CHAPTER XIII.
ON THE STATE OF THE CANON IN THE LAST QUARTER OF THE SECOND CENTURY.
I should not be very much surprised if the general reader who may have followed our enquiry so far should experience at this point a certain feeling of disappointment.

If he did not know beforehand something of the subject-matter that was to be enquired into, he might not unnaturally be led to expect round assertions, and plain, pointblank, decisive evidence.

Such evidence has not been offered to him for the simple reason that it does not exist.

In its stead we have collected a great number of inferences of very various degrees of cogency, from the possible and hypothetical, up to strong and very strong probability.

Most of our time has been taken up in weighing and testing these details, and in the endeavour to assign to each as nearly as possible its just value.
It could not be thought strange if some minds were impatient of such minutiae; and where this objection was not felt, it would still be very pardonable to complain that the evidence was at best inferential and probable.
An inference in which there are two or three steps may be often quite as strong as that in which there is only one, and probabilities may mount up to a high degree of what is called moral or practical certainty.