public man and a minister, with the theories to which he had wedded
himself; and of the impossibility of preserving in it the purity of
his character as a philosopher or a man. He was aware that in the
existing state of society at Rome, wealth was necessary to men high
in station; wealth alone could retain influence, and a poor
minister became at once contemptible. The distributor of the
Imperial favours must have his banquets, his receptions, his slaves
and freedmen; he must possess the means of attracting if not of
bribing; he must not seem too virtuous, too austere, among an evil
generation; in order to do good at all he must swim with the
stream, however polluted it might be. All this inconsistency Seneca
must have contemplated without blenching; and there is something
touching in the serenity he preserved amidst the conflict that must
have perpetually raged between his natural sense and his acquired
principles. Both Cicero and Seneca were men of many weaknesses, and
we remark them the more because both were pretenders to unusual
strength of character; but while Cicero lapsed into political
errors, Seneca cannot be absolved of actual crime. Nevertheless, if
we may compare the greatest masters of Roman wisdom together, the
Stoic will appear, I think, the more earnest of the two, the more
anxious to do his duty for its own sake, the more sensible of the
claims of mankind upon him for such precepts of virtuous living as
he had to give. In an age of unbelief and compromise he taught that
Truth was positive and Virtue objective. He conceived, what never
entered Cicero's mind, the idea of improving his fellow-creatures;
he had, what Cicero had not, a heart for conversion to
Christianity."

To this eloquent account of Seneca's position and of the tendency
of his writings I have nothing to add. The main particulars of his