388 Edward Livingston Youmans. 



abusive epithet available the Avord " metaphysics " ; 

 and accordingly the title of Mr. Harrison's next paper 

 proclaimed Spencer's views to be '* agnostic meta- 

 physics." Once more Mr. Spencer replied in an arti- 

 cle called Last Words about Agnosticism. All these 

 articles, by both antagonists, were published in the 

 Nineteenth Century, and reprinted in The Popular 

 Science Monthly. Mr. Harrison's papers, while char- 

 acterized by his usual brilliancy of style, were sadly 

 unscrupulous. They abounded in shameless gar- 

 blings and roisrepresentations of Mr. Spencer's views, 

 insomuch that to some unbiassed readers (whose 

 opinions I from time to time solicited) the writer 

 seemed to be sacrificing all other considerations to 

 the single end of parading before his audience with 

 airs of victory. A more charitable, if less probable, 

 construction might excuse him on the ground that 

 perhaps *' he didn't know any better." Whether he 

 felt himself to be getting worsted, after all said and 

 done, of course one cannot say ; but, curiously enough, 

 after Spencer's last article — which, as Mr. Harrison 

 himself declared, he regarded as a challenge to fur- 

 ther discussion — he suddenly changed his audience. 

 Instead of replying to Spencer in the Nineteenth Cen- 

 tury he had recourse to the Pall Mall Gazette, and 

 poured forth a fresh volley of misrepresentations be- 

 fore a new set of readers."^ 



* One of Harrison's remarks in this Pall Mall article reminds me of a 

 little incident in my experience which may be worth preserving. In a 

 preceding article he had alluded to Spencer's Descriptive Sociology as "a 

 pile of clippings made to order." He now went on to say : " I have cer- 

 tainly cast no insinuations whatever on the three conscientious gentlemen 

 who carried out Mr. Spencer's directions to tabulate ' all classes of facts' ; 

 but it is too much to ask me to believe either that they knew nothing of 



