at, even to improve it. In the region of fact,
in observation and experiment, there must be a mass of individual and
unassisted exertion. The use of allies in this region is to check and
confirm the accuracy of the first observer.

Again, an inquirer, by dint of prolonged familiarity with a subject, may
be his own best critic; he may be better able to detect flaws than any
one he could call in. This is another way of stating the superiority of
a particular individual over all others in the same walk. Such a
monarchical position as removes a man alike from the rivalry and from
the sympathy of his fellows, is the exception; mutual criticism and
mutual encouragement are the rule. The social stimulants are of avail in
knowledge and in truth as well as everything else.

A comparison of the state of speculation in the golden age of debate,
with the state of the sciences in the present day, both metaphysical and
physical, shows us clearly enough, what are the fields where polemic is
most profitable. I set aside the struggles of politics and theology, and
look to the scientific form of knowledge, which is, after all, the type
of our highest certainty everywhere. Now, undoubtedly, it is in
classifying, generalising, defining, and in the so-called logical
processes--induction and deduction--that a man can be least left to
himself. Until many men have gone over the same field of facts, a
classification, a definition, or an induction, cannot be held as safe
and sound. In modern science, there are numerous matters that have
passed through the fiery furnace of iterated criticism, seven times
purified; but there are, attaching to every science, a number of things
still in the furnace. Most of all does this apply to the metaphysical or
subject sciences, where, according to the popular belief, nothing has
yet passed finally out of the fiery trial. In psychology, in logic, in
eudaemonics, in sociology, in ethics, the facts are nearly all around
our feet; the question is how to classify, define, generalise, express
them. This was the situation of Zeno, Socrates, and Plato, for which
they invoked the militant ardour of the mind. Man, they saw, is a
fighting being; if fighting will do a thing, he will do it well.

[MOST USEFUL CLASSES OF DEBATES.]

In conformity with this view, the foremost class of debates, and
certainly not the least profitable, are such as discuss the meanings of
important terms. The genius of Socrates perceived that