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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



A CRITIC CRITICISED. 



Editor Popular Science Monthly. 



ANY one who reads the book notices in 

 journals wherein literary criticism is 

 conducted as it is in many important newspa- 

 pers will be impressed with the necessity of 

 abolishing the custom of anonymous reviews, 

 if we are to have any criticism worth any- 

 thing. Under the present system such notices 

 are the work largely of flippant critics, com- 

 petent only to frame condemnatory epithets, 

 who assume to judge everything without spe- 

 cial knowledge of anything ; and also of those 

 who have special acquaintance with the topic 

 in hand, but are consumed by feelings of 

 jealousy which prompt them to underrate, to 

 disparage, to stab in the back, to break down 

 reputations acquired, or to prevent the ac- 

 quiring of any on the part of new authors 

 who may apparently be rising. All these 

 things can be done and are done constantly 

 under the system of anonymous criticism. 

 The critic is safe in his concealment, and can 

 send forth his poisoned arrows with impunity. 

 Whether he is a giant or a dwarf can not be 

 known, save, perhaps, by his weapons ; but if, 

 as is usually the case, he is a pygmy, he is not 

 less dangerous, since retaliation is impossible. 

 The New York Evening Post of October 

 25, 1893, contains a notice of Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer's latest volume, Parts V and VI of 

 the Principles of Ethics, which furnishes a 

 complete illustration of the degradation of 

 criticism. If there were space I would ask 

 the editor of The Popular Science Monthly 

 to reprint it as such, without comment. But, 

 since the article can not be reprinted, I shall 

 draw attention to one or two of its features. 

 It begins by assertions of the marvelous 

 dullness of Mr. Spencer's works, his " cheap 

 and superficial platitudes," making him " an 

 accomplished artist in tedium." This cer- 

 tainly is a novel charge to be brought against 

 the author in question. Of all the modern 

 philosophical writers, according to the gen- 

 eral judgment expressed in numberless re- 

 views, notices, and comments published here, 

 there, and everywhere, Mr. Spencer has been 

 esteemed the one most free from the quality 

 of tediousness ! His power of holding the 

 reader's attention without wearying, his lu- 

 cidity of statement, his felicity in illustra- 

 tion, make his books eminently readable. 

 Of course, they imply a capacity to take 

 hold of thought, but, if this be presupposed, 

 few readers will call Mr. Spencer dull. As 

 to the matter of platitudes, it never occurs 

 to the average reviewer that criticising a 

 scientific writer on this score is often much 

 like criticising a sculptor or painter because 

 his work is true to life. If the philosopher 



keeps within his topic, it is evidence of his 

 greatness that his statements are so clear, 

 so true, that they seem indisputable. It is 

 his crowning excellence that he says things 

 which the reader recognizes as so evident 

 that he believes he himself and everybody 

 else must always have held the same ideas. 



The writer in the Post endeavors to dis- 

 parage Mr. Spencer's work by the old charge 

 that he is no scholar, that he reads little 

 and knows little of the progress of modern 

 thought. He claims that Mr. Spencer has 

 admitted his ignorance of Kant and is not 

 familiar with German idealism, while the list 

 of authorities he cites is " crude and uncrit- 

 ical material." It is difficult to deal with 

 these charges of little scholarship and failure 

 to know what is significant in philosophical 

 literature, in any other way than by a flat 

 contradiction. That Mr. Spencer has not 

 read everything in German philosophy, or in 

 recent philosophical literature of other coun- 

 tries, is no doubt true, but any one who knows 

 Mr. Spencer's habits is well aware how care- 

 ful he is to ascertain what literature is pro- 

 duced from time to time and its bearings 

 upon philosophical truth. For an ignorant 

 man and one who takes no note of what is 

 passing in the world Mr. Spencer shows a 

 remarkable aptitude for getting hold of facts 

 and theories bearing upon his own doctrines, 

 as is evinced in his recent discussions of Prof. 

 Weismann's theories in the Contemporary 

 Review. If, then, a critic declares Mr. Spen- 

 cer has fallen behind the times, he may dis- 

 cover, if he makes inquiry of those who know 

 what Mr. Spencer does, that it is easier to 

 write misleading statements for a newspaper 

 than to prove them when challenged. Per- 

 haps it is expected of Mr. Spencer that he will 

 turn aside from his work and prepare book re- 

 views, to demonstrate his scholarship and his 

 familiarity with questions of present impor- 

 tance in philosophy. But if he should have no 

 better success in that way than his anonymous 

 critic, it would scarcely be worth his while. 



This critic is especially severe because, as 

 he says, Mr. Spencer, in a passage quoted, 

 " represents every operation of the mind as a 

 recognition of a likeness or the recognition 

 of an unlikeness. According to this, every 

 operation of volition, every operation of go- 

 ing to sleep, and every other mental operation 

 is but an act of recognition." The passage 

 quoted by this able reviewer is this (Italics 

 mine) : " One division of an earlier work in 

 this series of works the Principles of Psy- 

 chology was devoted to showing that all in- 

 tellectual operations are ultimately decompos- 

 able into recognitions of likeness and unlike- 

 ness." The writer who assumes to inform 



