[BowMAN] FUNDAMENTAL PROCESSES IN HISTORICAL SCIENCE 163 
ments of a record, constitute prima facie evidence that the writer 
of the record had all the opportunities and all the access to infor- 
mation necessary in order to make his record trustworthy. 
2. The requisites for trustworthiness, if exemplified in the 
statement of a record, accredit the writer as an operator who is 
applying the corresponding correct processes for formulating 
trustworthy statements, and therefore, according to the 4th funda- 
mental principle of science, his results, 2.e. the statements in the 
record, must be accepted as correct or trustworthy unless the 
contrary be proven. Prima facie evidence, as above defined, is 
evidence that must prevail unless the contrary be proven: there- 
fore, the requisites for trustworthiness, if exemplified in the state- 
ments of a record, constitute prima facie evidence that the state- 
ments are trustworthy; and since, if statements are trustworthy, 
he who made them must have had all the opportunities and all 
the access to information necessary in order to make them trust- 
worthy, it is a necessary conclusion from the above premises that 
the requisites for trustworthiness, if exemplified in the statements 
of a record, constitute prima facie evidence that the writer of the 
record had all the opportunities and all the access to information 
necessary in order to make his record trustworthy. 
On the foregoing two grounds, the one based on facts found in 
actual intercourse and experience and the other on a fundamental 
scientific principle, the correctness of the 4th applicative principle is 
established as a necessary conclusion. Essentially this principle is in 
fact only a necessary and axiomatic extension of the Ist applicative 
principle, according to which a record exemplifying in its statements 
the requisites for trustworthiness must be accepted as essentially 
trustworthy; for if a record must be accepted as essentially trust- 
worthy, it is a necessary and axiomatic conclusion that the writer 
must have had all the opportunities and all the access to information 
necessary in order to make it so. The especial opportunity that is 
necessary in order to write an essentially trustworthy narrative is 
nearness in time and place, either personally or through trustworthy 
media, to the occurrences narrated; 7.e., the narrator must have been 
himself a participant or eye-witness of the occurrences, or he must 
have access either directly or through trustworthy men to trustworthy 
participants or eye-witnesses, or he must have access to trustworthy 
records of such occurrences. The fact that the requisites for trust- 
worthiness, if exemplified in a narrative, constitute prima facie evi- 
dence that the writer either personally or through trustworthy media, 
had this especial opportunity, does not require especial proof: for by 
| Sec. II., 1912. 11. 
