GENERAL PRINCIPLES, APPLICABLE TO QUESTIONS OF THE GENUINENESS AND
AUTHENTICITY OF ANCIENT RECORDS.
Civilization has not ordinarily, if indeed it has ever done so, sprung
up spontaneously in any land. A germ of the arts, and of literature,
transmitted from people to people, and passed down from age to age, has
taken root and become prolific, in a degree, proportioned generally to
the amount and variety of those elements of social and intellectual
improvement that may have been received from distant sources.
These germs of civilization may have been transported, and scattered
by colonization, by trade, or by conquest; but they are never so fully
expanded as when they are cherished by an imported literature. It is
not by comparing themselves with themselves, that individuals, or that
nations, become wise; and though there are fruits of genius which seem
to owe nothing to extraneous sources, the general perfectionment of
reason and of taste can be attained only by an extended knowledge of
what has been thought and performed by men of other nations, and of
other times.
Among all the inestimable advantages which have raised the inhabitants
of England and of France and of Germany, above those of Turkey
or of China, very few can be named that have not--directly or
indirectly--sprung from a knowledge of the civilisation, the arts,
and the literature of ancient nations. What is it that would be left
to the people of Europe, if all this knowledge, and all its remote
consequences, could at once be subtracted from their religious, their
political, and their intellectual condition? But it must be remembered
that it has chiefly been by _the transmission of books_, from age to
age, that this yeast of civilisation is now possessed and enjoyed.
If those works which we believe to be genuine are not so in fact,
we may be said to hold all the blessings of social and intellectual
advancement by a forged title. For on such a supposition the first
stock, or the rudiment of our advantages has sprung from a mass of
fabrications. No one entertains such a supposition; and yet it must be
admitted if any _general_ objections are to be allowed to disparage the
mode in which ancient literature has been transmitted to modern times.
If we except the almost forgotten enterprise of the Jesuit, Harduin,
no such general objections are ever formally made, or insinuated,
in relation to the remains of classic literature, and this for two
reasons;--first, because an attempt to support a sceptical doctrine
of this sort would be treated by the _learned_ with contempt, as
proceeding from a whimsical love of paradox, or from an inane ambition
to attract attention; and secondly, because the _unlearned_ could
never be induced to take so much interest in a controversy of this
kind, as might reward the pains of those who attempted to delude them.
But it is otherwise in relation to the Holy Scriptures; for while
some few of the learned are, from sinister motives, willing to aid an
attempt to bring the authority of these books into suspicion, there
are always thousands of the community who may easily be engaged to
listen to objectors, and who, from their want of information, and
their incapacity to reason correctly, are easily made the dupes of any
plausible sophistry.
Nor is it merely the uneducated classes that are exposed to the
artifices of sophists; for persons whose acquirements in general
literature are respectable, seem sometimes to be perplexed by
objections of a kind which, if levelled at the remains of classic
authors, they would deem undeserving of any serious regard.
This strange, and often fatal inconsistency, may sometimes arise from
the influence of moral causes, which it does not fall within the design
of this volume to notice; but it is often attributable to a want of
attention to some common principles of evidence which, though they are
so obvious that it may seem almost frivolous to insist upon them, are
never respected by objectors, and are seldom remembered by the victims
of sophistry. The most prominent of these principles may be classed
under the five following heads.
I. Facts remote from our personal observation may be as certainly
proved by evidence that is fallible _in its kind_, as by that which is
not open to the possibility of error.
By _certain_ proof is here meant, not merely such as may be presented
to the senses, or such as cannot be rendered obscure, even for a
moment, by a perverse disputant;--but such as when once understood,
_leaves no room for doubt in a sound mind_. And this degree of
certainty is every day obtained, in the common occasions of life, by
means of evidence that is fallible in its nature, and which may be
questionable in all its parts, _separately_ considered. Let us take
such an instance as this.--A person receives letters from several of
his friends in a neighbouring town, informing him that an extensive
fire has happened the night before, in that place, in consequence
of which many of the inhabitants have been driven from their
homes:--presently afterwards, a crowd of the sufferers, bringing with
them the few remains of their furniture, passes his door:--his friends
arrive among them, and ask shelter for their families;--the next day
the papers contain a full description of the calamity. Does this person
entertain any doubt as to the alleged fact? He cannot do so; and yet
he admits that human testimony is fallacious:--he knows that men lie
much oftener, than that towns are burned down:--perhaps there is not
one of all those who have reported the fact whose veracity ought to
be considered as absolutely unimpeachable;--some of them deserve
no confidence:--and as for the public prints, they every day admit
narratives that are altogether unfounded.
