The paradox is more formidable in appearance than
in reality, and has plenty of analogies in daily life. In a trialor lawsuit the jury's verdict is mainly based upon the evidence of
the witnesses; but that does not prevent the jury from making upits mind, from the evidence in general, that one or more witnesses
have been guilty of perjury and that their evidence is to bedisregarded. It is quite possible to elicit from the general
testimony of MSS. a rule of sufficient certainty to convict offalsehood their exceptional testimony, or of sufficient
probability to throw doubt upon it. But that exceptional testimonymust in each case be considered. It must be recognised that there
are two hypotheses between which we have to decide: the questionis whether the exceptions come from the author, and so break down
the rule, or whether they come from the scribe, and are to becorrected by it: [81] and in order to decide this we must keep oureyes open for any peculiarity which may happen to characterise
them.
One of the forms which lack of thought has assumed
in textual criticism is the tendency now prevailing, especiallyamong some Continental scholars, to try to break down accepted
rules of grammar or metre by the mere collection and enumerationof exceptions presented by the MSS. Now that can never break down
a rule: the mere number of exceptions is nothing; what matters istheir weight, and that can only be ascertained by classification
and scrutiny. If I had noted down every example which I have met,I should now have a large collection of places in Latin MSS. where
the substantive
orbis , which our grammars and
dictionaries declare to be masculine, has a feminine adjectiveattached to it. But I do not therefore propose to revise that rule
of syntax, for examination would show that these examples, thoughnumerous, have no force. Most of them are places where the sense
and context show that
orbis , in whatever case
or number it may be, is merely a corruption of the correspondingcase and number of
urbs ; and in the remaining
places it is natural to suppose that the scribe has beeninfluenced and confused by the great likeness of the one word to
the other. Or again, read Madvig,
Adu. Crit. , vol. I, book i,
chap. iv, where he sifts the evidence for the opinion that theaorist infinitive can be used in Greek after verbs of saying and
thinking in the sense of the future infinitive or of the aoristinfinitive with
ά̕ν{an}. The list of examples in the MSS. is very long
indeed; but the moment you begin to sort them and examine them youare less struck by their umber than by the restriction of their
extent. Almost all of them are such as
δέξασθαι{dexasthai} used for
δέξεσθαι{dexesthai} where the two forms differ by one letter only; a
smaller number are such as
ποιη̑σαι{poiesai} for
ποιήσειν{poiesein} where the difference, though greater, is still slight; others are
examples like
ή̔κισταἀναγκαασθη̑ναι{ekist' anagkasthenai} for
ή̔κισττ’ά̕νἀναγκασθη̑ναι{ekist' an anagkasthenai}, where again the difference is next to nothing. Now if the MSS. are
right in these cases, and the Greek authors did use this [82]construction, how are we to explain this extraordinary limitation
of the use? There is no syntactical difference between the firstand second aorist: why then did they use the 1st aorist so often
for the future and the 2nd aorist so seldom? why did they say
δέξασθαι{dexasthai} for
δέξεσθαι{dexesthai} dozens of times and
λαβει̑ν{labein} for
λήψεσθαι{lepsesthai} never? The mere asking of that question is enough to show the true
state of the case. The bare fact that the aorists thus used in theMSS. are aorists of similar
form to the
future, while aorists of dissimilar form are not thus used, provesthat the phenomenon has its cause in the copyist's eye and not in
the author's mind, that it is not a variation in grammatical usagebut an error in transcription. The number of examples is nothing;
all depends upon their character; and a single example of
λαβει̑ν{labein} in a future sense would have more weight than a hundred of
δέξασθαι{dexasthai}
