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286 facts its proper use and rank. All that has been said in the intervening pages has been an attempt to translate into language the experience which we have gradually gained in endeavouring to fulfil that aim.

373. There is no royal road to the ascertainment of the true texts of ancient writings. Investigation of the history and character of documentary ancestries would indeed be out of place for the text of the New Testament if the documentary evidence were so hopelessly chaotic that no difference of authority could carry much weight as between readings all having some clearly ancient attestation. The consequent necessity of always judging chiefly by Internal Evidence of Readings would undeniably save much labour. But it would introduce a corresponding amount of latent uncertainty. The summary decisions inspired by an unhesitating instinct as to what an author must needs have written, or dictated by the supposed authority of 'canons of criticism' as to what transcribers must needs have introduced, are in reality in a large proportion of cases attempts to dispense with the solution of problems that depend on genealogical data. Nor would there be a material increase of security by the assignment of some substantial weight to documentary evidence, so long as it were found or thought necessary to deal with each passage separately, and to estimate the balance of documentary evidence by some modification of numerical authority, without regard either to genealogical affinities as governing the distribution of attestation or to the standard of purity which this or that document or group of documents habitually attains. Under all these circumstances the absence or neglect of the most essential kinds of textual evidence would leave a real precariousness of text which could be avoided only