ABSTRACT
Most modern documents contain a precise indication of their authorship: in our days, books, newspaper articles, official papers, and even private writings, are, in general, dated and signed. Many ancient documents are anonymous, without date, and have no sufficient indication of their place of origin. The spontaneous tendency of the human mind is to place confidence in the indications of authorship, when there are any. Experience and reflection have shown the necessity of methodically checking the instinctive impulses of confiding trust. The autographs of Vercingetorix, Cleopatra, and Mary Magdalene had been manufactured by Vrain-Lucas. When the internal analysis of a document is carefully performed, it gives us an accurate notion of its authorship. It is praiseworthy, certainly, to react against those who never raise a doubt about the authorship of a document; but it is carrying the reaction too far to take an exclusive interest in periods of history which depend on documents of uncertain authorship.
