aid of that book: "It is a
mere _resume_ of a small portion of a comprehensive philosophical
system, so far as I have been able to work it out under most
distracting, discouraging, and unpropitious circumstances of many
years; and for this reason I must beg some indulgence for the
unavoidable incompleteness of my work."

Enumerating some reasons why I hesitated to begin the series of papers
afterwards published as "The Way out of Agnosticism," I said, in the
first of these papers: "First and foremost, perhaps, is the fact that,
although the ground-plan of this theory is already thoroughly matured,
the literary execution of it is as yet scarcely even begun, and from
want of opportunity may never be completed; and it seems almost absurd
to present the abridgment of a work which does not yet exist to be
abridged."

Finally, in an address printed in the "Unitarian Review" for December,
1889, I said: "Without advancing any personal claim whatever, permit
me to take advantage of your indulgent kindness, and to make here the
first public confession of certain painfully matured results of thirty
years' thinking, which, in the momentous and arduous enterprise of
developing a scientific theology out of the scientific method itself,
appear to be principles of cosmical import.... Perhaps I can make them
intelligible, as a contribution to that 'Unitary Science' which the
great Agassiz foresaw and foretold." In a postscript to this address I
added: "For fuller support of the position taken above, I am
constrained to refer ... to a large treatise, now in process of
preparation, which aims to rethink philosophy as a whole in the light
of modern science and under the form of a natural development of the
scientific method itself."

What remotest allusion to my own "originality" is contained in these
passages, or what remotest allusion to my own "profundity"? What
"pretension" of any sort is here made, whether "extravagant" or
moderate? Yet this is the only actual evidence, _and the whole of it_,
on which Dr. Royce dares to accuse me of "frequently making of late
extravagant pretensions as to the originality and profundity of my
still unpublished system of philosophy"! The pure absurdity of such an
accusation reveals itself in the very statement of it. Dr. Royce is
referring here, be it understood, not to my published books, but to my
"unpublished system of philosophy." _How does he know anything about
it?_ I certainly have never show