Transactions of the American Philological Association, Vol. 24
1893 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Transactions of the American Philological Association, Vol. 24: 1893

The object of this paper may be defined as an attempt to lay down certain canons of textual criticism, and to apply them to and illustrate them from the text of a single author, - Plautus.

If textual criticism is to become something more than the amusement of an idle hour; if we are to avoid the danger which sometimes seems to threaten us that the multiplication of light-hearted emendations will ultimately result in the disintegration of the classical authors, our schools being saddled with a multitude of texts, each differing from the other and showing a constantly increasing tendency to diverge, - it is imperatively necessary to find a method which offers something like a promise of a consensus of opinion. Such a method cannot be anything less than scientific; it must be analogous to the methods by which the great results of chemistry or physics or other "exact" sciences have been achieved, and, like them, it must depend on evidence, and not on authority. Science is a great unifier.

But salvation is to be found neither in "slashing surgery" nor in a childlike faith in the plenary inspiration of MSS.

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