It may, however, be made a question how far such public contests, whether conducted in the formal method of syllogistic warfare, or in the more popular style of personal conference occasionally practised in our own times, are well fitted to promote either the cause of truth or the love of it. The point determined by the dispute, if any, is not which party is in the right, but which is the ablest disputant, the acutest reasoner, or most eloquent speaker; and the object will commonly be, not to search candidly for the truth, and to embrace it wherever it is to be found, but to prove the opponent to be in the wrong, to lay hold of and magnify those flaws and oversights in argument of which he who has the better cause may often be guilty. A habit of disputing, not for truth but for victory, is in this manner too apt to be generated. It may be added, that success in contests of this kind commonly depends not so much on general talent, or even on a correct knowledge of the points in question, as on other qualifications of a merely personal nature;—on a facility in public speaking, or on a peculiar readiness and self-possession, with an acuteness in discerning and exposing the weak parts of an opponent's case, which may or may not be connected with the profession of the truth, or with a disposition
