When all has been said, we must, for practical purposes, accept the book as it has been handed down to us and make what we can of it. The difficulties are not exhausted even when the pristine order is restored. What is true of the work as a whole is true of it also in detail. The text is full of uncertainties and corruptions. The work was popular and was frequently copied, and this naturally gave rise to variations, which, being improved upon by succeeding generations of copyists, in course of time rendered the text in many places very obscure if not unmeaning. The nature of the subject matter, frequently little understood, no doubt facilitated and hastened the process of corruption. Hence the translator has at every turn to decide first _what_, and then _how_, he shall translate.[13] [13] Gercke says (Preface, xlvi) that the traditional text of the _Q.N._ is utterly corrupt and still requires the united efforts of many earnest scholars for its restoration. He writes as recently as two years ago (1907), and has himself probably made the most considerable contribution of all the editors to the correction of the text; but he modestly calls himself only a pioneer. An added difficulty is the form of address to Lucilius. The adoption of the epistolary style, whatever its other advantages, has not, it must be admitted, conduced to the lucidity of the argument. Science does not readily lend itself to exposition by dialogue, and the trouble is aggravated when, in addition to the correspondent, an imaginary opponent is from time to time introduced and indifferently addressed in the second person, or referred to in the third. To make matters still worse, the author frequently conceals himself behind the mask of one or other of the disputants, irrespective of pronouns. Finally, he employs “we” sometimes of himself and his correspondent, sometimes of his philosophic sect, the Stoics, sometimes of his nation, the Romans, sometimes of his kind, man in general! IV. SENECA’S METHOD OF TREATMENT OF SUBJECT