that Christianity,
instead of having been to an enormous extent successful was, in
fact, waiting, in comparative failure, the triumphant aid of a
military conqueror! He might then have dispensed with the celebrated
chapter, and substituted for it the two pregnant sentences by which
Mr. Newmen has, in effect, declared it superfluous.
____

August 7. Three days ago (the evening before my return home) I managed
to prevail upon myself to have a close and formal discussion with
Harrington on the subject of his scepticism. We had a regular fight,
which lasted till midnight, and beyond. A good deal of it was (in a
double sense, perhaps) a nuktomachia. As I had no one to jot down
short-hand notes of our controversy,--perhaps it is as well for me and
for truth that there was none,--it is impossible that I should do more
than give you a succinct summary of its course. But its principal
topics are too indelibly impressed on my memory to leave me in doubt
about general accuracy.

I hardly know what led to it; I believe, however, it was an observation
he made on the different fates of metaphysical and physical science,--the
last all progress, and the first perpetual uncertainty. He had been
reading a remark of some philosopher who attributed this difference to
the more substantial incentives offered to the cultivation of the
physical sciences. "So that," said he, "they are, it seems, what our
German friends would call 'Brodwissenschaften'! Not the brain, as some
idly suppose, but the stomach, is the true organon of discovery, and
if the metaphysician could but be punctually assured of his dinner
(which has not always been the case), or at all events of a fortune,
we should soon have the true theories of the Sublime and
Beautiful,--of Ethics,--of the Infinite,--of the Absolute,--of Mind
and Matter,--of Liberty and Necessity; whereas I think we should
only have a multiplication of doubtful theories."

He remarked that he doubted the truth of the hypothesis in both its
parts; that not the want of adequate motives, but the intrinsic
difficulty of the subjects, had kept metaphysics back (on what
subjects had men expended more gigantic toil?); nor, on the other
hand, was it necessity that chiefly impelled man to cultivate physical
science; it was the desire of knowledge,--or rather, he added, the
love of truth; for what else was his admitted curiosity, in the last
resort, unless man is equally curious about falsehood and truth; "that