rtment of study, is certainly good enough
for me in mine; and I by no means demur to being pedagogically
instructed about a variety of matters with which it has been the
business of my life to try to acquaint myself. But the Duke of Argyll
is not content with favouring me with his opinions about my own
business; he also answers for mine; and, at that point, really the
worm must turn. I am told that "no one knows better than Professor
Huxley" a variety of things which I really do not know; and I am said
to be a disciple of that "Positive Philosophy" which I have, over and
over again, publicly repudiated in language which is certainly not
lacking in intelligibility whatever may be its other defects.

I am told that I have been amusing myself with a "metaphysical
exercitation or logomachy" (may I remark incidentally that these are
not quite convertible terms?), when, to the best of my belief, I have
been trying to expose a process of mystification, based upon the use
of scientific language by writers who exhibit no sign of scientific
training, of accurate scientific knowledge, or of clear ideas
respecting the philosophy of science, which is doing very serious harm
to the public. Naturally enough, they take the lion's skin of
scientific phraseology for evidence that the voice which issues from
beneath it is the voice of science, and I desire to relieve them from
the consequences of their error.

The Duke of Argyll asks, apparently with sorrow that it should be his
duty to subject me to reproof--

What shall we say of a philosophy which confounds the
organic with the inorganic, and, refusing to take note of a
difference so profound, assumes to explain under one common
abstraction, the movements due to gravitation and the
movements due to the mind of man?

To which I may fitly reply by another question: What shall we say to a
controversialist who attributes to the subject of his attack opinions
which are notoriously not his; and expresses himself in such a manner
that it is obvious he is unacquainted with even the rudiments of that
knowledge which is necessary to the discussion into which he has
rushed?

What line of my writing can the Duke of Argyll produce which confounds
the organic with the inorganic?

As to the latter half of the paragraph, I have to confess a doubt
whether it has any definite meaning. But I imagine that the Duke is
alluding to my assertion that the law of gravitation is