But the embarrassment thus revealed naturally shows itself even more in the book itself, notwithstanding the fact that Mr Arnold expressly declines to reply to those who have attacked _Literature and Dogma_ as anti-Christian and irreligious. Not even by summarily banishing this not inconsiderable host can he face the rest comfortably: and he has to resort to the strangest reasons of defence, to the most eccentric invitation of reinforcements from afar. The strangest of all these, the clearest proof in itself of flurry and sense of need, is exhibited in his summoning--of all wonderful things --of Comparative Philology to the rescue of Literature. To rebut the criticism on his denial of a Personal God, he takes refuge in the ethnological meaning of Deus, which, it seems, is "Shining." The poor plain mind, already staggered by Mr Arnold's private revelations as to what did _not_ happen 6000 years ago (or earlier) in the garden of Eden, quite succumbs before this privilegium of omniscience. One had thought that the results of philology and etymology of this sort were extremely ingenious guesses, to be admitted in so far as they do not conflict with facts, and till the next guess comes, but nothing more. Lo! they are quoted as if they were on a par with "two and two make four," or the law of Excluded Middle. We may not take Moses and the prophets without proof, but Curtius and Professor Max Mueller may speak, and we must but hear. And later, when Mr Arnold is trying to cope with Descartes, he flies for refuge to "the roots _as_, _bhu_, and _sta_." One is tempted rather to laugh at this; but on some sides it is very serious. That no God of any religion can be more of a mere hypothesis than _as_, _bhu_, and _sta_, never seems to have occurred to Mr Arnold for one moment, nor that he was cutting the throat of his own argument. We must not, however, fall into his own mistake and quadruplicate to his duply. It may be sufficient to say that the long defence of the Fourth Gospel which this book contains is one of the oddest things in all literature. What, on Mr Arnold's principles, it matters whether the Fourth Gospel was written in the first century, the fourth, or the fourteenth, it is impossible for the poor plain mind to see. He will not have it as revelation, and as anything else its date is quite immaterial.