284 THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENCE. 



A good instance of this method is furnished by the 

 agreement of numerical statements with the truth. Thus, 



D 



in a manuscript of Diodorus Siculus, as Dr. Young states g , 

 the ceremony of an ancient Egyptian funeral is described 

 as requiring the presence of forty-two persons sitting in 

 judgment on the merits of the deceased, and in many 

 ancient papyrus rolls the same number of persons are 

 found delineated. The probability is but slight that Dio- 

 dorus, if inventing his statements or writing without 

 proper information, would have chosen such a number as 

 forty-two, and though there are not the data for an exact 

 calculation, Dr. Young considers that the probability in 

 favour of the correctness of the manuscript and the 

 veracity of the writer on this ground alone, is at least 

 100 to i. 



It is exceedingly probable that the ancient Egyptians 

 had exactly recorded the eclipses occurring during long 

 periods of time, for Diogenes Laertius mentions that 373 

 solar and 832 lunar eclipses had been observed, and the 

 ratio between these numbers exactly expresses that which 

 would hold true of the eclipses of any long period, of 

 say 1 200 or 1300 years, as estimated on astronomical 

 grounds h . 



It is evident that an agreement between small numbers, 

 or customary numbers, such as seven, one hundred, a 

 myriad, &c., is much more likely to happen from chance, 

 and therefore gives much less presumption of dependence. 

 If two ancient writers spoke of the sacrifice of oxen, they 

 would in all probability describe it as a hecatomb, and 

 there would be nothing remarkable in the coincidence. 



On similar grounds, we must inevitably believe in the 

 human origin of the flint flakes so copiously discovered of 

 late years. For though the accidental stroke of one stone 



g Young's 'Works,' vol. ii. pp. 18, 19. 



11 ' History of Astronomy,' Library of Useful Knowledge, p. 14. 