Scepticism of this sort, on such an occasion, if it be supposable,
could only arise from a degree of mental perversity, not much differing
from insanity. In other words, this amount of evidence is such as
leaves absolutely no room for doubt in a sound mind; nevertheless, the
material of which it is composed--if we may so speak--is in itself
fallible, and as to all the parts of it, if _separately taken_, they
might be rejected.
Or we may take an example or two of another kind.--It has been long
affirmed by voyagers, and on their authority it has been assumed as
certain by the compilers of geographical works, and by the framers of
charts, that, midway in the Pacific Ocean, there are several groups of
inhabited islands. And the people of England, generally, think these
affirmations as certain, as that two and two are four. And yet who does
not know that voyagers are too fond of bringing home tales, invented to
amuse the weariness of a long voyage, and published to win the wonder
of the vulgar, or to turn a penny? Now it may be imagined that some
question of national importance--some argument for the remission of
taxes--depended upon proving that such islands do not exist; and then
let it be supposed that certain interested disputants are permitted to
win the ear of the common people, and to keep it to themselves: in such
a case the proof of this fact--certain as it is, might easily be made
to appear very questionable, or to be altogether unworthy of belief--in
a word, a trick of the Government, contrived to wring money from the
people!
Or again:--It has been affirmed by historians that some two hundred
years ago the Parliament of England quarrelled with their king--levied
war against him--vanquished, and beheaded him, and set up a republican
form of government, in the place of the monarchy. But in proof of
facts so improbable as these we have no better evidence than the
testimony of prejudiced political writers: the whole story rests on the
credit of old books or manuscripts; nor is there one of the writers
who have repeated the narrative that may not be convicted of some
misrepresentation; and some of them are plainly chargeable with many
direct and wilful untruths. Notwithstanding this array of objections,
yet the principal events of the civil war are, in the estimation of all
persons of sound mind, as certainly established as any mathematical
proposition. The same may be said of innumerable facts--much more
remote, or apparently obscure, than those above mentioned; and yet they
are so proved, that they cannot be questioned without doing violence to
common sense.
The difference between the proof obtained by mathematical
demonstration, and that which results from an accumulation of oral or
written testimony, is not--that the latter must always, and _from its
nature_, be less certain than the former; but that the certainty of
the former may be _exhibited_ more readily, and by a simpler and more
compact process, than that of the other. If it were denied that the
three angles of every triangle are equal to two right angles, an actual
measurement of lines, or the placing of two pieces of card one over
the other, would end the dispute in a moment: or even if the problem
were of a more complicated kind, belonging to the higher branches of
mathematical science, and therefore if it were such as could not be
made plain to an uninstructed person, by any means, or to any one by a
very brief process, yet whoever will choose to bestow time enough and
is capable of giving attention enough to the demonstration, will not
fail, at length, to be convinced of its truth; for all the parts of
which it consists are certain, and their connexion, one with another,
is also certain. But the certainty that is obtained from a mass of
testimony, oral or written, does not result from the solidity of the
separate parts, or the firmness of the cement which connects them; but
from the irresistible pressure of the multifarious mass. The strength
of mathematical demonstration is like that of a pier;--the strength of
accumulated testimony is like that of the swelling ocean when its tides
are mantling upon the shore.
II. Facts, remote from our personal knowledge, are not necessarily more
or less certain in proportion to the length of time that has elapsed
since they took place.
An illusion of the imagination, taking its rise, naturally, from the
indistinctness of our individual recollections of infancy, and from
the entire obliteration of many of the records of memory, leads us,
involuntarily, to attach an idea of obscurity, and of uncertainty, to
whatever is remote in time. And besides; if the knowledge of remote
facts has been imperfectly, or suspiciously, transmitted, and if there
be a want of direct evidence on any point of ancient history, then the
distance of time does really decrease the chances of collecting any
_new_ evidence; and therefore such facts must always be shrouded in
uncertainty.
