We are entirely sceptical as to the proposition that "men have at all
times quarrelled more fiercely about phrases and formulas than even
about material interests" (p. 124). There has been a certain amount of
fighting in the world about mere words, as idle as the faction fights
between Caravats and Shanavests, or Two-Year-Olds and Three-Year-Olds
in Ireland. But the more carefully we look into human history, the
more apparent it becomes that underneath the phrase or the formula
there is usually a material or a quasi-material, or a political, or
a national, or an ecclesiastical interest. Few quarrels now seem so
purely verbal as those which for several centuries raged about the
mysteries of the faith in the Western and the Eastern Churches. Yet
these quarrels, apparently as frivolous as they were ferocious,
about the relations of mind and matter, about the composition of
the Trinity, about the Divine nature, turned much less on futile
metaphysics than on the solid competition for ecclesiastical power, or
the conflict of rival nationalities. The most transcendental heresy or
orthodoxy generally had business at the bottom of it.

In limiting the parentage of Modern English Liberalism of a Radical or
democratic type to Rousseau and Bentham, the author has left out
of sight what is assuredly a much more important factor than any
speculative, literary, or philosophic matter whatever. "Englishmen,"
he says truly, "are wont to be content with the rough rule of success
or failure as the test of right or wrong in national undertakings."
The same habit of mind and temper marks the attitude of Englishmen
towards their national institutions. They look to success and failure,
they take the measure of things from results, they consult the
practical working of the machine, they will only go to school with
experience. We cannot find the proof that _a priori_ Radicalism ever