A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University | Page 4

quotation marks so as to evade a charge
of formal misquotation, he perverts and effectually misquotes a
sentence of the book in a way which makes it appear exactly what it is
not,--"pretentious." I had said at the end of my own book (page 75):
"Its aim has been to show the way out of agnosticism into the sunlight
of the predestined philosophy of science." This expression is perfectly
in harmony with the prefatory Note, which says that "this book aims to
show that, in order to refute agnosticism and establish enlightened
theism, nothing is now necessary but to philosophize that very
scientific method which agnosticism barbarously misunderstands and

misuses," and which immediately adds: "Of the success of the perhaps
unwise attempt to show this in so small a compass, the educated public
must be the judge." Most certainly, there is no "pretension" in this
modest and carefully guarded avowal of the simple aim of my book.
But Dr. Royce twists this modest avowal into a barefaced boast, and
injuriously misquotes me to his own readers thus: "At the conclusion of
the book, we learn that we have been shown 'the way out of agnosticism
into the sunlight of the predestined philosophy of science.'" Gentlemen,
I request you to compare thoughtfully the expressions which I have
here italicized, and then decide for yourselves whether this injurious
misquotation is purely accidental, or, in view of Dr. Royce's purpose of
proving me guilty of "vast pretensions," quite too useful to be purely
accidental.
IV. But Dr. Royce does not content himself with quoting or misquoting
what I have published, for the self-evident reason that what I have
published is not sufficiently "pretentious" for his purpose. Disinterested
anxiety for the public welfare, and tender sorrow over the "harm to
careful inquiry" which my book is doing by "getting influence over
immature or imperfectly trained minds," constrain him to accuse me of
"frequently making of late extravagant pretensions as to the originality
and profundity" of my "still unpublished system of philosophy."
Precisely what have been these "extravagant pretensions"? Simply
these:--
In the preface to "Scientific Theism," I said of that book: "It is a mere
résumé of a small portion of a comprehensive philosophical system, so
far as I have been able to work it out under most distracting,
discouraging, and unpropitious circumstances of many years; and for
this reason I must beg some indulgence for the unavoidable
incompleteness of my work."
Enumerating some reasons why I hesitated to begin the series of papers
afterwards published as "The Way out of Agnosticism," I said, in the
first of these papers: "First and foremost, perhaps, is the fact that,
although the ground-plan of this theory is already thoroughly matured,
the literary execution of it is as yet scarcely even begun, and from want

of opportunity may never be completed; and it seems almost absurd to
present the abridgment of a work which does not yet exist to be
abridged."
Finally, in an address printed in the "Unitarian Review" for December,
1889, I said: "Without advancing any personal claim whatever, permit
me to take advantage of your indulgent kindness, and to make here the
first public confession of certain painfully matured results of thirty
years' thinking, which, in the momentous and arduous enterprise of
developing a scientific theology out of the scientific method itself,
appear to be principles of cosmical import.... Perhaps I can make them
intelligible, as a contribution to that 'Unitary Science' which the great
Agassiz foresaw and foretold." In a postscript to this address I added:
"For fuller support of the position taken above, I am constrained to
refer ... to a large treatise, now in process of preparation, which aims to
rethink philosophy as a whole in the light of modern science and under
the form of a natural development of the scientific method itself."
What remotest allusion to my own "originality" is contained in these
passages, or what remotest allusion to my own "profundity"? What
"pretension" of any sort is here made, whether "extravagant" or
moderate? Yet this is the only actual evidence, and the whole of it, on
which Dr. Royce dares to accuse me of "frequently making of late
extravagant pretensions as to the originality and profundity of my still
unpublished system of philosophy"! The pure absurdity of such an
accusation reveals itself in the very statement of it. Dr. Royce is
referring here, be it understood, not to my published books, but to my
"unpublished system of philosophy." How does he know anything
about it? I certainly have never shown him my unpublished manuscript,
and beyond those published allusions to it he possesses absolutely no
means whatever of knowing anything about its contents. Nothing,
surely, except full and exact knowledge, derived from careful and
patient personal examination of that manuscript,