But whatever has been well and sufficiently proved in one age, remains
not less certainly proved in the next, so long as all the evidences
continue in the same state. Indeed--as we have before remarked,
historical evidence often greatly increases in clearness and certainty
by the lapse of time. If in the time of Leo X. it was certain that
Augustus ruled the Roman world sixteen hundred years before that
period, we have no need to deduct anything from our persuasion of the
truth of the fact, on account of the four centuries which have since
elapsed. On the contrary, the proof of it has become much greater, both
in its amount, and in its clearness, now, than it was then.
The proof of the genuineness of books, even if it should not gather
particles of evidence, yet remains, from age to age, unimpaired. Nor
is the proof of the genuineness of modern works more satisfactory,
although it may be more abundant, than that of ancient books. We could
not be persuaded that the Paradise Lost was written in the last century
by some obscure scribbler; nor would it be a whit less absurd to
suppose that the Æneid was composed in the tenth century, or the Iliad
at any time subsequent to the invasion of Greece by Xerxes.
The degree of certainty that is attainable on any point of ancient
history, or literature, is regulated--not by distance of time, but by
the state of the world at the period in question; especially by the
contraction, or the diffusion of general knowledge at that time. This
certainty therefore rises and falls--it becomes bright or obscure,
alternately, from age to age, and it does so quite irrespectively of
distance of years. In sailing up the stream of time, mists and darkness
rest upon the landscape at a comparatively early stage of our progress;
but as we ascend, light breaks upon the scene in the full splendour of
a noonday sun; scarcely an object rests in obscurity, and whatever is
most prominent and important, may be discerned in its minutest parts.
III. The validity of evidence in proof of remote facts is not affected,
either for the better or the worse, by the weight of the consequences
that may happen to depend upon them.
No principle can be much more obviously true than this; and if the
reader chooses to call it a truism, he is welcome to do so: and yet
none is more often disregarded. With the same sort of inconsistency
which impels us to measure the punishment of an offence--not by its
turpitude, but by the amount of injury it may have occasioned, we are
instinctively inclined to think the most slender evidence _good enough_
in proof of a point which is of no importance; while we distrust the
best evidence as if it were feeble, on any occasion when the fact in
question involves great and pressing interests. We are apt to think of
evidence as if it were a cord or a wire, which, though it may sustain a
certain weight, must needs snap with a greater. And yet the slightest
reflection will dissipate a prejudice that is so groundless and absurd.
It is very true that the degree of care, of diligence, and of
attention, with which we examine evidence, may well be proportioned to
the importance of the consequences that are involved in the decision. A
juryman ought indeed to give his utmost attention to testimony that may
sentence a prisoner to a month’s confinement; but if he be open to the
common feelings of humanity, he will exercise a tenfold caution when
life or death is to be the issue of his verdict. This is very proper;
but no one who is capable of reasoning justly would think that, if the
proof of guilt in the former case has been thoroughly examined, and is
quite conclusive, it can become a jot less convincing, if it should be
found that some new interpretation of the law makes the offence capital.
The genuineness of the satires and epistles of Horace is allowed by
all scholars to be unquestionable; and any one who has examined the
evidence in this instance, must call him a mere sophist who should
attempt to raise a controversy on the subject. Would the case be
otherwise than it is, even though the proof of the genuineness of these
writings should overthrow the British constitution; or should make it
the duty of every man to resign his property to his servant?
The evidence of the genuineness and authenticity of the Jewish and
Christian Scriptures has, for no other reason than a thought of the
consequences that are involved in an admission of their truth, been
treated with an unwarrantable disregard of logical equity--and even of
the dictates of common sense. The poems of Anacreon, the tragedies of
Sophocles, the plays of Terence, the epistles of Pliny, are adjudged to
be safe from the imputation of spuriousness, or of material corruption;
and yet evidence ten times greater as to its quantity, variety, and
force, supports the genuineness of the poems of Isaiah, and the
epistles of Paul.
