INTRODUCTION. HEAD VI. OF THE PROOF BY NAMES.

×It were premature, in the present stage of the inquiry, to do more than indicate, with such brevity as the subject admits, the distinction upon which the proof by names, as I conceive it, depends; and I shall endeavour to show, from a single instance and from the method of a single writer, that a name which is preserved is a testimony, and that a name which is recovered is a conjecture, and that the discredit which has fallen upon the proof is the consequence of the second having been entered in the place of the first.¹ The instance is the name of Chus, as Josephus gives it; the writer is Mr. Bryant, whose design I have no hesitation in saying that I regard with more sympathy than any other which has been proposed, and from whose method I differ upon a point which it will be my business to specify. NB-06-009

×Josephus, in speaking of the four sons of Ham, observes that "time has not at all hurt the name of Chus"; for the Ethiopians, over whom he reigned, are even at this day, both by themselves and by all men in Asia, called Chusites.² The testimony, it is to be remarked, is of a peculiar kind. It does not say that a word of the Greeks resembles the name of Chus, nor that a derivation has been found for it; it says that the people answer to the name in their own mouths, and in the mouths of their neighbours, and that they have so answered from the time of the patriarch to the writer's own. No etymology is required to find such a name, and none is offered; it is found where it was left, and it is entered, accordingly, as a testimony. The same writer adds, in the same place, that the memory of the Mesraites is preserved in their name, which is of the same kind, and which I reserve for the head in which the sons of Ham are treated.³ NB-06-009

×The method of Mr. Bryant is of another kind, as appears from the Preface to the Analysis (the work on mythology), in which he proposes, "to divest mythology of every foreign and unmeaning ornament," and to shew that all the rites and mysteries of the Gentiles were only so many memorials of their principal ancestors, and of the great occurrences to which they had been witnesses; and he affirms that the Greeks had perverted ancient terms, and that the only way of obtaining an insight must be by an etymological process, and by recurring to the primitive language of the people concerning whom he treats.⁴ Of the purpose I make no complaint, the fault being in the logic of the means; for if every word of the Greeks which resembles the name of a patriarch is to be taken for that name perverted, the resemblance is made at once the ground of the identification and the proof of it, which is to suppose beforehand what the argument is designed to prove. The Greeks, in his own instance, are said to have rendered Chus by a word like their word for gold, and the places named from him to have been turned into Chruse and Chrusopolis; and these derivations, which rest upon nothing but the likeness of the sounds, are such as no sound could refuse, and such as no sound could confirm.⁵ NB-06-009 NB-06-031

×The word upon which the method depends is the word "all". That some of the rites of the Gentiles were memorials of ancestors I do not doubt; that every rite and mystery of the Gentiles was one is a proposition which is to be tried name by name, and not to be taken from a preface; and it is to be inquired whether the great occurrences, to which the rites are said to refer, are in truth the same in every nation, or are made the same by the manner in which the names are brought to agree.⁶ A writer who has resolved beforehand that the whole of the heathen worship is memorial will find a memorial in every name; and a name so found, having been found by the supposition, can be no evidence for it. The abuse of the method is thus seen to be the consequence, not of the proof by names, which is capable of a stricter use, but of the word by which it was extended beyond the testimony. NB-06-031

×The view which I propose, as at present sketched, is that a name which is preserved in the mouths of a people, and which needs no etymology to be found, is a testimony of a very different order from a name which is recovered by the comparison of syllables; that names so recovered are to be entered as conjectures, and names so preserved as testimony; and that the proof by names, when it is confined to the former, and admits the latter only as confirmation, is entitled to the rank of a proof. The name of Chus, as preserved in the Chusites, is of the first kind; the Greek word for gold, if it be indeed a rendering of that name, is of the second, and the question whether it is so is left open. I do not say that the second kind is without value, nor that it may not be admitted as confirmation where the first is already secured; I say only that it is not to be made the foundation, and that a derivation which no sound can refuse is not confirmed by any sound. The application of the distinction to the several names is reserved to the heads in which they occur, and in particular to those of the first Book.⁷ NB-06-009 NB-06-031

×It may be objected, in the first place, that the distinction is a refinement, and that no name is preserved without some corruption, so that the preserved and the recovered differ in degree and not in kind; to which I answer that the difference is not in the degree of corruption but in the source of the evidence, a name which is preserved being known from the mouths of those who bear it, and a name which is recovered from the comparison of the names of others. It may be objected, in the second place, that the instance of Josephus is a single one, and that a single instance does not make a method; to which I answer that I offer it as an instance of the kind, and that the kind is to be found in other places, of which the Chusites are not the only example. It may be objected, in the third place, that in confining the proof to the preserved name I deprive it of the greater part of its force, since the names which are preserved are few; to which I answer that this is so, and that it is better that the proof should be small and sure than great and unsound. And it may be objected, lastly, that Mr. Bryant's purpose, which I have myself approved, cannot be accomplished without the method which I reject; to which I answer that this is the very question, and that it is to be determined, not by the importance of the purpose, but by the sufficiency of the means; and the objection, with others which may be urged with less force, will be considered at greater length under the several heads.⁸ NB-06-009 NB-06-031