An English historian--one amongst many--of our British India, having never happened to visit any part of that vast region, nor, indeed, any part of the East, founded upon that accident a claim to a very favourable distinction. It was, Mr. Mill argued, desirable--it was a splendid advantage--NOT to have seen India. This advantage he singly, amongst a crowd of coming rivals and precursors, might modestly plead; and to that extent he pretended to a precedency amongst all his competitors. The whole claim, and the arguments which supported it, wore the aspect of a paradox; and a paradox it certainly was--but not, therefore, a falsehood. A paradox, as I have many times explained, or proposition contradicting the _doxa_ or public opinion, not only may be true, but often has been the leading truth in capital struggles of opinion. Not only the true doctrine, but also, in some branches of science, the very fundamental doctrine, that which at this day furnishes a foundation to all the rest, originally came forward as a violent and revolting, paradox.[62] It is possible enough, therefore, that the Indian historiographer may have been right, and not merely speciously ingenious. It is something of a parallel case, which we may all have known through the candid admissions of the Duke of Wellington, that the battle of Waterloo might by possibility have been reported as satisfactorily, on the 18th of June, 1815, from the centre of London smoke, as from the centre of that Belgian smoke which sat in heavy clouds throughout the day upon the field of battle. Now and then, it is true, these Belgian clouds drew up in solemn draperies, and revealed the great tragic spectacle lying behind them for a brief interval. But they closed up again, and what the spectator saw through these fugitive openings would have availed him little indeed, unless in so far as it was extended and interpreted by _information_ issuing from the British staff. But this information would have been not less material and effectual towards a history of the mighty battle, if furnished to a man sitting in a London drawing-room, than if furnished to a reporter watching as an eye-witness at Hougoumont. [Footnote 62: This truth, for the sake of making it more impressive, I threw long ago into this antithetic form; and I will not scruple, out of any fear that I may be reproached with repeating myself, to place it once again on record:--'Not _that_ only is strictly a paradox, which, being false, is popularly regarded as true;' but that also, and in a prodigiously greater extent, which, being true, is popularly regarded as false.]