at the point where Genealogical method finally ceases to be applicable, since no independent documentary evidence remains to be taken up. Whatever variations survive at this ultimate divergence must still stand as undecided variations. Here therefore we are finally restricted to the Internal Evidence of single or grouped Documents and Readings, aided by any available external knowledge not dependent on Genealogy.
F. 73–76. Variable use of genealogy according to unequal preservation of documents
73. The proper method of Genealogy consists, it will be seen, in the more or less complete recovery of the texts of successive ancestors by analysis and comparison of the varying texts of their respective descendants, each ancestral text so recovered being in its turn used, in conjunction with other similar texts, for the recovery of the text of a yet earlier common ancestor. The preservation of a comparatively small number of documents would probably suffice for the complete restoration of an autograph text (the determination of the earliest variations of course excepted) by genealogy alone, without the need of other kinds of evidence, provided that the documents preserved were adequately representative of different ages and different lines of transmission. This condition however is never fulfilled. Texts are not uncommonly preserved in a considerable assemblage of documents the genealogy of which can be fully worked out, but is found to conduct to one or two originals which, for all that appears to the contrary, may be separated from the autograph by many ages of transmission, involving proportionate possibilities of corruption. Here Genealogical method retains its relative value, for it reduces within narrow limits the amount of variation which need occupy an editor when he comes to the construction of his text:
