Internal evidence from the manuscripts of Modern Painters I suggests that Ruskin might first have written Part II, Sections III to VI - in which he discusses the Truth of Skies, Earth, Water and Vegetation - in notebooks which are now missing (see missing manuscripts of Modern Painters I); then Part II, Section I - 'General Principles respecting Ideas of Truth' - and Part II, Section II - 'Of General Truths', much of which we have in manuscript; and finally the two sections of Part I ('Of General Principles'), almost all of which we have in manuscript. Ruskin's mind tended to work from the particular to the general. He perhaps also discovered as he went along that he needed general theoretical discussion at the beginning of the book to underpin his later defence of Turner and his detailed descriptions of art and nature (see period of composition of Modern Painters I and Ruskin and aesthetics.) Furthermore, it is common for writers to draft their introductions last. Cook and Wedderburn argue that the drafts in the Brantwood manuscript were probably the earliest made by Ruskin for Modern Painters I, beginning with a false start to Part II, Section I, Chapter I - 'Of Ideas of Truth in their connection with those of Beauty and Relation' (see Works, 3.680-81). This proto-chapter is written in a decidedly pamphleteering style, as Ruskin lays into the Dutch school of painters (fol. 20r). A learned treatise, however, from a 'Graduate of Oxford', who wishes to engage with Locke and Burke, and to elevate landscape painting to new heights, must also be underpinned with a statement of general principles. So by the time he has (a) produced several versions of this opening to Part II, Section I, (b) drafted the rest of the section and then most of Part II, Section II, (c) run out of space in the notebook containing the Brantwood manuscript of Modern Painters I and therefore (d) begun the notebook containing the Allen manuscript, where he first (e) finishes Part II, Section II with the unpublished sixth chapter, he has decided on the need for the introductory material that takes up most of the Allen notebook. In arguing, however, that the Brantwood manuscript is probably Ruskin's earliest draft, Cook and Wedderburn do not acknowledge the possibility that he drafted the second half of the volume, in one of the missing manuscripts of Modern Painters I - one that Ruskin himself might later have destroyed - before he turned to Part II, Section I and its 'General Principles respecting Ideas of Truth', thus establishing a pattern of moving from the particular to the general which the extant manuscripts continue (see pagination of the Allen manuscript.)