Genre and place in the book. A cosmological argument in the form of the disjunction "order or chaos" — a special case of "providence or atoms." Marcus's most compressed assertion of the orderedness of the Whole.

Ἤτοι κόσμος ἢ κυκεών. Either an ordered cosmos (κόσμος διατεταγμένος — the word κόσμος itself means "order") or a κυκεών — a "medley," a stirred-up mixture (the Homeric κυκεών, a murky potion; a metaphor for chaos). This is the same fork as "DOGMAprovidence or atoms": the κυκεών ≈ the atomic vortex without a director (cf. Med. 6.10 — "confusion and dispersion, or unity, order, and providence"; 04-03).

ἀλλὰ μὴν κόσμος. "But surely a cosmos [order]": Marcus chooses order. The argument is microcosm/macrocosm: "can a certain order (κόσμος) subsist in you, but disorder (ἀκοσμία) in the All?" If order is in the part (in your ruling faculty), all the more in the Whole of which you are a part.

συμπαθῶν — and that, in sympathy. A reinforcement: all things are "distinguished (διακεκριμένων), yet interfused (διακεχυμένων) and in sympathy (συμπαθῶν)" — the parts are separate but bound by sympathy. This is the DOGMAunity of the cosmos (συμπάθεια through the pneumatic continuum; cf. Med. 7.9 — "all things interwoven, and the bond is holy"). Sympathy is a mark not of chaos but of one ordered whole.

Two doctrines side by side. 4.27 joins DOGMAprovidence (order, not chaos — the teleological choice) and DOGMAunity (the sympathy of the parts — the ontological bond): the world is both rationally ordered and interconnected.

The disciplines. The principal one is assent: a cosmological doctrine (the world is ordered), established by a disjunctive argument. The secondary is desire: the orderedness of the Whole grounds the acceptance of what happens.

Parallels. Order-or-chaos (providence or atoms) — Med. 6.10; 04-03 (cf. DOGMAprovidence; the atomist horn — democritus). All in sympathy — Med. 7.9; 4.40 (cf. DOGMAunity-of-cosmos). Order in the part → order in the Whole — cf. 02-01.