National Repository.
We see then how absolutely necessary for archaeology and ethnology it is to have a National Repository, where the cost of space shall never be detrimental to the collection. I need not enter on the details of how such a repository could be carried out, as I have fully discussed them at the British Association, and the Society of Arts (see Jour. S. A. No. 2, 478, price 6d.); but an outline of the conditions and cost will shew the practicability of the proposal. All objects of value to a thief should be kept in the strong custody of city museums; but the great majority of specimens that should be preserved are too bulky or too unsaleable to be stolen, beside casts which no one would steal, and such do not, therefore, need more than general supervision. A square mile of land, within an hour’s journey from London, should be secured; and built over with uniform plain brickwork and cement galleries, at the rate of 20,000 square feet a year, so providing 8 miles of galleries 50 feet wide in a century, with room yet for several centuries of expansion at the same rate. A staff of about 30 persons would suffice to arrange the new material at this rate; and having abundant space, no time would be wasted by frequent shifting of old material. Everything should be photographically registered as it came in. Glass should be placed over all objects which can deteriorate; but the amount of dirt would be a minimum in the country, and with the air-supply filtered from dust.
The total cost of land, building, materials, and staff would be covered by a budget of £10,000 a year. And this is the normal increase of the British Museum budget every four years. Hence if the British Museum were to find room by clearing out objects which are not liable to be stolen, for a few years, and placing them in the Repository, the cost of the Repository would be paid for to all time. A mere retardation of growth of the British Museum for five or ten years would entirely make up for the cost of the Repository twenty times its size. That this provision is perfectly practicable is not denied; that it would be far cheaper than continued expansion in highly expensive conditions is certain; and that it is essential for the growth of archaeology and ethnology is sadly obvious. Let us hope that if we are too hide-bound in England to grasp the new conditions of research, that at least in America some one will provide such a storehouse for all time; where some day the history of the world may be studied, when we have hopelessly lost the chance of preserving what might at present be had for the asking. If we are to make up our minds to ignore and lose what is now being lost and destroyed every year owing to our ignorance and blindness, we must look to the New World to rescue from our misuse the material we now throw away, and so preserve the history of mankind.
CHAPTER XII
ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE
Nature of proof.
The nature of proof is more complex than it seems to be at first sight. True enough, all proof is merely a matter of common sense; it does not appeal to any different faculty. And though a proof may follow as simply as possible from the facts, yet it cannot be understood by one who is not familiar with the facts to begin with. Trigonometry is the most obvious common sense to any one familiar with the formulae; and the formulae themselves are only common sense to any one who takes the trouble to argue them through. Yet, for all that, trigonometry is not obvious to the ignorant. In the same way the evidences about the past of man are simple and clear when the facts and methods from which they are deduced are already known. Yet it requires a good familiarity with the material before the conclusions can be felt to be self-evident results.
Legal evidence.
To follow clearly what evidence and proof means, it is best to refer to a class of evidence which is most familiar to the reader. What is commonly called legal evidence is the best-known example, as it is met every day in law cases and police reports. Evidence is based on the same principles, in whatever subject it may be; there is not one logic for the present, and a different logic for the past. But the kind of evidence, the exactitude, the certainty, which is considered enough to determine a property or a life, is rightly looked on as conclusive for all reasonable purposes. The laws of such evidence have been threshed over for generations past; and it is well known what kind of proofs may be relied upon, and what are dubious. If we then compare this class of evidence with that which we accept in studying the past history of man, we shall see more clearly what kinds of proof are admissible, and how far it is reasonable to depend upon our results.
In examining legal evidence we see that it all falls under one of four heads—(1) witnesses, (2) material objects, (3) exhaustion, and (4) probabilities. These four kinds of evidence are of very different values; any one of them may be stronger than the others in a given case, and each kind has its own special weakness.