that twenty millions of human beings did not exist for the gratification of

one.

Now note the effect of what I have called the cumulative method in this passage. Every re-statement is a little stronger than the last. Saint Simon is at first "of all the members of that court the least courtly," and "as nearly an oppositionist as any man of his time." Then a definite statement is made about him: "He neither loved nor respected the King." Then he becomes "one of the most liberal men in France;" and finally, in the last sentence, not only is his liberality more emphatically stated, but his single person is transformed into the plural number and we hear of "bold and independent thinkers" staring and so on. A similar crescendo is observable in the description of the degree of his astonishment at the sentiment; while the sentiment itself, expressed in the first sentence in general terms is at the end paraphrased and thrown at the reader's head in its most concrete and violent form. The effect is superb.

And now to consider the use of this method in the particular case of controversy, turn to the famous essay on Bacon, and especially to the passage where Macaulay is answering the excuses put forward by Lord Verulam's biographer for the philosopher's treachery to his friend and benefactor, Essex.

In order to get rid of the charge of ingratitude, Mr. Montagu attempts to show that Bacon lay under greater obligations to the Queen than to Es

ground; and this Mr. Montagu felt. "What perhaps was her greatest kindness," says he, "instead of having hastily advanced Bacon, she had, with a continuance of her friendship, made him bear the yoke in his youth. Such were his obligations to Elizabeth.

Such indeed they were. Being the son of one of her oldest and most faithful Ministers, being himself the ablest and most accomplished young man of his time, he had been condemned by her drudgery, to obscurity, to poverty. She had depreciated his acquirements. She had checked him in the most imperious manner when in Parliament he ventured to act an inpendent part. She had refused to him the professional advancement to which he had a just claim. To her it was owing that, while younger men, not superior to him in extraction, and far inferior to him in every kind of personal merit, were filling the highest offices of the State, adding manor to manor, rearing palace after palace, he was lying at a sponging-house for a debt of three hundred pounds. suredly if Bacon owed gratitude to Elizabeth, he owed none to Essex. If the Queen really was his best friend, the Earl was his worst enemy. We wonder that Mr. Montagu did not press this argument a little further. He might have maintained that Bacon was excusable in revenging himself on a man who had attempted to rescue his youth from the salutary yoke imposed on it by the Queen, who had wished to advance him hastily, who, not content with attempting to inflict the Attorney-Generalship upon him, had been so cruel as to present him with a landed estate.

As

There you will find the same method but applied with a direct controversial object. He begins by approaching his opponent's argument quietly and with a certain respect as if he were going to treat it seriously. Then he proceeds to exhibit it, first in his opponent's own words, then in words a little stronger and touched with irony. Finally he hacks at it with energy and flings it

away, throwing after it, as one throws a stone, the derisive anger of the last sentence.

That is the method of Macaulay.

Huxley brought to the art of controversy a much bigger brain than Macaulay's and an infinitely wider outlook. Yet his method is Macaulay'sthough with a difference that will be presently noted. It is not difficult to pick out passages from all his controversial essays, passages which in everything but the literary style (which of course is far more lucid and restrained) resemble the passages that I have quoted from Macaulay. For example, in the essay called "The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science" he quotes a religious commentator who from a calculation of the lives of the various early patriarchs draws the conclusion that "the account which Moses gives of the Temptation and the Fall passed through no more than four hands between him and Adam." Here is Huxley's comment

If "the trustworthiness of our Lord Jesus Christ" is to stand or fall with the belief in the sudden transmutation of the chemical components of a woman's body into sodium chloride, or on the "admitted reality" of Jonah's ejection, safe and sound, on the shores of the Levant, after three days' seajourney in the stomach of a gigantic marine animal, what possible pretext can there be for even hinting a doubt as to the precise truth of the longevity attributed to the Patriarchs? Who that has swallowed the camel of Jonah's journey will be guilty of the affectation of straining at such an historical gnat-nay, midge-as the supposition that the mother of Moses was told the story of the Flood by Jacob; who had it straight from Shem; who was on friendly terms with Methuselah; who knew Adam quite well?

In another essay, where he is quoting (with approval) Newman's argument that the miracles of the Church are as easy to believe as those of

Scripture, the death of Arius after the Bishop's prayers to "take him away," is mentioned at first simply as "the death of Arius," then as his death “in the midst of his deadly, if prayerful, enemies," and finally, as "the miraculous slaying of the man who fell short of the Athanasian power of affirming contradictions." This is in the very manner of Macaulay in his best combative form.

