h those words may be admitted
and explained by Christians, yet, in the mind of Seneca, they led to
conclusions directly opposed to those of Christianity. With him, for
instance, the wise man is the _equal_ of God; not His adorer, not His
servant, not His suppliant, but His associate, His relation. He differs
from God in time alone. Hence all prayer is needless he says, and the
forms of external worship are superfluous and puerile. It is foolish to
beg for that which you can impart to yourself. "What need is there of
_vows_? Make _yourself_ happy." Nay, in the intolerable arrogance which
marked the worst aberration of Stoicism, the wise man is under certain
aspects placed even higher than God--higher than God Himself--because
God is beyond the reach of misfortunes, but the wise man is superior to
their anguish; and because God is good of necessity, but the wise man
from choice. This wretched and inflated paradox occurs in Seneca's
treatise _On Providence_, and in the same treatise he glorifies suicide,
and expresses a doubt as to the immortality of the soul.

Again, the two principles on which Seneca relied as the basis of all his
moral system are: first, the principle that we ought to follow Nature;
and, secondly, the supposed perfectibility of the ideal man.

1. Now, of course, if we explain this precept of "following Nature" as
Juvenal has explained it, and say that the voice of Nature is always
coincident with the voice of philosophy--if we prove that our real
nature is none other than the dictate of our highest and most nobly
trained reason, and if we can establish the fact that every deed of
cruelty, of shame, of lust, or of selfishness, is essentially
_contrary_ to our nature--then we may say with Bishop Butler, that the
precept to "follow Nature" is "a manner of speaking not loose and
undeterminate, but clear and distinct, strictly just and true." But how
complete must be the system, how long the preliminary training, which
alone can enable us to find any practical value, any appreciable aid to
a virtuous life, in a dogma such as this! And, in the hands of Seneca,
it becomes a very empty formula. He entirely lacked the keen insight and
dialectic subtlety of such a writer as Bishop Butler; and, in his
explanation of this Stoical shibboleth, any real meaning which it may
possess is evaporated into a gorgeous mist of confused declamation and
splendid commonplace.

2. Nor is he much more fortunate with his ideal ma