Gentlemen, I deny sweepingly the whole groundwork of cunning and amazing misrepresentation on which this unparalleled tirade is founded.
I. I deny that my philosophy is "essentially idealistic," or that any "careful" or conscientious scholar could possibly affirm it to be such.
II. I deny that I "borrowed" my realistic theory of universals from the idealist, Hegel, whether consciously or unconsciously. The charge is unspeakably silly. Realism and idealism contradict each other more absolutely than protectionism and free-trade.
III. I deny that I ever made the "philosophical pretensions" which Dr. Royce calumniously imputes to me. But, if I had made pretensions as high as the Himalayas, I deny his authority to post me publicly-to act as policeman in the republic of letters and to collar me on that account. A college professor who thus mistakes his academic gown for the policeman's uniform, and dares to use his private walking-stick for the policeman's bludgeon, is likely to find himself suddenly prostrated by a return blow, arrested for assault and battery, and unceremoniously hustled off into a cell, by the officer whose function he has injudiciously aped without waiting for the tiresome but quite indispensable little preliminary of first securing a regular commission.
IV. Most of all, I deny Dr. Royce's self-assumed right to club every philosopher whose reasoning he can neither refute nor understand. I deny, in general, that any Harvard professor has the right to fulminate a "professional warning" against anybody; and, in particular, that you, gentlemen, ever voted or intended to invest Dr. Royce with that right. He himself now publicly puts forth a worse than "extravagant pretension" when he arrogates to himself this right of literary outrage. He was not appointed professor by you for any such unseemly purpose. To arrogate to himself a senseless "professional" superiority over all non-"professional" authors, to the insufferable extent of publicly posting and placarding them for a mere difference of opinion, is, from a moral point of view, scandalously to abuse his academical position, to compromise the dignity of Harvard University, to draw down universal contempt upon the "profession" which he prostitutes to the uses of mere professional jealousy or literary rivalry, and to degrade the honorable office of professor in the eyes of all who understand that a weak argument is not strengthened, and a false accusation is not justified, by throwing "professional warnings" as a make-weight into the scales of reason. I affirm emphatically that no professor has a moral right to treat anybody with this undisguised "insolence of office," or to use any weapon but reason in order to put down what he conceives to be errors in philosophy. In the present case, I deny that Dr. Royce has any better or stronger claim than myself to speak "professionally" on philosophical questions. The very book against which he presumes to warn the public "professionally" is founded upon lectures which I myself "professionally" delivered, not only from Dr. Royce's own desk and to Dr. Royce's own college class, but as a substitute for Dr. Royce himself, at the request and by the appointment of his own superiors, the Corporation and Overseers of his own University; and the singular impropriety (to use no stronger word) of his "professional warning" will be apparent to every one in the light of that fact.
IV.
So far I have treated Dr. Royce's attack solely from the literary and ethical points of view. The legal point of view must now 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.