Chapter VI

Here, gentlemen, you may very properly inquire: "Why do you not, then, prosecute Dr. Royce in the courts, instead of bringing the case before us?"

Briefly, because I have not yet exhausted those milder means of obtaining redress which it befits a peaceable and non-litigious citizen to employ before resorting to legal measures. You would have had just cause to complain of me, if I had precipitately prosecuted one of your professors for a "professional" attack without giving you previously an opportunity to discipline him in your own way, and in dignified recognition of your own ultimate responsibility. A prosecution may not, I trust will not, prove necessary; for I have neither malice nor vindictiveness to gratify, but only a resolute purpose to defend my reputation effectually against a malicious libel, and not to permit the libeller to set up a plausible claim that, by silence and passive submission, I "tacitly confess the justice of an official condemnation by Harvard University of my 'philosophical pretensions.'" Except for that one phrase, "professional warning," in Dr. Royce's attack, this appeal would never have been written, or the least notice taken of his intrinsically puerile "criticisms." When Mr. Herbert Spencer, whom I have more than once publicly criticised, can yet magnanimously write to me of this very book, "I do not see any probability that it will change my beliefs, yet I rejoice that the subject should be so well discussed,"--and Mr. William Ewart Gladstone, "I am very conscious of the force with which you handle the subject,"--and ex-President Noah Porter, "I thank you very sincerely for sending me a copy of your last book; I had already read it nearly twice, and found much in it very admirable and timely,"--I could very well afford to pass over Dr. Royce's ineffectual "criticisms" with indifference. But when he insinuates to the uninformed public that these same "criticisms" have the weighty sanction of Harvard University, it is quite another matter. That calls upon me to defend myself against so atrocious a calumny.

But even self-defence has its proprieties, and to these I scrupulously submit. The first step was to send a reply to the periodical which published the attack. This was sent. At first, Dr. Royce effusively agreed to its publication, and wrote a rejoinder to be published simultaneously with it. Later, in alarm, he procured its rejection, and, through legal counsel, served a formal notice upon me not to publish or to circulate it at all. The second step was to demand from Dr. Royce a specific retraction and apology; this he contemptuously refused. The third step was to appeal from the recalcitrant employee to the responsible employer, and to lay the case respectfully before the supreme representatives of Harvard University itself. This I now do, and it is entirely unnecessary to look any farther. But, in order to lay the case before you fully, it is incumbent upon me to state the details of these proceedings with some minuteness, and I now proceed to unfold the extraordinary tale.