book--only if he had, I fear he would never have read it!--he would
hardly have complained of lack of argument on either side, whatever he
might have thought of its quality. Again and again I went on writing for
hours, satisfying the logical sense in oneself, trying to put the
arguments on both sides as fairly as possible, only to feel despairingly
at the end that it must all come out. It might be decent controversy;
but life, feeling, charm, _humanity_, had gone out of it; it had ceased,
therefore, to be "making," to be literature.

So that in the long run there was no other method possible than
suggestion--and, of course, _selection_!--as with all the rest of one's
material. That being understood, what one had to aim at was so to use
suggestion as to touch the two zones of thought--that of the scholar and
that of what one may call the educated populace; who, without being
scholars, were yet aware, more or less clearly, of what the scholars
were doing. It is from these last that "atmosphere" and "diffusion"
come; the atmosphere and diffusion which alone make wide penetration for
a book illustrating an intellectual motive possible. I had to learn
that, having read a great deal, I must as far as possible wipe out the
traces of reading. All that could be done was to leave a few sign-posts
as firmly planted as one could, so as to recall the real journey to
those who already knew it, and, for the rest, to trust to the floating
interest and passion surrounding a great controversy--the _second_
religious battle of the nineteenth century--with which it had seemed to
me, both in Oxford and in London, that the intellectual air was charged.

I grew very weary in the course of the long effort, and often very
despairing. But there were omens of hope now and then; first, a letter
from my dear eldest brother, the late W.T. Arnold, who died in 1904,
leaving a record as journalist and scholar which has been admirably told