Collected Essays, Volume V | Page 9

in the world ever since, is, and always has been, profoundly interesting; and, considering how recent the really scientific study of that problem, and how great the progress made during the last half century in supplying the conditions for a positive solution of the problem, I cannot doubt that the attainment of such a solution is a mere question of time.
I am well aware that it has lain far beyond my powers to take any share in this great undertaking. All that I can hope is to have done somewhat towards "the preparation of those who have ceased to be contented with the old and find no satisfaction in half measures": perhaps, also, something towards the lessening of that great proportion of my countrymen, whose eminent characteristic it is that they find "full satisfaction in half measures."
T.H.H. HODESLEA, EASTBOURNE, _December 4th, 1893_.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] D.F. Strauss, Der alte und der neue Glaube (1872), pp. 9, 10.
[2] Collected Essays, vol. ii., "On the Origin of Species" (1860).
[3] 1 John iii. 8.
[4] Not necessarily of more than this. A few centuries ago the twelve most intelligent and impartial men to be found in England, would have independently testified that the sun moves, from east to west, across the heavens every day.
[5] Nowhere more concisely and clearly than in Dr. Sutherland Black's article "Gospels" in Chambers's _Encyclop?dia_. References are given to the more elaborate discussions of the problem.
[6] Those who regard the Apocalyptic discourse as a "vaticination after the event" may draw conclusions therefrom as to the date of the Gospels in which its several forms occur. But the assumption is surely dangerous, from an apologetic point of view, since it begs the question as to the unhistorical character of this solemn prophecy.
[7] See p. 287 of this volume.

CONTENTS
PAGE I. PROLOGUE 1 (Controverted Questions, 1892).
II. SCIENTIFIC AND PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM [1887] 59
III. SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE [1887] 90
IV. AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY [1887] 126
V. THE VALUE OF WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS [1889] 160
VI. POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES [1891] 192
VII. AGNOSTICISM [1889] 209
VIII. AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER [1889] 263
IX. AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY [1889] 309
X. THE KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE [1890] 366
XI. ILLUSTRATIONS OF MR. GLADSTONE'S CONTROVERSIAL METHODS [1891] 393

I: PROLOGUE
[Controverted Questions, 1892]
Le plus grand service qu'on puisse rendre �� la science est d'y faire place nette avant d'y rien construire.--CUVIER.
Most of the Essays comprised in the present volume have been written during the last six or seven years, without premeditated purpose or intentional connection, in reply to attacks upon doctrines which I hold to be well founded; or in refutation of allegations respecting matters lying within the province of natural knowledge, which I believe to be erroneous; and they bear the mark of their origin in the controversial tone which pervades them.
Of polemical writing, as of other kinds of warfare, I think it may be said, that it is often useful, sometimes necessary, and always more or less of an evil. It is useful, when it attracts attention to topics which might otherwise be neglected; and when, as does sometimes happen, those who come to see a contest remain to think. It is necessary, when the interests of truth and of justice are at stake. 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. 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 unfairness 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;[8] assuring my honourable adversaries that any heat of which signs may remain was generated, in accordance with the law of the conservation of energy, by the force of their own blows, and has long since been dissipated into space.
But, however the polemical coincomitants of these discussions may be regarded--or better,