388 Edward Livingston Youmans. 



abusive epithet available the word " 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 misrepresentations 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 