This violation of argumentative equity, in relation to the Scriptures,
has been favoured by the mere circumstance of their having to be
so continually defended. It matters little how impudently false an
imputation may be; the reply, though, in the most absolute sense,
conclusive, is apt to beget almost as much suspicion as it dissipates.
Herein consists the strength of infidel writings;--they call for a
defence of that which is attacked, and this defence seems to imply
that there is a question which may fairly be argued, and that it is in
some degree doubtful. Let the genuineness of the most indubitable of
the classics be boldly questioned in a popular style, and let it be
defended in a form level to the mode of attack--and level also to the
ignorance of the middle and lower orders, and the result would produce
quite as many cases of doubt, as of conviction.
What course ought to be pursued, or which alternative should be
adopted, if a case should arise wherein evidence, intrinsically
good, seems to support a narrative that is palpably incredible,
and contradictory to common sense, is a question that may well be
left undecided until such a case actually presents itself. No such
incongruity weighs against our acceptance of the Jewish and Christian
Scriptures; for the miracles they report, wrought for purposes so wise
and benign, accord with every notion we can antecedently form of the
Divine character and government.
IV. A calculation of actual instances, taken from almost any class of
facts, will prove that a mass of evidence which carries the convictions
of sound minds, is incomparably more often true than false.
Evidence may be spoken of as _good_ if it be such that, after an
ordinary amount of examination, it does not appear to be liable to
suspicion. However much of falsification and of error there may be in
the world, there is yet so great a predominance of truth, that any one
who believes indiscriminately will be in the right a thousand times
to one, oftener, than any one who doubts indiscriminately. Habitual
scepticism will render a man the victim of almost perpetual error.
Indeed, either to believe by habit, or to doubt by habit, must be
regarded as the symptom of a feeble or diseased mind. And yet the
former is vastly more congruous to the actual condition of mankind, and
to the ordinary course of human affairs, and is more safe, and is more
reasonable, than the latter.
No man, unless his mind is verging towards insanity, acts in the daily
occasions of common life on the principles of scepticism; for with such
a rule of action in his head, he must retreat from human society, and
take up his abode in a cavern. Not only is the sceptic an anomalous
being among his fellows, but his scepticism itself is an anomaly in his
own ordinary conduct; it is an insanity on single points, which of all
kinds is the least hopeful of cure.
Adherence to truth is an element of human nature, just as is the love
of kindred: and although the operation of both principles is liable
to interruption, such deviations from the impulses of nature must
always be held to arise from the influence of some specific inducement.
Wilful, difficult, and hazardous falsifications, prompted by no
assignable motive of interest or ambition, if indeed such are ever
attempted, need not be included in a calculation of probabilities.
If, therefore, in listening to a professed narrative of facts, we
have reason to feel secure against the ordinary motives of deliberate
falsehood; and if, on the contrary, the veracity of the narrator is
guaranteed by the circumstances in which he is placed; if, moreover,
his testimony is confirmed by a measure of independent evidence; and if
it is uncontradicted by testimony of equal value; and if the whole case
has been again and again scrupulously examined by persons of every cast
of mind--then, and in such a case, if indeed a remaining possibility of
delusion exists, it is so incalculably small, that to take it up _in
preference_ to the positive evidence, must be accounted an infatuation
arising from folly or perversity.
Let then the rule above mentioned be applied to the existing remains
of ancient literature. Among the works that were brought to light and
printed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there were not a
few--though few in comparison with the whole--which were very soon
discovered to be spurious productions--imitations of the style of
ancient authors. Although at first sight they seemed to possess a claim
to genuineness, they were soon found to be destitute of that external
evidence which may be collected from the quotations of subsequent
writers; or there was a manifest failure in the attempted imitation
of style; or there were oversights, in phrases or allusions, such as
served fully to expose the deception. All these cases stand excluded,
therefore, from the intention of our proposition; for they do not
possess evidence of authenticity that could be spoken of as _seemingly
good_.
