is not
awake, or our aversion stimulated, are tokens of truth or of
dissimulation and pretence. There is a story of a sane person
being by mistake shut up in the wards of a Lunatic Asylum, and
that, when he pleaded his cause to some strangers visiting the
establishment, the only remark he elicited in answer was, "How
naturally he talks! you would think he was in his senses."
Controversies should be decided by the reason; is it legitimate
warfare to appeal to the misgivings of the public mind and to
its dislikings? Any how, if my accuser is able thus to practise
upon my readers, the more I succeed, the less will be my
success. If I am natural, he will tell them "Ars est celare
artem;" if I am convincing, he will suggest that I am an able
logician; if I show warmth, I am acting the indignant innocent;
if I am calm, I am thereby detected as a smooth hypocrite; if I
clear up difficulties, I am too plausible and perfect to be
true. The more triumphant are my statements, the more certain
will be my defeat.

So will it be if my Accuser succeeds in his man[oe]uvre; but I
do not for an instant believe that he will. Whatever judgment my
readers may eventually form of me from these pages, I am
confident that they will believe me in what I shall say in the
course of them. I have no misgiving at all, that they will be
ungenerous or harsh towards a man who has been so long before
the eyes of the world; who has so many to speak of him from
personal knowledge; whose natural impulse it has ever been to
speak out; who has ever spoken too much rather than too little;
who would have saved himself many a scrape, if he had been wise
enough to hold his tongue; who has ever been fair to the
doctrines and arguments of his opponents; who has never slurred
over facts and reasonings which told against himself; who has
never given his name or authority to proofs which he thought
unsound, or to testimony which he did not think at least
plausible; who has never shrunk from confessing a fault when he
felt that he had committed one; who has ever consulted for
others more than for himself; who has given up much that he
loved and prized and could have retained, but that he loved
honesty better than name, and Truth better than dear friends....

* * * * *

What then shall