form was naturally accompanied by a philosophical training. Of one branch of a philosoph- ical education, that of logic, there is almost too much evidence in his pages. He is free from the repulsive angularity which sometimes disfigures the pages of Novatian, a writer who had no great influence over him; but in the De Trinitate he too often refuses to trust his reader’s intelligence, and insists upon being logical not only in thought but in expression. But, sound premises being given, he may always be expected to draw the right conclusion. He is singularly free from confusion of thought, and never advances to results beyond what his premises warrant. It is only when a false, though accepted, exegesis misleads him, in certain collateral arguments which may be surrendered without loss to his main theses, that he can be refuted; or again when, in his ventures into new fields of thought, he is unfortunate in the selection or combination of texts. But in these cases, as always, the logical processes are not in fault; his deduction is clear and honest. Philosophy in those days was regarded as incomplete unless it included some knowledge of natural phenomena, to be used for purposes of analogy. Origen and Athanasius display a considerable interest in, and acquaintance with, physical and physiological matters, and Hilary shares the taste. The conditions of human or animal birth and life and death are often discussed11; he believes in universal remedies for disease12, and knows of the employment of anæsthetics in surgery13. Sometimes he wanders further afield, as, for instance, in his account of the natural history of the fig-tree14 and the worm15, and in the curious little piece of information concerning Troglodytes and topazes, borrowed, he says, from secular writers, and still to be read in the elder Pliny16. Even where he seems to be borrowing, on rare occa- sions, from the commonplaces of Roman poetry, it is rather with the interest of the naturalist than of the rhetorician, as when he speaks in all seriousness of ‘Marsian enchantments and hissing vipers lulled to sleep17,’ or recalls Lucan’s asps and basilisks of the African desert as a description of his heretical opponents18. Perhaps his lost work, twice mentioned by Jerome19, against the physician Dioscorus was a refutation of physical arguments against Christianity. 11 E.g. Trin. v. 11, vii. 14, ix. 4. 12 Trin. ii. 22. 13 Trin. x. 14. This is a very remarkable allusion. Celsus, vii. præf., confidently assumes that all surgical oper- ation must be painful. 14 Comm. in Matt. xxi. 8. 15 Trin. xi. 15. 16 Tract. in Ps. cxviii. Ain. 16; it is from Plin. N.H. 37, 32. 17 Tract. in Ps. lvii. 3. It suggests Virgil, Ovid, Silius, and others. 18 Trin. vii. 3. 19 Ep. 70, 5, Vir. Ill. 100. 10 The Life and Writings of St. Hilary of Poitiers.