Yet an immense gulf separates Huxley from Macaulay, and that gulf is due less to a difference of method than to the difference between the moral and intellectual make-up. Huxley ardently loved and desired the truth

simply because it was the truth. This love and hunger for truth for truth's sake was not only not among Macaulay's many admirable qualities, but was almost in so many words repudiated by him. The latter part of his essay on Bacon is practically a plea for not caring about truth unless it happens to be of immediate use to mankind. The effect of this difference upon their methods is very noticeable. Macaulay is fighting only for immediate victory. He looks for the weak point in his opponent's argument and hammers at it. He does not care very much if a hundred strong points remain unanswered. For his aim is simply to defeat his enemy, and he knows that the effect of defeat is produced if only on one point the opposing pleader is entirely routed. So again he is not much concerned if the counter-theory he sets up is weak and untenable. If you look at his reply to Gladstone, for instance, you will feel at once the contrast between the keenness with which he fastens on and demolishes the weak elements of Gladstone's theory and the easily assailable structure of the counter-theory which he attempts to erect in its place.

Very different is the method of Huxley in controversy (by a curious coin

cidence) with the same man more than half a century later. His aim is not merely to set up a trophy but to conquer a province. Therefore he is not content while a single strong point in his opponent's case remains unanswered or a single weak point in his own undefended. He attacks the weak points of the other side as mercilessly and as successfully as ever Macaulay did. But he engages the enemy all along the line; and he is not content while a single position remains unreduced. He even, in his controversy with Gladstone, suggests objections that he may rebut them, so anxious is he that no loop-hole for escape should remain. He wants his victory to be not only conspicuous but final.

Huxley was fond of attributing (it was his one permanent illusion) this characteristic of his to his pre-occupation with physical science. He was wildly wrong. It was due to a care for the final truth of things, which is a native quality of the mind and has no more to do directly with biology than with coal-mining. Aquinas had it before physical science (in the modern sense) existed. Newman had it, though his studies had lain in an entirely different direction. On the other hand, some of Huxley's scientific colleagues (Haeckel for instance) conspicuously lacked it and argued quite as unfairly as ever Macaulay did, though far less ably.

When we turn to the third name I have mentioned we find ourselves suddenly confronted with an entirely new mode of controversy, so original and so wonderfully successful that it deserves more attention than it seems to have received from writers of criticisms and appreciations of Newman.

Continuing the military metaphor which I have several times used-misleading no doubt in many points but not without its value-I might say that

the difference between Newman and almost all other controversialists is that he is not only a tactician but a strategist. Macaulay, as I have said, tries to break his opponent's line: Huxley tries to defeat him all along the line. In Newman alone do you find an elaborate series of operations, patiently worked out without reference to the temptation of immediate "scoring," and intended to end, so to speak, in the surrounding and obliteration of the enemy. He alone seems to look past the battle to the campaign.

It is of the very nature of this method that it cannot be shown, as I have tried to show the method of Macaulay, by quotation. The ultimate blow when it comes is indeed as smashing or more smashing than the most vigorous strokes delivered by Huxley and Macaulay. But it has always been carefully prepared, and its force really depends upon that preparation.

The best way in which I can illustrate the methods I am trying to describe will perhaps be to take a particular example and follow it out in some detail.

The third of Newman's lectures on "The Present Position of Catholics in England" is devoted to showing the true nature of the traditions upon which Protestant condemnation of the Catholic religion rests, and the flimsy and unreal character of their historical foundation. To this end he takes three instances, with only one of which I am at the moment concerned.

The historian Hallam, in his View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, had remarked that "in the very best view that can be taken of monasteries their existence is deeply injurious to the general morals of the nation," because under their influence men of the highest character "fell implicitly into the snares of crafty priests, who made submission to the

Church not only the condition but the measure of all praise." And to illustrate this fact he proceeds

He is a good Christian, says St. Eligius, a saint of the seventh century, who comes frequently to church, who presents an oblation that it may be offered to God on the altar; who does not taste the fruits of his land till he has consecrated a part of them to God; who can repeat the Creed or the Lord's Prayer. Redeem your souls from punishment, while it is in your power: offer presents and tithes to churches, light candles in holy places, as much as you can afford, come more frequently to church, implore the protection of the saints; for, if you observe these things, you may come with security at the day of judgment to say, "Give unto us, O Lord, for we have given unto Thee!" With such a definition of the Christian character, it is not surprising that any fraud and injustice became honorable, when it contributed to the riches of the clergy and glory of their order.

Now the statement that St. Eligius ever gave "such a definition of the Christian character" is, as will presently be seen, a lie. One can readily imagine with what promptitude and energy Macaulay or Huxley would have pounced upon that lie, how they would have torn it in pieces, and scored heavily by exposing and denouncing it. Not so Newman.

