SECTION IV. INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF GROUPS
77, 78
77. We have reserved for this place the notice of another critical resource which is in some sense intermediate between Internal Evidence of Documents and Genealogical Evidence, but which in order of discovery would naturally come last, and the value of which will have been made more apparent through the inherent and the incidental defects of Genealogical Evidence described in the preceding paragraphs. This supplementary resource is Internal Evidence of Groups. In discussing Internal Evidence of Documents, we spoke only of single documents: but the method itself is equally applicable to groups of documents. Just as we can generalise the characteristics of any given MS by noting successively what readings it supports and rejects, (each reading having previously been the subject of a tentative estimate of Internal Evidence of Readings, Intrinsic and Transcriptional,) and by classifying the results, so we can generalise the characteristics of any given group of documents by similar observations on the readings which it supports and rejects, giving special attention to those readings in which it stands absolutely or virtually alone. In texts where mixture has been various, the number of variations affording trustworthy materials for generalisations as to any one group can be only a part of the sum total of variations; but that part will often be amply sufficient. The evidence obtained in this manner is Internal Evidence, not Genealogical. But the validity of the inferences depends on the genealogical principle that community of reading implies community of origin. If we find, for instance, in any group of documents a succession of readings
