572 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



race is known to have produced. Thucydides has a few hypothetical 

 statements in his introductory discussion of the early state of Greece 

 (Book I, chapters 1-21); but in the remainder of his work, and in the 

 historical writings of Caesar, probable statements, open or veiled, are 

 on the whole, conspicuously absent. If definite proof could be given 

 that their practice in this respect was not scientifically correct, 

 their authority ought not to prevail against the established require- 

 ments of science; but if the scientific requirement and their practice 

 are at one with each other, the example of these intellectual giants, as 

 such, should receive the more serious consideration. 



5. Essential incorrectness. The erratic results produced in in- 

 dividual conclusions where reasoned probability is used as a positive 

 criterion, may be also produced, and cause essential incorrectness, 

 throughout an entire series of conclusions, if the series rests solely on 

 that basis. Ordinarily the correct and incorrect processes of histori- 

 cal science coincide sufficiently (many contemporaneous records being 

 trustworthy, not because they are contemporaneous, but because they 

 exemplify the 5 requisites) to save the present method from a complete 

 fiasco in any extensive series of its results. Where, however, an ex- 

 tensive series of its conclusions is grounded solely upon the prevailing 

 incorrect use of probability, there is no assurance that the entire series 

 will not fall before additions of evidence. A comparatively prominent 

 instance of such a development in the field of historico-literary criti- 

 cism is afforded by the theory of the Homeric poems enunciated in 

 1795 by Wolf, who reduced Homer to the rôle of a compiler. This 

 theory, extended by Lachman, who dropped the notion of a Homer 

 altogether, found wide acceptance. It was based largely on the prob- 

 able ground that the Iliad could not have been composed in a primitive 

 age when writing was unknown. But recent discoveries have shown 

 that Greek society in the time assigned to Homer was by no means 

 primitive, and also that writing was far older in Greece than Wolf 

 supposed. In 1900 a great mass of tablets older than the age of 

 Homer was excavated from the palace of Minos in Crete, amounting 

 to over a thousand inscriptions, in a highly developed linear script, 

 with regular divisions between the words, and for elegance hardly 

 surpassed by any later form of writing. 



