INTRODUCTION
again, he may have put them together into an order which satisfied himself but is not satisfactory to us; or again, the publication may have originally been more regular, and since have suffered dislocation and occasional truncation in the course of transmission.
Perhaps the likeliest hypothesis, as it is the simplest, is that the editor recorded religiously what he had to his hand, misunderstanding sometimes notes which marked passages not destined for their present context, sometimes embodying at the wrong place marginal additions. Sentences are undoubtedly left standing now which appear to belong to a different order of thought and purpose from their neighbours, perhaps even from the main collection.
This explanation certainly assumes what cannot be proved. Indeed it is contrary to the opinion of Gataker and other critics, probably also to the sense of an ordinary reader, for it implies that Marcus was occupied with a work which he intended some day to publish. In favour of this explanation are the traces in what we possess of a unity, especially the completed first Book, the nearly finished Books ii and iii, the other incipient unities, and the conclusion of Book xii. The difficulty which will be felt is that the tenour of so much of the writing is as of a soliloquy, not intended to be overheard. This may be met in part by supposing that the original purpose was to fortify the writer's own heart and mind, and that this only gradually expanded itself to a wider ambit, an address to his fellow men. Marcus has hit upon a form of self-expression not previously used in Greek letters, and has written a manual of admonitions useful for the philosophic life, Spiritual Consolations, in fact a Religio Imperatoris. He is gradually feeling his way to the right expressional use of his new instrument, and has often failed to reach the final and sufficient shape.
A clue to the origin of the Meditations is furnished by another work of similar form and content, whose genesis
