A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University | Page 5

could possibly be a
ground of just judgment of its character. How, then, in absolute
ignorance of its character and contents, could any fair man hazard any
public verdict upon it? Yet Dr. Royce not only accuses me of making
"pretensions" about it which I never made, but dares to characterize

them as "extravagant," when, for all he knows, they might (if made) fall
far short of the truth. Whether in this case the evidence supports the
accusation, and whether the conscience which permits the making of
such an accusation on such evidence is itself such a conscience as you
expect to find in your appointees,--these, gentlemen, are questions for
you yourselves to decide.
III.
These three connected and logically affiliated misstatements of
fact--namely, (1) that my philosophy is "essentially idealistic," (2) that
it has been "appropriated" and "unconsciously borrowed" from the
idealist Hegel, and (3) that I have frequently made "extravagant
pretensions as to the originality and profundity" of this merely
"borrowed" and "appropriated" philosophy--constitute in their totality a
regular system of gross and studied misrepresentation, as methodical
and coherent as it is unscrupulous. It is not "fair criticism"; it is not
"criticism" at all; and I do not hesitate to characterize it deliberately as
a disgrace both to Harvard University and to American scholarship.
Yet, gross and studied and systematic as this misrepresentation is, I
should have passed it over in silence, precisely as I did pass over a
similar attack by Dr. Royce on my earlier book in "Science" for April 9,
1886, were it not that, perhaps emboldened by former impunity, he now
makes his misrepresentations culminate in the perpetration of a literary
outrage, to which, I am persuaded, no parallel can be found in the
history of polite literature. It is clear that forbearance must have
somewhere its limit. The commands of self-respect and of civic
conscience, the duty which every citizen owes to his fellow-citizens not
to permit the fundamental rights of all to be unlimitedly violated in his
own person, must at last set a bound to forbearance itself, and compel
to self-defence. These are the reasons which, after patient exhaustion of
every milder means of redress, have moved me to this public appeal.
Dr. Royce's misstatements of fact, so elaborately fashioned and so
ingeniously mortised together, were merely his foundation for a
deliberate and formal "professional warning to the liberal-minded
public" against my alleged "philosophical pretensions." The device of

attributing to me extravagant but groundless "pretensions" to
"originality" and "profundity"--since he is unable to cite a single
passage in which I ever used such expressions of myself--was probably
suggested to him by the "Press Notices of 'Scientific Theism,'" printed
as a publishers' advertisement of my former book at the end of the book
which lay before him. These "Press Notices," as usual, contain
numerous extracts from eulogistic reviews, in which, curiously enough,
these very words, "original" and "profound," or their equivalents, occur
with sufficient frequency to explain Dr. Royce's choleric unhappiness.
For instance, Dr. James Freeman Clarke wrote in the "Unitarian
Review": "If every position taken by Dr. Abbot cannot be maintained,
his book remains an original contribution to philosophy of a high order
and of great value"; M. Renouvier, in "La Critique Philosophique,"
classed the book among "de remarquables efforts de construction
métaphysique et morale dus à des penseurs indépendants et profonds";
and M. Carrau, in explaining why he added to his critical history of
"Religious Philosophy in England" a chapter of twenty pages on my
own system, actually introduced both of the words which, when thus
applied, jar so painfully on Dr. Royce's nerves: "La pensée de M.
Abbot m'a paru assez profonde et assez originale pour mériter d'être
reproduite littéralement." (La Philosophie Religieuse en Angleterre. Par
Ludovic Carrau, Directeur des Conférences de philosophie à la Faculté
des lettres de Paris. Paris, 1888.) These extracts, be it remembered,
were all printed at the end of the book which Dr. Royce was reviewing.
Now he had an undoubted right to think and to say that such
encomiums as these on my work were silly, extravagant, preposterous,
and totally undeserved; but to take them out of the mouth of others and
put them into mine was wilful and deliberate calumny. Systematic and
calumnious misrepresentation is the sole foundation of the
"professional warning" in which Dr. Royce's ostensible review
culminates, and which is too extraordinary not to be quoted here in
full:--
"And so, finally, after this somewhat detailed study of Dr. Abbot's little
book, I feel constrained to repeat my judgment as above. Results in
philosophy are one thing; a careful way of thinking is another. Babes
and sucklings often get very magnificent results. It is not the office of

philosophy to outdo the babes and sucklings at their own business of
receiving revelations. It