point of view, was this, that it opened to the philosopher a divine
region, in which, "wandering among the stars," he could laugh at the
earth and all its riches, and his mind "delivered as it were from
prison could return to its original home." In other words, its value
lay not in its results, but simply in the intellectual activity; and
therefore it concerned not mankind at large but a few chosen
individuals who, doomed to live in a miserable world, could thus
deliver their souls from slavery.

For Seneca's belief in the theory of degeneration and the hopeless
corruption of the race is uncompromising. Human life on the earth is
periodically destroyed, alternately by fire and flood; and each
period begins with a golden age in which men live in rude
simplicity, innocent because they are ignorant not because they are
wise. When they degenerate from this state, arts and inventions
promote deterioration by ministering to luxury and vice.

Interesting, then, as Seneca's observations on the prospect of some
future scientific discoveries are, and they are unique in ancient
literature, [Footnote: They are general and definite. This
distinguishes them, for instance, from Plato's incidental hint in
the Republic as to the prospect of the future development of solid
geometry.] they were far from adumbrating a doctrine of the Progress
of man. For him, as for Plato and the older philosophers, time is
the enemy of man. [Footnote: The quotations and the references here
will be found in Nat. Quaest. i. Praef.; Epist. 104, Sec. 16 (cp.
110, Sec. 8; 117, Sec. 20, and the fine passage in 65, Sec. 16-21);
Nat. Quaest. iii. 28-30; and finally Epist. 90, Sec. 45, cp. Sec.
17. This last letter is a criticism on Posidonius, who asserted that
the arts invented in primitive times were due to philosophers.