A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University | Page 2

disguised by a few exaggerated compliments adroitly inserted here
and there: these merely furnish the foil needed to give greater potency
and efficiency to the personal insinuations, and, like Mark Antony's
compliments to Cæsar's assassins, subserved quite too many politic
purposes to be accepted as sincere. Only a native of Boeotia could be
imposed upon by them, when the actual character of the book in
question was carefully misrepresented, and when the self-evident trend,
tenor, and aim of the ostensible review were to excite public prejudice
against the author on grounds wholly irrespective of the truth or untruth
of his expressed opinions.
Of course, the very largest liberty must be and should be conceded to
legitimate criticism. From this, as is well known, I never shrank in the
least; on the contrary, I court it, and desire nothing better for my books,
provided only that the criticism be pertinent, intelligent, and fair. But
misrepresentation for the purpose of detraction is not criticism at all;
and (notwithstanding numerous quotations perverted by unfair and
misleading glosses, including two misquotations quite too useful to be
accidental) this ostensible review is, from beginning to end, nothing but
misrepresentation for the purpose of detraction. Passing over numerous

minor instances, permit me to invite your attention to three gross
instances of such misrepresentation.
II.
The book under review had taken the utmost pains (pages 16-39,
especially page 39) to distinguish "realism" from "idealism," and to
argue for the former in opposition to the latter, on the ground of the
absolute incompatibility of the latter with the scientific method of
investigation. It had taken the utmost pains to make the contrast broad
and deep, and to point out its far-reaching consequences by explicitly
opposing (1) scientific realism to philosophical idealism in general, and
in particular (2) constructive realism to constructive idealism, (3)
critical realism to critical idealism, (4) ethical realism to ethical
idealism, and (5) religious realism to religious idealism. Any fair or
honorable critic would recognize this contrast and opposition between
realism and idealism as the very foundation of the work he was
criticising, and would at least state it candidly, as the foundation of his
own favorable or unfavorable comments. How did Dr. Royce treat it?
He not only absolutely ignored it, not only said nothing whatever about
it, but actually took pains to put the reader on a false scent at the start,
by assuring him (without the least discussion of this all-important point)
that my philosophical conclusions are "essentially idealistic"!
So gross a misrepresentation as this might be charitably attributed to
critical incapacity of some sort, if it did not so very conveniently pave
the way for the second gross misrepresentation which was to follow:
namely, that the theory actually propounded in my book had been, in
fact, "appropriated" and "borrowed" from an idealist! The immense
utility of misrepresenting my system at the start as "essentially
idealistic" lay in the fact that, by adopting this stratagem, Dr. Royce
could escape altogether the formidable necessity of first arguing the
main question of idealism versus realism. Secretly conscious of his
own inability to handle that question, to refute my "Soliloquy of the
Self-Consistent Idealist," or to overthrow my demonstration that
consistent idealism leads logically to hopeless absurdity at last, Dr.
Royce found it infinitely easier to deceive his uninformed readers by a

bold assertion that I myself am an idealist at bottom. This assertion,
swallowed without suspicion of its absolute untruth, would render it
plausible and quite credible to assert, next, that I had actually
"appropriated" my philosophy from a greater idealist than myself.
For the only substantial criticism of the book made by Dr. Royce is that
I "borrowed" my whole theory of universals from
Hegel--"unconsciously," he has the caution to say; but that qualification
does not in the least mitigate the mischievous intention and effect of his
accusation as a glaring falsification of fact and artful misdescription of
my work. It would be inopportune and discourteous to weary you with
philosophical discussions. I exposed the amazing absurdity of Dr.
Royce's accusation of plagiarism in the reply to his article which, as
appears below, Dr. Royce himself anxiously suppressed, and which I
should now submit to you, if he had not at last taken fright and served
upon me a legal protest against its circulation. But, to any
well-educated man, such an accusation as this refutes itself. It would be
just as reasonable, just as plausible, to accuse Darwin of having
borrowed his theory of natural selection from Agassiz, or Daniel
Webster of having borrowed his theory of the inseparable Union from
John C. Calhoun, or ex-President Cleveland of having borrowed his
message on tariff reform from the Home Market Club, as to accuse me
of having borrowed my theory of universals from Hegel. Hegel's theory