Besides works obviously spurious, there were a few of which the claim
to genuineness was good enough to justify controversy, and which
yet find a few advocates among scholars; although the majority of
critics has returned a verdict against them. Now these doubtful works,
inasmuch as their genuineness is not generally acknowledged, may also
be excluded from our proposition; for the evidence in their favour can
barely be called--seemingly good.
Now after exclusions of this kind have been made, no one acquainted
with the evidence that supports the genuineness of the unquestioned
portion of ancient literature, and who has given attention to the
controversies which have been carried on relative to doubtful works,
and who is aware of the assiduity, the acuteness, the learning, the
eager pertinacity of research, that have been brought to bear upon
such questions, will affirm that there are ancient works, generally
supposed by scholars to be genuine, which are in fact spurious. Every
one who is competent to form an opinion on the subject grants, that
even if there be a chance that a few of the classic authors, the
genuineness of which has never been doubted, are after all spurious,
such a chance is incalculably small--it is so small, as to leave
nothing but paradoxes and absurdities in the hands of those who, on
such ground, should attempt to bring them under suspicion.
V. The strength of evidence is not proportioned to its simplicity, or
to the ease with which it may be apprehended by all persons; on the
contrary, the most conclusive kind of proof is often that which is the
most intricate and complicated.
In the mathematical sciences there are many propositions, so simple and
so readily demonstrated, that all to whom they are explained may be
supposed to carry away an equally clear apprehension of their truth;
but the higher departments of these sciences abound with theorems
which, though not in any degree less certain than the simplest axioms,
are shown to be true by means of a process which may require hours,
or even days to work it out. Among those who actually attend to all
the parts of such a process, there will be wide differences in the
kind and degree of conviction that is obtained of the truth of such
propositions. Some, though they may firmly believe the demonstration
to be perfect, as well because they have examined--one by one--the
links of which it consists, as because they know it is assented to
by calculators more competent than themselves, are yet unable, either
from the want of habit, or of capacity, to _comprehend_ the method of
proof; or to perceive distinctly the connexion of the parts, and the
real _oneness_ of the whole. They have walked in the dark over the
ground--groping their way from step to step;--they are satisfied that
they have arrived, by a right path, at a certain point, though they
cannot survey the route.
But another calculator, long practised in the refined modes of abstract
reasoning--expert in leaping with certainty over intervals which others
must slowly pace, and capable, by the vigour and comprehension of his
mind, of retaining his hold of a multitude of particulars, sees the
certainty of such operose demonstrations with as much ease as another
finds in comprehending an elementary proposition. Yet the conclusion
which perhaps not fifty men in Europe can, with full intelligence,
know to be true, is actually as true as the axiom which the schoolboy
comprehends at a glance.
Now all evidence on questions of antiquity, whether the facts be
historical or literary, thus far resembles an operose demonstration
in mathematical science, that it is remote from the intellectual
habits, and extraneous to the usual acquirements, even of well-educated
persons: very far remote, therefore, must it be from the mental range
of the uninstructed classes. The strength of our convictions, as to
matters of fact, remote in time or place, must bear proportion to
the extent and the exactness of our knowledge, and to the consequent
fulness and vividness of our conceptions of that class of objects
to which the question relates. By long and intimate familiarity with
ancient authors, and by an extensive acquaintance with the relics of
antiquity, of all kinds, the imagination of the scholar bears him back
to distant ages, with a full and distinct consciousness of the reality
of those scenes and persons. Nor is this ideal converse with remote
objects like that which is produced by fictitious narratives; for such
excursions of the fancy through unreal regions, are disconnected with
the rest of our ideas and convictions: on the contrary, the ideal
presence of an accomplished mind in the scenes of ancient history is
firmly, and by innumerable ties, combined with the knowledge of present
realities. The imagination does not flit, on the wing of a fantasy,
from the real, to an unreal world; but it tracks its way, with a steady
step, on solid ground, from times present, to times past; and the
intelligent conviction of truth travels up to the farthest point of its
progress.
To those who are thus conversant with history, all facts or
events--literary or historical--if they be satisfactorily attested,
are held in the mind with a firmness of persuasion which cannot, by
any statements, or any reasonings, however conclusive or perspicuous,
be imparted to other minds; because, neither its own powers of
comprehension, nor its variety of knowledge, can be so imparted.