160 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
therefore, according to the 4th fundamental principle, one is 
required as a reasonable man to accept the results of the writer, 1.e. 
the statements in such single record, as correct unless the contrary 
be proven: 7.e., corroboration by other records is not necessary 
before such statements are accepted as correct, but on the con- 
trary, disproof is necessary before they dare be rejected as in- 
correct. 
7. In the 2d applicative principle it is established that 
where a record is accepted as essentially trustworthy because it 
-exemplifies in its statements the requisites for trustworthiness, 
this acceptance is grounded on necessary reasons shown, and 
hence no single statement in such a record dare be stamped as 
erroneous, 7.e., be impugned, save for a necessary cause shown. 
Therefore, in the case of a single record exemplifying the requisites 
for trustworthiness, if the evidence which we have (7.e., the exem- 
plification of the requisites for trustworthiness in the single record 
available) establishes the essential trustworthiness of such record 
as a necessary conclusion, then the absence of a corroborating 
record cannot be a necessary cause for impugning the statements 
of the single record either separately or in the aggregate; but on 
the contrary the lack of such evidence is no ground for impugnment 
at all. 
On the foregoing seven grounds, some of them based on the example 
and facts found in actual intercourse and experience and others on 
fundamental and established scientific principles, the correctness of the 
3d applicative principle is established as a necessary conclusion. 
Although any one of these grounds should suffice to establish this 
principle, the entire seven have been enumerated on account of the 
importance of the point in question. With some a doubt exists whether 
the essential trustworthiness of any record which is the sole evidence of 
the events that it narrates can be satisfactorily established; and by 
others it is even held that individual features in a series of events, 
if such features be mentioned by but one of several parallel records, 
must be discarded as unproven. In the study and writing of history, 
more instead of less scepticism is, indeed, the paramount need of the 
time: and, regarding some fields, at least, of criticism it must be 
admitted that the salvation of history as a science depends on the 
recognition and observance of the fundamental principle that in 
historical as in all other scientific research only necessary conclusions 
dare be fully accepted. If, therefore, the uniform rejection of every 
historical record which is the sole evidence of the events that it narrates 
would practically blanket extensive and important periods of the past 
