286. The two processes deal with distinct classes of phenomena, the one with distributions of external attestation, the other with internal characteristics. The former simply registers in what company a given document is or is not found, with reference to certain well marked assemblages constantly recurring and having a conspicuously ancient origin: the latter deduces from those variations which on internal grounds afford clear presumptions the quality of the texts attested by the various groups into which a given document enters, and thus ultimately the quality of the document itself as a whole. The results of the former process are brought into comparison with those of the latter by a similar but independent deduction of the texts of the observed assemblages of documents. To a certain limited extent the materials in this case are identical with those employed in the latter process, for the various Syrian, Western, and Alexandrian assemblages are included among the numerous groups. But this partial coincidence does not materially impair the independence of the two processes, at least as regards any mixed or any approximately neutral document; for among the variations from which the character of, let us say, the Western text is deduced there will be found many in which each of the mixed documents now in question stands in opposition to the Western reading; and again many groupings, which by the ascertained quality of their texts go to shew the quality of a given document included in them all, are of too ambiguous composition to be used as evidence of the character of the Western or other assemblages. Thus the correspondence between the results of the two modes of investigating the groups containing א and B, and again those containing Β with-
