CUMULATIVE (The Argument).—An argument gaining in force by increase of evidence and of reasons as it advances, each new point having additional testimony for the conclusion. Its strength does not lie in the connection of the points with each other, but simply in their sum. For example, «the proof of a Divine agency is not a conclusion which lies at the end of a chain of reasoning, of which chain each instance of contrivance is only a link, and of which, if one link fail, the whole fails; but it is an argument separately supplied by every separate example. An error in stating an example affects only that example. The argument is cumulative in the fullest sense of that term. The eye proves it without the ear, the ear without the eye » (Paley, Nat. Theol., ch. VI.).
