The letter was as good in dialectic as it was in moral tone. For this is a little curious, that Rousseau, so diffuse in expounding his opinions, and so unscientific in his method of coming to them, should have been one of the keenest and most trenchant of the controversialists of a very controversial time. Some of his strokes in defence of his first famous assault on civilisation are as hard, as direct, and as effective as any in the records of polemical literature. We will give one specimen from the letter to the Archbishop of Paris; it has the recommendation of touching an argument that is not yet quite universally recognised for slain. The Savoyard Vicar had dwelt on the difficulty of accepting revelation as the voice of God, on account of the long distance of time between us, and the questionableness of the supporting testimony. To which the archbishop thus:--"But is there not then an infinity of facts, even earlier than those of the Christian revelation, which it would be absurd to doubt? By what way other than that of human testimony has our author himself known the Sparta, the Athens, the Rome, whose laws, manners, and heroes he extols with such assurance? How many generations of men between him and the historians who have preserved the memory of these events?" First, says Rousseau in answer, "it is in the order of things that human circumstances should be attested by human evidence, and they can be attested in no other way. I can only know that Rome and Sparta existed, because contemporaries assure me that they existed. In such a case this intermediate communication is indispensable. But why is it necessary between God and me? Is it simple or natural that God should have gone in search of Moses to speak to Jean Jacques Rousseau? Second, nobody is obliged to believe that Sparta once existed, and nobody will be devoured by eternal flames for doubting it. Every fact of which we are not witnesses is only established by moral proofs, and moral proofs have various degrees of strength. Will the divine justice hurl me into hell for missing the exact point at which a proof becomes irresistible? If there is in the world an attested story, it is that of vampires; nothing is wanting for judicial proof,--reports and certificates from notables, surgeons, clergy, magistrates. But who believes in vampires, and shall we all be damned for not believing? Third, _my constant experience and that of all men is stronger in reference to prodigies than the testimony of some men_."