Newman proceeds, while leaving the statement as yet uncontradicted, to point out to the reader that Hallam gives as his reference for that statement Dr. Robertson, the historian of Charles V, and the German Lutheran historian, Mosheim. To Dr. Robertson then Newman turns and quotes him as stating that in the dark ages "the barbarous nations, instead of aspiring to sanctity and virtue, imagined that they satisfied every obligation of duty by scrupulous observance of external ceremonies," and in support of this giving what he calls "one remark

able testimony," namely, the foregoing quotation from St. Eligius, adding what he describes as "the very proper reflection" of Dr. Maclaine, Mosheim's translator: "We see here a large and ample description of the character of a good Christian in which there is not the least mention of the love of God, resignation to His will, obedience to His laws; or of justice, benevolence, and charity towards men."

Newman now turns to a certain Mr. White, an Oxford Professor who, in lecturing on the life and work of Mahomet, remarked that "no representation can convey stronger ideas of the melancholy state of religion in the seventh century than the description of a good Christian as drawn at that period by St. Eligius," and proceeded to quote as before. A further step backward carries him to Archdeacon Jortin, who made the same quotation in his Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, introducing it with the observation that it constitutes "the sum and substance of true religion as it is drawn up for us by Eligius, one of the principal saints of that age."

Newman now takes us to Mosheim himself, who in his Ecclesiastical History, observes that while the religion of the earlier Christian was spiritual, the later ones "placed the substance of religion in external rites and bodily exercises," and proves this by the same quotation.

Now Newman has manoeuvred his guns into position and he proceeds to open fire as follows

Brothers of the Oratory, take your last look at the Protestant Tradition, ere it melts away into thin air from before your eyes. It carries with it a goodly succession of names, Mosheim, Jortin, Maclaine, Robertson, White and Hallam. It extends from 1755 to the year 1833. But in this latter year, when it was now seventy-eight years old, it met with an accident attended with fatal consequences. Some one

for the first time, instead of blindly following the traditional statement, thought it worth while first to consult St. Eligius himself.

He then proceeds to show that the quotation is made up by picking out and putting together odd sentences scattered through a very long sermon, and that the surrounding sentences actually contain those very recommendations to general piety and benevolence which poor St. Eligius had been so vilely abused by Mosheim, Maclaine, Robertson, Jortin, White and Hallam for omitting. Thus: "Wherefore, my brethren, love your friends in God and love your enemies for God, that he who loveth his neighbor has fulfilled the law... he is a good Christian who receives the stranger with joy as though he were receiving Christ Himself ... who gives alms to the poor in proportion to his possessions . . . who has no deceitful balances or deceitful measures... who both lives chastely himself and teaches his neighbors and his children to live chastely and in the fear of God. . . . Keep peace and charity, recall the contentious to concord, avoid lies, tremble at perjury, bear no false witness, commit no theft.

Do as you would be done by... Visit the infirm. . . Seek out those who are in prison." And then St. Eligius adds: "If you observe these things you may appear boldly at God's tribunal in the day of judgment and say, 'Give, Lord, as we have given.'"

Now observe the controversial effect of Newman's superb strategy. He has nailed the particular lie about St. Eligius to the counter as Macaulay or Huxley would have done. But he has done much more than that. By his patient tracing of the tradition, by his careful marshalling of all the authorities that support it, before he smashes it, he has created in the mind of his readers an indelible distrust of all The Oxford and Cambridge Review.

Protestant traditions however venerable and apparently authoritative. The victory is complete. The enemy is simply obliterated; his guns and baggage have fallen into the hands of the victor.

I could give a hundred other instances, did space permit, of this method in Newman's controversial writings. There is that amazingly effective chapter, in The Development of Christian Doctrine, which deals with the early Christians, where the attitude of the Roman world towards the new Faith is carefully delineated and illustrated by numerous quotations from pagan writers, and the reader gets to the end of it without a suspicion of the masked battery which Newman has prepared, until he is suddenly reminded that the accusations which he has been reading are almost word for word the same as those now brought against the Catholic Church. If there be now in the world, says Newman, a form of Christianity which is accused by the world of superstition, insane asceticism, secret profligacy and so on, "then it is not so very unlike Christianity as that same world viewed it when first it came forth from its Divine Founder."

How triumphantly Newman used the method here described is best shown in his famous controversy with Kingsley. In reading the earlier phases of that controversy one is inclined to fancy that Newman is missing points and not taking full advantage of his adversary. But he misses nothing. He has ruthlessly taken every advantage. His guns command every position. And at the end his adversary, surrounded and already doomed, dashes backwards and forwards striving wildly to find somewhere the mercy or the escape which are alike forbidden him. That is what I call great Controversial Strategy.

Cecil Chesterton.