2 PROLOGUE 1 



when the interests of truth and of justice are at 

 stake. C It is an evil, in so far as controversy 

 always tends to degenerate into quarrelling, to 

 swerve from the great issue of what is right and 

 what is wrong to the very small question of who 

 is right and who is wrong.J I venture to hope 

 that the useful and the necessary were more 

 conspicuous than the evil attributes of literary 

 militancy, when these papers were first published ; 

 but I have had some hesitation about reprinting 

 them. If I may judge by my own taste, few 

 literary dishes are less appetising than cold 

 controversy ; moreover, there is an air of unfair- 

 ness about the presentation of only one side of 

 a discussion, and a flavour of unkindness in the 

 reproduction of " winged words/' which, however 

 appropriate at the time of their utterance, would 

 find a still more appropriate place in oblivion. 

 Yet, since I could hardly ask those who have 

 honoured me by their polemical attentions to 

 confer lustre on this collection, by permitting me 

 to present their lucubrations along with my own ; 

 and since it would be a manifest wrong to them to 

 deprive their, by no means rare, vivacities of 

 language of such justification as. they may derive 

 from similar freedoms on my part ; I came to the 

 conclusion that my best course was to leave the 

 essays just as they were written ; l assuring my 



1 With a few exceptions, which are duly noted when they 

 amount to more than verbal corrections. 



