Mr. Huxley, exercising his rapid judgment on the text, does
not appear to have encumbered himself with the labour of
inquiring what anybody else had known or said about it. He
has thus missed a point which might have been set up in
support of his accusation against our Lord. (P. 273.)
Unhappily for my conduct, I have been much exercised in controversy
during the past thirty years; and the only compensation for the loss
of time and the trials of temper which it has inflicted upon me, is
that I have come to regard it as a branch of the fine arts, and to
take an impartial and aesthetic interest in the way in which it is
conducted, even by those whose efforts are directed against myself.
Now, from the purely artistic point of view (which, as we are all
being told, has nothing to do with morals), I consider it an axiom,
that one should never appear to doubt that the other side has
performed the elementary duty of acquiring proper elementary
information, unless there is demonstrative evidence to the contrary.
And I think, though I admit that this may be a purely subjective
appreciation, that (unless you are quite certain) there is a "want of
finish," as a great master of disputation once put it, about the
suggestion that your opponent has missed a point on his own side.
Because it may happen that he has not missed it at all, but only
thought it unworthy of serious notice.
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