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 H