more occupied with the life and the qualities of Lucullus, of Metellus,
and Scipio, than with the fate of any of his own countrymen. Of the
hey-day of classic Rome he, who otherwise uses such measured terms,
speaks with a glowing enthusiasm. He often avers that he belongs to
no special school of thought; that he advocates no theory; that he is
not the adherent of any party or sect. To him--so he asserts--an
unprejudiced examination of all knowledge is sufficient. His endeavour
was, to prove the devise of his escutcheon: 'Que scais-je?'

Have the humanistic studies not given to him, as to so many of his
contemporaries, a distinctive mental bent? Have Greek and Roman
philosophy and poetry remained without any influence upon him? Has
his character not been formed by them? Does he not once reckon himself
among 'nous autres naturalistes?' [2]

Once only, it is true, he does this; but even if he who would not belong
to any special school of thought, and who would rather be 'a good
equerry than a logician,' [3] had not ascribed to himself this
designation, a hundred passages of his work would bear witness to
the fact of his having been one of the Humanists, on whose banner
'Nature' was written as the parole. Ever and anon he says (I here
direct attention more specially to his last Essays) that we ought
willingly to follow her prescriptions; and incessantly he asserts
that, in doing so, we cannot err. He designates her as a guide as
mild as she is just, whose footprints, blurred over as they are by
artificial ones, we ought everywhere to trace anew. 'Is it not folly,'
he asks with Seneca, [4] 'to bend the body this way, and the mind that
way, and thus to stand distorted between two movements utterly at
variance with each other?'