THE BRITISH

CONTROVERSIALIST,

AND

LITERARY MAGAZINE:

DEVOTED TO THE IMPARTIAL AND DELIBERATE DISCUSSION OF

IMPORTANT QUESTIONS IN

RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY, HISTORY, POLITICS,

SOCIAL ECONOMY, ETC.,

AND TO THE PROMOTION OF SELF-CULTURE AND GENERAL

EDUCATION.

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

380

PREFACE.

CONTROVERSY cannot cease. Inquiry is natural to man. Inquiry implies the possibility of affirming or denying. “If,” says Whately, “it were asked what is to be regarded as the most appropriate intellectual occupation of man, as man, what would be the answer ? The Statesman is engaged with political affairs; the Soldier with military; the Mathematician with the properties of numbers and magnitudes; the Merchant with commercial concerns, &c.; but in what are all and each of these employed ?-employed, I mean, as men; for there are many modes of exercise of the faculties, mental as well as bodily, which are in great measure common to us with the lower animals. They are all occapied in deducing, well or ill, conclusions from premises; each is evidently engaged in reasoning concerning the subject of his own particular business.” Now the greater part of reasoning is discursive. Thought does not go on always in a straight and linear path. We are constantly coming to bifurcations in our way, and at least a twofold possibility of progress opens before us. If there is any systematic way of deciding on the right path, it must be by some sort of controversial proceeding-some balancing of reason against reason, until that has been discovered which is of greatest weight and efficacy. Truth and falsehood lie before man always, act upon his mind continually, ply hiä on şvery side with saggettions and limitations. In this conflict of thought controi or37-is "our only rešuúrće." • After the fight peace may come; before it even compromise will be ineffecidal. The way to truth is through controversy.

For opwards of fourteen years now the eandastors of this periodical have been engaged in the labour of popularizing cangroveny as an educative agent—as a beneficial training for the great business of life and thought. They have not regarded controversy as in itself an ultimate good, but as a means to an end, and that end the attainment of truth, relative, if not absolute. Yet even as an energy of mind, controversy has charms for man, whose position in this life is so much that assigned to him by Platoa hunter of truth,

“ Hunter of shadows, though himself a shade.” Nor is controversy all vain toil and fruitless expenditure of ingenuity. “ Non inutiles,” says Bacon,“ scientiæ existimandæ sunt quarum in se nullas est usus, si ingenia acuant et ordinent” (Intellectual pursuits which have no attainable end of their own are not to be thought useless, if they sharpen and regulate the intellect). Controversy is the best gymnastic of the mind, and by the culture of

à