INTRODUCTION 



attempts to restore the Q.N. to what may be supposed 

 to have been its original form. The most casual reading 

 of it as it stands, shows that it is full of inequalities. If 

 the clue could only be recovered, much of its difficulty 

 and obscurity would disappear. As it is, it abounds in 

 abrupt transitions, interruptions of the logical sequence, 

 repetitions, excrescences, and even irrelevancies and incon- 

 sistencies, which it can hardly be supposed that an author 

 would have allowed to remain in a treatise prepared for 

 publication. 



One or two considerations derived from the present 

 arrangement will serve to throw light upon this point 

 In the first place, Book IV., as we have it, is evidently 

 composite. Between Chaps. II. and III. there is a deep 

 hiatus. In the former chapter the discussion of the Nile 

 is cut short, and the author's own view is not even 

 indicated, much less established ; while the latter opens 

 so abruptly as at least to suggest that it may have origin- 

 ally been preceded by something with which it stood in 

 organic sequence. 



Again, the several Books do not conform to the 

 author's division of the subject as set forth in the opening 

 of Book II. (51), but follow or precede one another 

 anyhow. 



Then, three of the Books (I. III. IV.) have a formal 

 Preface, while the others have not, though in them, too, 

 with the exception of the Sixth, the opening chapter is 

 introductory in character. 



Any attempt to restore a more intelligible order must 

 depend for its success on the extent to which we may 

 assume Seneca to have been a methodiser. In Book II. i., 

 he certainly states very distinctly the divisions of his sub- 

 ject (a) things in the heavens, () things between heaven 

 and earth, (c) things on the earth. But it by no means 

 follows that he himself maintained this order of treatment, 

 or that he always exhausted one subject before passing 

 on to the next. The division evidently enumerates the 

 subjects in order of dignity or worth, and may have little, 

 if any, relation to the order of their discussion ; in fact, in 



