"As the spectacle of the reeling Helot taught the Spartans sobriety, so his bitterness shall teach me moderation. I know enough of human nature to understand that it is very possible for an angry man—and chagrin and irritation are too legibly written on every page of this article—to be betrayed into gross injustice."

The reader will see from this the difficulty of my position in this controversy. Mr. Martineau, while defending himself, deprecated the profanity of my other opponent, and the atheistic nature of his arguments. He spoke as a bystander, and with the advantage of a judicial position, and it is called "wanton and outrageous." A second writer goes into detail, and exposes some of the garbling arts which have been used against me; it is imputed[4] to ill temper, and is insinuated to be from a spirit of personal revenge. How much less can I defend myself, and that, against untruthfulness, without incurring such imputation! My opponent speaks to a public who will not read my replies. He picks out what he pleases of my words, and takes care to divest them of their justification. I have (as was to be expected) met with much treatment from the religious press which I know cannot be justified; but all is slight, compared to that of which I complain from this writer. I will presently give a few detailed instances to illustrate this. While my charge against my assailant is essentially moral, and I cannot make any parade of charity, he can speak patronizingly of me now and then, and makes his main attacks on my logic and metaphysics. He says, that in writing his first book, he knew no characteristics of me, except that I was "a gentleman, a scholar, and a very indifferent metaphysician" At the risk of encountering yet more of banter and insult, I shall here quote what the third "Prospective Reviewer" says on this topic. (Vol. x. p. 208):—

"Our readers will be able to judge how well qualified the author is to sneer at Mr. Newman's metaphysics, which are far more accurate than his own, or to ridicule his logic. The tone of contempt which he habitually assumes preposterously reverses the relative intellectual status, so far as sound systematic thought is concerned, of the two men."

I do not quote this as testimony to myself but as testimony that others, as well as I, feel the contemptuous tone assumed by my adversary in precisely that subject on which modesty is called for. On metaphysics there is hitherto an unreconciled diversity among men who have spent their lives in the study; and a large part of the endless religious disputes turns on this very fact. However, the being told, in a multitude of ingenious forms, that I am a wretched logician, is not likely to raffle my tranquillity. What does necessarily wound me, is his misrepresenting my thoughts to the thoughtful, whose respect I honour; and poisoning the atmosphere between me and a thousand religious hearts. That these do not despise me, however much contempt he may vent, I know only too well through their cruel fears of me.

I have just now learned incidentally, that in the last number (a supplementary number) of the "Prospective Review," there was a short reply to the second edition of Mr. Rogers's "Defence," in which the Editors officially deny that the third writer against Mr. Rogers is the same as the second; which, I gather from their statement, the "British Quarterly" had taken on itself to affirm.

I proceed to show what liberties my critic takes with my arguments, and what he justifies.

I. In the closing chapter of my third edition of the "Phases," I had complained of his bad faith in regard to my arguments concerning the Authoritative imposition of moral truth from without. I showed that, after telling his reader that I offered no proof of my assertions, he dislocated my sentences, altered their order, omitted an adverb of inference, and isolated three sentences out of a paragraph of forty-six lines: that his omission of the inferential adverb showed his deliberate intention to destroy the reader's clue to the fact, that I had given proof where he suppresses it and says that I have given none; that the sentences quoted as 1,2,3, by him, with me have the order 3, 2,1; while what he places first, is with me an immediate and necessary deduction from what has preceded. Now how does he reply? He does not deny my facts; but he justifies his process. I must set his words before the reader. _(Defence, 2nd ed., p. 85.)

"The strangest thing is to see the way in which, after parading this supposed 'artful dodge,'[5] which, I assure you, gentle reader, was all a perfect novelty to my consciousness,—Mr. Newman goes on to say, that the author of the 'Eclipse' has altered the order of his sentences to suit a purpose. He says: 'The sentences quoted as 1, 2, 3, by him, with me have the order 3, 2, 1.' I answer, that Harrington was simply anxious to set forth at the head of his argument, in the clearest and briefest form, the conclusions[6] he believed Mr. Newman to hold, and which he was going to confute. He had no idea of any relation of subordination or dependence in the above sophisms, as I have just proved them to be, whether arranged as 3, 2, 1, or 1, 2, 3, or 2, 3, 1, or in any other order in which the possible permutations of three things, taken 3 and 3 together, can exhibit them; ex nihilo, nil fit; and three nonentities can yield just as little. Jangle as many changes as you will on these three cracked bells, no logical harmony can ever issue out of them."

Thus, because he does not see the validity of my argument, he is to pretend that I have offered none: he is not to allow his readers to judge for themselves as to the validity, but they have to take his word that I am a very "queer" sort of logician, ready "for any feats of logical legerdemain."

I have now to ask, what is garbling, if the above is not? He admits the facts, but justifies them as having been convenient from his point of view; and then finds my charity to be "very grotesque," when I do not know how, without hypocrisy, to avoid calling a spade a spade.