seneca is typical of the Stoics in regarding Ethics as of supreme importance. On Logic he did not apparently set any great store, though he must have been a diligent student of the cognate branch, Rhetoric. Physics, as we have seen, did not claim much attention from him in early life; only as he approached the mature age of threescore did his study of it become more detailed and systematic. No clear line of demarcation existed in his mind, or for the matter of that in his age, between philosophy and science. Yet there is considerable internal evidence in the Q.N. that his pursuit of such studies was in part an outcome of the true scientific spirit, and that he possessed in no ordinary degree the scientific imagination. Still, when all due allowance is made for this, it remains true that Seneca was moralist first and physicist or scientist afterwards. Physics led to theology,15 and had thus a direct bearing on man’s destiny and fate. Had there been no Ethics, whose interests were involved in a knowledge of the universe, its parts, its function, and its author, the impelling motive for the study of Physics would have been removed. Possibly when his political career was closed by the death of Burrus in 63, Seneca might in any case have devoted some of his leisure to a subject which offered such opportunities of exalted contemplation. But it was his ethical aims that added the chief zest to the pursuit.16 As the various departments of knowledge had not assumed definite divergent forms, there was nothing incongruous to his mind in the mixture, or as he might have regarded it, the union, of what to us seem so different from one another as Physics and Ethics. The facts of nature had, in his view, to be brought into connection with the lessons that may be derived from them. In so many words he tells us (102) that every study must have a moral attached to it, or to put it otherwise, that physical phenomena must be made the occasion for driving home some general truth, establishing some ethical position, clinching an argument, reprobating a vice. The conclusion of each Book of the Q.N. contains the practical application of the lessons to be derived from its subject: there are not infrequent digressions, too, for the same or a cognate purpose. The author’s moral zeal sometimes ran off with him, and he felt constrained to break off for the time his discussion of scientific truths and to assume the rôle of the moralist and reformer.17
The reader of the Q.N. need not, therefore, regard as matter of surprise this curious medley of science and morality, which is of the very essence of the author’s principles and purpose. Seneca performs this part of his task with evident relish. He is always ready to improve the occasion, and will even go out of his way to find it. His censure of vice, his denunciation of luxury and self-indulgence, his castigation of immorality, seem to afford him a kind of morbid satisfaction. Even a note of insincerity may sometimes be suspected. He is rather too ready to display his own acquaintance with all the refinements of the vices of “good society”: perhaps it was the fault of his age to gloat over unsavoury details that a moralist would now be more anxious to conceal than to reveal.18
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.
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 Comets19 (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.
Seneca nowhere gives us a reasoned connected exposition of the views entertained by him regarding the Universe as a whole or the relation of its parts. Only “by parcels” and inference can we glean them from scattered remarks and comments that he makes in the course of his work. In Physics even more than in Ethics he was an Eclectic; he criticises freely, and occasionally rejects entirely, the opinions of his own school, the Stoics, at one point going so far as to call them silly (181, cf. 295). He claims authority, too, for his own research, and asserts the right to hypothesise for himself: he is hopeful, if not certain, of discovery (304). He frequently quotes rival opinions without indicating his own. He is familiar with conflicting theories which he does not attempt, or fails in his attempt, to harmonise. And in the end one is tempted to ask whether he himself had reached any consistent comprehensive cosmical scheme. There is much that is quaint and interesting and ingenious, but it seems doubtful whether an attempt to construct from the Q.N. a complete cosmology would in the end repay the labour. The scheme might prove self-contradictory; it would in any case be full of error, and there would in no case be the assurance that it was all Seneca’s own. This seems sufficient reason for declining the task. If one care to pursue it further, helpful information may be obtained from Bernhardt’s brochure (Die Anschauung, etc.) already referred to, while a discussion of the whole subject will be found in Crouslé’s Thesis, written in Latin, De L. Annaei Senecae Nat. Quaest., which for fulness and fairness leaves nothing to be desired.20 In the Commentary and Notes at the end of the volume Seneca’s scientific opinions and methods are discussed by Sir Archibald Geikie.