Thus if one is to maintain that the History is in a fairly finished state as we have it and was composed essentially in one period of the author's life, it is not enough merely to prove how few passages imply an earlier version, valuable as that negative task is. It is necessary to show that the version which we have is in fact so complete a unit, that no part stands outside the complex of ideas known from other parts and that, since much of it is demonstrably late, all of it must accordingly have been composed or arranged at the same time—in sum, that it is the kind of work which a brilliant mind, dominated by a certain number of related ideas, would compose when those ideas were consistently before it.
Thus if one is to maintain that the History is in a fairly finished state as we have it and was composed essentially in one period of the author's life, it is not enough merely to prove how few passages imply an earlier version, valuable as that negative task is. It is necessary to show that the version which we have is in fact so complete a unit, that no part stands outside the complex of ideas known from other parts and that, since much of it is demonstrably late, all of it must accordingly have been composed or arranged at the same time—in sum, that it is the kind of work which a brilliant mind, dominated by a certain number of related ideas, would compose when those ideas were consistently before it.<br>
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