A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University | Page 8

was said before, the Notion is the only true concrete." (Encyklop?die, Werke, VI. 316.) Again: "Just as little is the sensuous-concrete of Intuition a rational-concrete of the Idea." (Ibid., Werke, VI. 404.) A score of similar passages can easily be cited. That is to say, Hegel avowedly excludes from his idealistic theory of universals the "concrete" of sensation, perception, intuition, or real experience, and admits into it only the "concrete" of pure or non-empirical thought; while I avowedly exclude from my realistic theory of universals the "concrete" of pure thought, and admit into it only the "concrete" of real experience. Hegel's "concrete" cannot be seen, heard, or touched; while to me nothing which cannot be seen, heard, or touched is "concrete" at all. A mere common school education is quite sufficient for comprehension of the contradictoriness of these two uses of the word. Yet, in order to found a malicious charge of plagiarism, Dr. Royce has the hardihood to assure the uninformed general public that Hegel and I use the word "concrete" in one and the same sense!
(2) The assertion that I have lived all my life in a Hegelian "atmosphere" I can only meet with a short, sharp, and indignant denial. I know of no such "atmosphere" in all America; if it anywhere exists, I certainly never lived, moved, or worked in it. The statement is a gratuitous, impertinent, and totally false allegation of fact, wholly outside of my book and its contents, and is used in this connection solely to feather an arrow shot at my reputation; it is a pure invention, a manufactured assertion which is absolutely without foundation, and, when thus artfully thrown out with apparent artlessness (ars celare artem) as itself foundation for a false and malicious charge of plagiarism, it becomes fabrication of evidence for the purpose of defamation. The less said about such an offence as that, the better for Dr. Royce, and I spare him the comment it deserves.
Now, while it might be "fair criticism" to infer my plagiarism from Hegel, if there were only some reasonable or even merely plausible evidence to support the inference (which I have just proved not to be the case), it is incontestable that to affirm this plagiarism, as a "certain" matter of fact, without any reasonable evidence at all, is not that "fair criticism" which the law justly allows, but, on the contrary, a totally unjustifiable libel. In accusing me personally of plagiarism on no reasonable grounds whatever, as I have just unanswerably proved him to have done, and in making the "certainty" of the plagiarism depend upon an allegation of fact wholly independent of the book which he professed to be criticising (namely, the false allegation that I have worked all my life in a Hegelian "atmosphere"), Dr. Royce has beyond all controversy transgressed the legally defined limits of "fair criticism," and become a libeller.
But this is by no means all. If the bat-like accusation of an "unconscious", yet "sinning" (or sinful) plagiarism hovers ambiguously between attacking my literary reputation and attacking my moral character, there is no such ambiguity hanging about the accusation of "extravagant pretensions as to the originality and profundity of my still unpublished system of philosophy." A decent modesty, a self-respectful reserve, a manly humility in presence of the unattainable ideal of either moral or intellectual perfection, a speechless reverence in the presence of either infinite goodness or infinite truth,--these are virtues which belong to the very warp and woof of all noble, elevated, and justly estimable character; and wherever their absence is conspicuously shown, there is just ground for moral condemnation and the contempt of mankind. Dr. Royce has not scrupled to accuse me of making, not only "pretensions," but even "extravagant pretensions," which are absolutely incompatible with the possession of these beautiful and essential virtues, and thereby to hold me up to universal contempt and derision. He has done this, by the very terms of his accusation, absolutely and confessedly without cause; for the system of philosophy which is "unpublished" to others is no less "unpublished" to him, and an accusation thus made confessedly without any knowledge of its truth is, on the very face of it, an accusation which is as malicious as it is groundless. To make such a self-proved and self-condemned accusation as this is, I submit, to be guilty of libel with no ordinary degree of culpability.
But the libel of which I have greatest cause to complain is not confined to exceptional or isolated expressions. These might charitably be explained as mere momentary ebullitions of pettishness or spleen, and pardonable as merely faults of temper in a criticism which was in the main conscientious and fair. But the libel of which I complain most of all is one that constitutes the entire ground and