单选题 It is a matter worthy of consideration, that the accounts of similar phenomena of culture, recurring in different parts of the world, actually supply incidental proof of their own authenticity. Some years since, a question which brings out this point was put to me by a great historian: "How can a statement as to customs, myths, beliefs, etc., of a savage tribe be treated as evidence where it depends on the testimony of some traveler or missionary, who may be a superficial observer, more or less ignorant of the native language, a careless retailer of unfiltered talk, a man prejudiced or even willfully deceitful?" This question is, indeed, one which we ought to keep clearly and constantly in mind.
Of course we are bound to use our best judgment as to the reliability of all authors we quote, and if possible to obtain several accounts to certify each point in each locality. But it is over and above these measures of precaution that the test of recurrence comes in. If two independent visitors to different countries, say a medieval Mohammedan in Tarytary and a modern Englishman in Dahome, or a Jesuit missionary in Brazil and a Wesleyan in the Fiji Islands, agree in describing some analogous art or rite or myth among the people they have visited, it becomes difficult or impossible to set down such correspondence to accident or willful fraud. A story by someone who lived in the bush of Australia may, perhaps, be objected to as a mistake or an invention, but did a Methodist minister in Guinea conspire with him to cheat the public by telling the same story there? The possibility of intentional or unintentional mystification is often barred by such a state of things as that a similar statement is made in two remote lands, by.two witnesses, of whom A lived a century before B, and B appears never to have heard of A. How distant are the countries, how wide apart the dates, how different the creeds and characters of the observers, in the catalogue of facts of civilisation, needs no farther showing to any one who will even glance at the footnotes of the present work. And the more odd the statement, the less likely that several people in several places should have made it wrongly. This being so, it seems reasonable to judge that the statements are in the main truly given, and that their close and regular coincidence is due to the accidental occurrence of similar facts in various districts of culture.

单选题 Which of the following statements best retell the ideas of the sentence "It is a matter ... their own authenticity"?

单选题 According to the author, the chief difference between the two pairs of people (in paragraph 2) lies in

单选题 According to the text, the historian's remarks served, functionally, chiefly as

单选题 When we want to cite other people's conclusions, we tend to be

单选题 Which of the following is true of the main idea of the text?