greater part
of the documents which have been written have been lost, and the greater
part of the events which happen are not recorded in writing. In the
majority of cases the argument would be invalid. It must therefore be
restricted to the cases where the conditions implied in it have been
fulfilled.

(1) It is necessary not only that there should be now no documents in
existence which mention the fact in question, but that there should
never have been any. If the documents are lost we can conclude nothing.
The argument from silence ought, therefore, to be employed the more
rarely the greater the number of documents that have been lost; it is of
much less use in ancient history than in dealing with the nineteenth
century. Some, desiring to free themselves from this restriction, are
tempted to assume that the lost documents contained nothing interesting;
if they were lost, say they, the reason was that they were not worth
preserving. But the truth is, every manuscript is at the mercy of the
least accident; its preservation or destruction is a matter of pure
chance.

(2) The fact must have been of such a kind that it could not fail to be
observed and recorded. Because a fact has not been recorded it does not
follow that it has not been observed. Any one who is concerned in an
organisation for the collection of a particular species of facts knows
how much commoner those facts are than people think, and how many cases
pass unnoticed or without leaving any written trace. It is so with
earthquakes, cases of hydrophobia, whales stranded on the shore.
Besides, many facts, even those which are well known to those who are
contemporary with them, are not recorded, because the official
authorities prevent their publication; this is what happens to the
secret acts of governments and the complaints of the lower classes. This
silence, which proves nothing, greatly impresses unreflecting
historians; it is the origin of the widespread sophism of the "good old
times." No document relates any abuse of power by officials or any
complaints made by peasants; therefore, everything was regular and
nobody was suffering. Before we argue from silence we should ask: Might
not this fact have failed to be recorded in any of the documents we
possess? That which is conclusive is not the absence of any document on
a given fact, but silence as to the fact in a document in which it would
naturally be mentioned.

The negative argument is thus limite