A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University | Page 9

framework of the article as a whole. Every part of it is methodically spun and interwoven with every other part, in such a way as to make it one seamless tissue of libel from beginning to end. This I say in full consciousness of the interspersed occasional compliments, since these have only the effect of disguising the libellous intent of the whole from a simple-minded or careless reader, and since they subserve the purpose of furnishing to the writer a plausible and ready-made defence of his libel against a foreseen protest. Compliments to eke out a libel are merely insults in masquerade. The libellous plan of the article as a whole is shown in the regular system of gross and studied misrepresentation, of logically connected and nicely dovetailed misstatements of facts, which I exposed at the outset. Every intelligent reader of my two books is perfectly aware that they are both devoted to an exposition of the fundamental and irreconcilable conflict between philosophical idealism and scientific realism, and to a defence of the latter against the former, as the only possible method by which a spiritual theism can be intellectually, and therefore successfully, defended in this age of science. Only one who has read and digested the two books can fully appreciate the enormity and the unscrupulousness of the initial misrepresentation, slipped in, as it were, quite casually, and without any argument, in the apparently incidental and matter-of-course statement that my "conclusion" is "essentially idealistic." It is not "idealistic" at all, but as radically realistic as the premises themselves; and no professor of philosophy could ever have called it "idealistic" by a mere slip of the tongue or pen. The intelligent origin of this misrepresentation is clearly enough suggested in the use to which it is at once put: namely, to render plausible the otherwise ridiculous charge that my theory of universals was "borrowed" from an idealist. Next, the same origin is more than suggested by the use to which these two misrepresentations together are put: namely, to show that any claim of "novelty" for a merely "borrowed" philosophy is a "vast" and "extravagant pretension." Lastly, the same origin is inductively and conclusively proved, when these three inter-linked misrepresentations, as a whole, are made the general foundation for a brutal "professional warning" to the public at large against my "philosophical pretensions" in general. Not one of these fundamental positions of Dr. Royce's article is a fact,--least of all, an "admitted fact"; on the contrary, each of them is energetically and indignantly denied. But the libel of which I complain above all is the regular system of gross and studied misrepresentation by which the most essential facts are first misstated and falsified, and then used to the injury of my literary and personal reputation.
It may, I trust, be permitted to me here to show clearly what the law is, as applicable to the case in hand, by a few pertinent citations.
"The critic must confine himself to criticism, and not make it the veil for personal censure, nor allow himself to run into reckless and unfair attacks, merely from the love of exercising his power of denunciation. Criticism and comment on well-known and admitted facts are very different things from the assertion of unsubstantiated facts. A fair and bona fide comment on a matter of public interest is an excuse of what would otherwise be a defamatory publication. The statement of this rule assumes the matters of fact commented on to be somehow ascertained. It does not mean that a man may invent facts, and comment on the facts so invented in what would be a fair and bona fide manner, on the supposition that the facts were true. If the facts as a comment upon which the publication is sought to be excused do not exist, the foundation fails.... The distinction cannot be too clearly borne in mind between comment or criticism and allegations of fact.... To state matters which are libellous is not comment or criticism." (Newell on Defamation, Slander, and Libel, p. 568.) Applying this to the case in hand: the "admitted facts" are these: (1) my philosophy is realistic from beginning to end; (2) I have not worked all my life, nor any part of my life, in a Hegelian "atmosphere"; (3) I did not borrow my theory of universals from Hegel; (4) I have made no vast or extravagant pretensions whatever as to my own philosophy. But Dr. Royce invents and states the exact opposite of all these facts, and then bases on these purely invented facts most undeserved "personal censure" and most "reckless and unfair attacks." Therefore, his article is a libel in its whole groundwork and essential spirit.
"If a person, under pretence of criticising a literary work, defames the private character of the author, and,