A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University | Page 7

be considered.
Plagiarism, conscious or unconscious, is a very grave and serious
charge to bring against an author, and one which may entail upon him,
not only great damage to his literary reputation, but also social disgrace
and pecuniary loss. If proved, or even if widely believed without proof,
it cannot but ruin his literary career and destroy the marketable value of
his books; and it matters little, so far as these practical results are
concerned, whether the plagiarism attributed to him is conscious or
unconscious. In an able editorial article on "Law and Theft," published
in the New York "Nation" of Feb. 12, 1891, it is forcibly said: "Authors
or writers who do this [borrowing other men's ideas] a good deal,
undoubtedly incur discredit by it with their fellows and the general
public. It greatly damages a writer's fame to be rightfully accused of
want of originality, or of imitation, or of getting materials at second
hand. But no one has ever proposed to punish or restrain this sort of
misappropriation by law. No one has ever contended for the infliction
on the purloiners of other men's ideas of any penalty but ridicule or
disgrace." Whoever wrongfully accuses an author of plagiarism, then,
holds him up undeservedly to "discredit, ridicule, or disgrace," and
"slanders his title" to the product of his own brain. This is contrary to
the law. Yet this is precisely what Dr. Royce has done in accusing me
falsely, and as a "certain" matter of fact, of borrowing my theory of
universals from Hegel. His accusation is made with as many sneers and
as much insult as could well be compressed into the space:--
"Dr. Abbot is hopelessly unhistorical in his consciousness. His
'American theory of universals' is so far from being either his own or a
product of America that in this book he continually has to use, in
expounding it, one of the most characteristic and familiar of Hegel's
technical terms, namely, 'concrete,' in that sense in which it is applied
to the objective and universal 'genus.' Dr. Abbot's appropriation of

Hegel's peculiar terminology comes ill indeed from one who talks," etc.
"This I say not to defend Hegel, for whose elaborate theory of
universals I hold in no wise a brief, but simply in the cause of literary
property-rights. When we plough with another man's heifer, however
unconscious we are of our appropriation, however sincerely we seem to
remember that we alone raised her from her earliest calfhood, it is yet
in vain, after all, that we put our brand on her, or call her 'American.'...
Now Hegel's whole theory may be false; but what is certain is that Dr.
Abbot, who has all his life been working in an atmosphere where
Hegelian ideas were more or less infectious, has derived his whole
theory of universals, so far as he has yet revealed it with any coherency,
from Hegelian sources, and even now cannot suggest any better
terminology than Hegel's for an important portion of the doctrine. Yet
in the volume before us we find all this pretentious speech of an
'American' theory, and discover our author wholly unaware that he is
sinning against the most obvious demands of literary property-rights."
Passing over the self-evident point that whoever is "unaware that he is
sinning" cannot be "sinning" at all, since "sinning" consists in being
aware of the wrong we do,--and, consequently, that Dr. Royce comes
here as near as he dares to a direct insinuation that my plagiarism is
conscious, and not "unconscious,"--let me call your attention to the
more important point, that Dr. Royce affirms my conscious or
unconscious theft from Hegel as a matter of "certain" fact, not merely
as a matter of probable inference. Yet the only evidence he has to offer
in support of this "certainty" is (1) that I use the word "concrete" in the
same sense as Hegel, and (2) that I have worked all my life in a
Hegelian "atmosphere." These two points cover all the grounds of his
accusation. Permit me very briefly to examine them.
(1) The word "concrete" is not in the least a technical term copyrighted
by Hegel, nor is it his trademark. It is one of the commonest of words,
and free to all. But what sort of a reasoner is he who infers the identity
of two whole complex theories from their coincidence in the use of
only a single word? Even this poor and solitary little premise slips out
of Dr. Royce's clutch, for Hegel's use of the word is contradictory to
mine! Hegel has to put upon the word "concrete" a very unusual,

strained, and artificial sense, in order to cover up the weakest point of
his idealistic system. He explains it, however, frankly, clearly, and
unambiguously: "The Concept or