PUNISHING A SENIOR WRANGLER. 157 



that I could not really think what I had there said, but he ignores a 

 direct contradiction contained in the paragraph succeeding that from 

 which he quotes. So that the case stands thus : On two adjacent 

 pages I have made two opposite statements, both of which I cannot 

 be supposed to believe. One of them is right ; and this the reviewer 

 assumes I do not believe. One of them is glaringly wrong ; and this 

 the reviewer assumes I do believe. Why he made this choice no one 

 who reads his criticism will fail to see. 



Even had his judgments more authority than is given to them by 

 his mathematical honors, this brief characterization w^ould, I think, 

 suffice. Perhaps already, in rebutting the assumption that I did not 

 answer his allegations because they were unanswerable, I have as- 

 cribed to them an unmerited importance. For the rest, suggesting 

 that their value may be measured by the value of that above dealt 

 with as a sample, I leave them to be answered by the works they are 

 directed against. 



Here I end. The foregoing pages, while serving, I think, the more 

 important purpose of making clearer the relations of physical axioms 

 to i^hysical knowledge, incidentally justify the assertion that the re- 

 viewer's charges of fallacious reasoning and ignorance of the nature of 

 proof recoil on himself. When, in his confident way, he undertakes 

 to teach me the nature of our warrant for scientific beliefs, ignoring 

 absolutely the inquiry contained in " Principles of Psychology," con- 

 cerning the relative values of direct intuitions and reasoned conclusions, 

 he lays himself open to a sarcasm which is sufiiciently obvious. And 

 when a certain ultimate principle of justification for our beliefs, set 

 forth and acted upon in the " System of Synthetic Philosophy " more 

 distinctly than in any other work, is enunciated by him for my in- 

 struction, as one which he " thought that every tolerably educated 

 man was aware " of, his course is one for which I find no fit epithet in 

 the vocabulary I permit myself to use. That in some cases he has 

 shown eagerness to found charges on misinterpretations little less than 

 deliberate, has been sufiiciently shown ; as also that, in other cases, 

 his own failure to discriminate is made the ground for ascribing to me 

 beliefs that are manifestly untenable. Save in the single case of a 

 statement respecting collisions of bodies, made by me without the need- 

 ful qualification, I am not aware of any errors he detects, except errors 

 of oversight or those arising from imperfect expression and inadequate 

 exposition. When he unhesitatingly puts the worst constructions on 

 these, it cannot be because his own exactness is such that no other con- 

 structions occur to him ; for he displays an unusual capacity for inad- 

 vertencies, and must have had many experiences showing him how 

 much he might be wronged by illiberal interpretations of them. One 

 who in twenty-three professed extracts makes fifteen mistakes — words 

 omitted, or added, or substituted — should not need reminding how 

 largely mere oversight may raise suspicion of something worse. One 



