The day will come when time and human diligence will clear up problems which are now obscure.

We divide the few years of our lives unequally between study and vice, and it will therefore be the work of many generations to explain such phenomena as comets.

One day our posterity will marvel at our ignorance of causes so clear to them.
"How many new animals have we first come to know in the present age?
In time to come men will know much that is unknown to us.

Many discoveries are reserved for future ages, when our memory will have faded from men's minds.

We imagine ourselves initiated in the secrets of nature; we are standing on the threshold of her temple." [Footnote: The quotations from Seneca will be found in Naturales Quaestiones, vii.