, after the labours of Darwin and of Spencer, of
Helmholtz and of Huxley, still do. Ontological speculation is as
barren now as then, and the problems of existence still remain
insoluble. The chief difference indeed between him and modern
investigators is that they have been lessoned by the experience of
the last two thousand years to know better the depths of human
ignorance, and the directions in which it is possible to sound them.

It may not be uninteresting to collect a few passages in which the
Roman poet has expressed in his hexameters the lines of thought
adopted by our most advanced theorists. Here is the general
conception of Nature, working by her own laws toward the achievement
of that result which we apprehend through the medium of the senses
(ii. 1090):--

Quae bene cognita si teneas, natura videtur
libera continuo dominis privata superbis
ipsa sua per se sponte omnia dis agere expers.

Here again is a demonstration of the absurdity of supposing that the
world was made for the use of men (v. 156):--

dicere porro hominum causa voluisse parare
praeclaram mundi naturam proptereaque
adlaudabile opus divom laudare decere
aeternumque putare atque inmortale futurum
nec fas esse, deum quod sit ratione vetusta
gentibus humanis fundatum perpetuo aevo,
sollicitare suis ulla vi ex sedibus umquam
nec verbis vexare et ab imo evertere summa,
cetera de genere hoc adfingere et addere, Memmi
desiperest.

A like cogent rhetoric is directed against the arguments of
toleology (iv. 823):--

Illud in his rebus vitium vementer avessis
effugere, errorem vitareque praemetuenter,
lumina ne facias oculorum clara creata,
prospicere ut possemus, et ut proferre queamus
proceros passus, ideo fastigia posse
surarum ac feminum pedibus fundata plicari,
bracchia tum porro validis ex apta lacertis
esse manusque datas utraque ex parte ministras,
ut facere ad vitam possemus quae foret usus.
cetera de genere hoc inter quaecumque pretantur
omnia perversa praepostera sunt ratione,
nil ideo quoniam natumst in corpore ut uti
possemus, sed quod natumst id procreat usum.
nec fuit ante videre oculorum lumina nata
nec dictis orare prius quam lingua creatast,
sed potius longe linguae praecessit origo
sermonem multoque creatae sunt prius aures
quam sonus est auditus, et omnia denique membra
ante fuere, ut opinor, eorum quam foret usus.
haud igitur potuere utendi cresc