XI PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 413 



charges which he has, afterwards, to admit are 

 erroneous, in language of carefully calculated 

 offensiveness ("Impregnable Kock," pp. 269-70) ; he 

 should not assume that persons with whom he 

 disagrees are so recklessly unconscientious as to 

 evade the trouble of inquiring what has been said 

 or known about a grave question (" Impregnable 

 Rock," p. 273) ; he should not qualify the results of 

 careful thought as "hand-over-head reasoning " 

 (" Impregnable Rock," p. 274) ; he should not, as in 

 the extraordinary propositions which I have just 

 analysed, make assertions respecting his opponent's 

 position and arguments which are contradicted by 

 the plainest facts. 



Persons who, like myself, have spent their 

 lives outside the political world, yet take a mild 

 and philosophical concern in what goes on in it, 

 often find it difficult to understand what our 

 neighbours call the psychological moment of this 

 or that party leader, and are, occasionally; loth to 

 believe in the seeming conditions of certain kinds 

 of success. And when some chieftain, famous in 

 political warfare, adventures into the region of 

 letters or of science, in full confidence that the 

 methods which have brought fame and honour in 

 his own province will answer there, he is apt to 

 forget that he will be judged by these people, on 

 whom rhetorical artifices have long ceased to take 

 effect ; and to whom mere dexterity in putting 



