B. 54—37. Genealogy and Number
54. It is hardly necessary to point out the total change in the bearing of the evidence here made by the introduction of the factor of genealogy. Apart from genealogy, the one MS becomes easily overborne by the nine; and it would be trusted against their united testimony only when upheld by strong internal evidence, and then manifestly at great risk. But if it is found that the nine had a common original, they sink jointly to a numerical authority not greater than that of the one; nay rather less, for that one is known absolutely, while the lost copy is known only approximately. Where for want of sufficiently clear evidence, or for any other reason, the simplification of pedigree cannot be carried thus far, still every approximation to an exhibition of their actual historical relations presents them in a truer light for the purposes of textual criticism than their enumeration in their existing form as so many separate units. It enables us on the one hand to detect the late origin and therefore irrelevance of some part of the prima facie documentary evidence, and on the other to find the rest of it already classified for us by the discovered relations of the attesting documents themselves, and thus fitted to supply trustworthy presumptions, and under favourable circumstances much more than presumptions, as a basis for the consideration of other classes of evidence.
55. It would be difficult to insist too strongly on the transformation of the superficial aspects of numerical authority thus effected by recognition of Genealogy. In the crude shape in which numerical authority is often presented, it rests on no better foundation than a vague transference of associations connected with majorities of voices, this
