rable comments. How did
Dr. Royce treat it? He not only absolutely ignored it, not only said
nothing whatever about it, but actually took pains to put the reader
on a false scent at the start, by assuring him (without the least
discussion of this all-important point) that my philosophical
conclusions are "essentially idealistic"!

So gross a misrepresentation as this might be charitably attributed to
critical incapacity of some sort, if it did not so very conveniently
pave the way for the second gross misrepresentation which was to
follow: namely, that the theory actually propounded in my book had
been, in fact, "_appropriated" and "borrowed" from an idealist_! The
immense utility of misrepresenting my system at the start as
"essentially idealistic" lay in the fact that, by adopting this
stratagem, Dr. Royce could escape altogether the formidable necessity
of _first arguing the main question of idealism versus realism_.
Secretly conscious of his own inability to handle that question, to
refute my "Soliloquy of the Self-Consistent Idealist," or to overthrow
my demonstration that consistent idealism leads logically to hopeless
absurdity at last, Dr. Royce found it infinitely easier to deceive his
uninformed readers by a bold assertion that I myself am an idealist at
bottom. This assertion, swallowed without suspicion of its absolute
untruth, would render it plausible and quite credible to assert, next,
that I had actually "appropriated" my philosophy from a greater
idealist than myself.

For the only substantial criticism of the book made by Dr. Royce is
that I "borrowed" my whole theory of universals from
Hegel--"unconsciously," he has the caution to say; but that
qualification does not in the least mitigate the mischievous intention
and effect of his accusation as a glaring falsification of fact and
artful misdescription of my work. It would be inopportune and
discourteous to weary you with philosophical discussions. I exposed
the amazing absurdity of Dr. Royce's accusation of plagiarism in the
reply to his article which, as appears below, Dr. Royce himself
anxiously suppressed, and which I should now submit to you, if he had
not at last taken fright and served upon me a legal protest against
its circulation. But, to any well-educated man, such an accusation as
this refutes itself. It would be just as reasonable, just as
plausible, to accuse Darwin of having borrowed his theory of natural
selection from Agassiz, or D