THE ANTIQUITIES OF FREEMASONRY.
5
"We
have without hesitation repuLanguage and Literature of Ancient Greece" observes:
diated the hypercritical doctrine of a modern school of classical antiquaries, that in no case
whatever is the reality of any event or person to be admitted unless it can be authenticated
by contemporaneous written evidence. If this dogmatical rule be valid at all, it must be valid
to the extent of a condemnation of nearly the whole primitive annals of Greece down to the
The more rational principle
first rise of authentic history about the epoch of the Persian War.
of research
tradition
is,
that the historical critic
by the standard
speculative argument
entitled to test the truth or falsehood of national
is
The general grounds
of speculative historical probability.
of such
in favour of an element of truth in oral tradition admit of being ranged
Fvnl, The comparative recency of the age in which the event
transmitted is supposed to have taken place, and the proportionally limited number of stages
Secondly, The inherent probability of the event, and,
through which the tradition has passed.
under the following heads
more
:
any such close connection in tlie ratio of cause and effect
and some other more recent and better attested event, as might warrant the
inference, even apart from the tradition on the subject, that the one was the consequence of
the other.
Tliirdly, The presumption that, although the event itself may not have enjoyed the
especially, the existence of
between
it
which the tradition
benefit of written transmission, the art of writing was, at the period from
dates, suflBciently prevalent to check, in regard to the
history, that licence in
to indulge."
The
which the popular organs of
more prominent
vicissitudes of national
tradition in a totally illiterate age
ai-e
apt
^
principle to be observed in inquiries of this character appears, indeed,
up
to a certain
have been best laid down by Dr Taylor, who says " A notion may weigh against a
notion, or one hypothesis may be left to contend with another but an hypothesis can never
be permitted, even in the slightest degree, to counterbalance either actual facts, or direct
point, to
:
;
inferences from such facts.
This preference of facts and of direct inductions to hypotheses,
however ingenious or specious they may be, is the great law of modern science, which none
but dreamers attempt to violate.
Now, the rules of criticism and the laws of historical
evidence are as
much
from a mass of
facts."
matters of science as any other rules or laws derived by careful induction
^
In the main, however, whilst carefully discarding the
which our masonic system
given expression
is
is
encumbered, I
we shaU do
the one that
an invariable maxim to follow
am
plaitily fabulous
of opinion that the view to
He
well to adopt.
historical tradition,
and
"
says
to hold fast
:
I
narrations with
which Schlegel has
have laid
it
down as
when
by that clue, even
things in the testimony and declarations of tradition appear strange and almost inexfor as soon as, in the investigations of ancient history, we let
plicable, or at least enigmatical
many
;
slip that
thread of Ariadne,
we can
iiud
the chaos of clashing opinions." *
"
The origin and source whence
A
'
W. Mure,
^
Isaac Taylor,
Critical History of the
The Process
no outlet from the labyrinth of fanciful theories and
first
sprang the institution of Freemasonry," says
Dr
Language and Literature of Ancient Greece, 1853, vol. iv., pp. 317, 318.
In another part of this work (p. 202) the author
says
of Historical Proof, 1S2S, p. 3.
:
" Our
part is to scrutinise as carefully as we can the validity of the proofs not to weigli the probability of the facts— a
task to which we can scarcely ever be competent." The last branch of this definition carries us a little farther than we
;
can safely go.
2
F. von Schlegel, Philosophy of History
(tr.
by
J. B.
Robertson, 1835), vol.
i.,
p. 29.