to
formulate and further apply what science has done, and that I
respectfully submit the result (so far as already published), not to
such critics as Dr. Royce, but to able, learned, and magnanimous
students of philosophy everywhere.

III. Lastly, though employing quotation marks so as to evade a charge
of formal misquotation, he perverts and effectually misquotes a
sentence of the book in a way which makes it appear exactly what it is
not,--"pretentious." I had said at the end of my own book (page 75):
"_Its aim has been to show_ the way out of agnosticism into the
sunlight of the predestined philosophy of science." This expression is
perfectly in harmony with the prefatory Note, which says that "_this
book aims to show_ that, in order to refute agnosticism and establish
enlightened theism, nothing is now necessary but to philosophize that
very scientific method which agnosticism barbarously misunderstands
and misuses," and which immediately adds: "_Of the success of the
perhaps unwise attempt to show this in so small a compass, the
educated public must be the judge._" Most certainly, there is no
"pretension" in this modest and carefully guarded avowal of the simple
aim of my book. But Dr. Royce twists this modest avowal into a
barefaced boast, and injuriously misquotes me to his own readers thus:
"At the conclusion of the book, we learn that _we have been shown_
'the way out of agnosticism into the sunlight of the predestined
philosophy of science.'" Gentlemen, I request you to compare
thoughtfully the expressions which I have here italicized, and then
decide for yourselves whether this injurious misquotation is purely
accidental, or, in view of Dr. Royce's purpose of proving me guilty of
"vast pretensions," quite too useful to be purely accidental.

IV. But Dr. Royce does not content himself with quoting or misquoting
what I have published, for the self-evident reason that what I have
published is not sufficiently "pretentious" for his purpose.
Disinterested anxiety for the public welfare, and tender sorrow over
the "harm to careful inquiry" which my book is doing by "getting
influence over immature or imperfectly trained minds," constrain him
to accuse me of "frequently making of late extravagant pretensions as
to the originality and profundity" of my "still unpublished system of
philosophy."

Precisely what have been these "extravagant pretensions"? Simply
these:--

In the preface to "Scientific Theism," I s