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ESSAYS ON LIBERTY
points are not equally strong, and that nothing can be conceded except \vhat they can defend. They did much for the cause of learning, though they took little interest in what did not immediately serve their turn. In their use of Protestant \vriters they displayed the same partiality. They estimated a religious adversary, not by his kno\v- ledge, but by his concessions; and they took advantage of the progress of historical criticism, not to revise their opinions, but to obtain testimony to their truth. It \vas characteristic of the school to be eager in citing the favourable passages from Protestant authors, and to be careless of those which were less serviceable for discussion. In the principal \vriters this tendency was counteracted by character and learning; but in the hands of men less competent or less suspicious of themselves, sore pressed by the necessities of controversy, and too obscure to challenge critical correction, the method became a snare for both the writer and his readers. Thus the very qualities which we condelnn in our opponents, as the natural defences of error and the significant emblems of a bad cause, came to taint both our literature and our policy. Learning has passed on beyond the range of these men's vision. Their greatest strength was in the weakness of their adversaries, and their own faults vvere eclipsed by the monstrous errors against which they fought. But scientific methods have now been so perfected, and have come to be applied in so cautious and so fair a spirit, that the apologists of the last generation have collapsed before them. Investigations have become so impersonal, so colourless, so free from the prepossessions \vhich distort truth, from predetermined aims and foregone conclusions, that their results can only be met by investigations in which the same methods are yet more completely and conscientiously applied. The sounder scholar is invincible by the brilliant rhetorician, and the eloquence and ingenuity of De Maistre and Schlegel would be of no avail against researches pursued with perfect mastery of science and singleness of purpose. The apologist's armour would be vulnerable at the point where his religion and
