PRESIDENT JORDAN'S ''NEMINISM:' 495 



disdain facts and theories and the truth, and must float in the pure, 

 soft twilight of his o^vn imagination while he writes about people 

 who never existed, in a language which nobody can understand. 

 Yet, sir, in your unblushing appropriation of the late Professor 

 Hegel's dictum of Sein und nicht Sein sind dieselbe (which I pre- 

 sume you, sir, to exculpate yourself, will swear you do not under- 

 stand), and in your changing that immortal antithesis to your Nihil 

 nemini nocet — in doing all this I declare that you have violated one 

 of the most sacred principles, in fact, the very essence of "NTemi- 

 nism; for to say, as you have said, that nothing hurts nobody, is to 

 say a very dull, prosaic, vulgar fact which any fool can under- 

 stand; but to say that " to be and not to be are the same " is to 

 say something that is not only very beautiful, but, what is far more 

 to the point, is likewise utterly incomprehensible; yet to do this is 

 the essence of ]^eminism, as you yourself have shown. 



As a confirmed Neminist glorying in his K^eminism, as Pascal's 

 Father Joseph, the Jesuit, gloried in " interpretation " of the words 

 " murder " and " charity," I am, sir (and I hope my frequent use 

 of this monosyllable will not annoy you, for the first feminist, 

 Plato, uses H So)KpaTe<i quite as frequently, though his expression 

 requires four times as much wind or space as mine), I say, then, 

 that I am always anxious to be thought well of by people who are 

 on top or are getting there, in order, to use your own undignified 

 and cruel metaphor in the Rev. Mr. Lyman Abbott's journal of news 

 and Christianity, that I may continue " to hold down " my position 

 as the janitor and Professor of Leibnitzian Monadology in the 

 University of Mentiphysics. But there are times, sir, when even 

 a ISTeminist rises above his interest, and, like Richelieu in the play, 

 exchanges the lion's and the fox's skins. In short, I beg to inform 

 you that I believe that you, seeing the growing attachment of the 

 vulgar mob for the Wissenshaftliche Pddagogie of the Robinson 

 Crusoeans or concentrationists, have had the thought to sap the 

 foundations of their success by vulgarizing our noble monopoly of 

 feministic science, and I should not be at all surprised to see your 

 name, after a little, as the editor of a " Journal of Psycho-Materno- 

 Kinder Apperceptics," or of a strictly American " Great Educator 

 Series," beginning with Pontiac and ending with Jim Fiske. 



Or perhaps, sir, you are actuated by deeper motives. Our imi- 

 versity has not yet received the complimentary copy of your work 

 on Imperial Democracy, the Government probably holding it back 

 until General Young can catch Mr. Aguinaldo, but I see by the 

 publishers' lists that it is out, Now, it is easy to see that if Impe- 

 rial Democracy gets within a stone's throw of China it will get into 

 China, and, with your knowledge of Aristotle's Politics and the 



