libel with no ordinary degree of culpability.

But the libel of which I have greatest cause to complain is not
confined to exceptional or isolated expressions. These might
charitably be explained as mere momentary ebullitions of pettishness
or spleen, and pardonable as merely faults of temper in a criticism
which was in the main conscientious and fair. But the libel of which I
complain most of all is one that constitutes the entire ground and
framework of the article _as a whole_. Every part of it is
methodically spun and interwoven with every other part, in such a way
as to make it one seamless tissue of libel from beginning to end. This
I say in full consciousness of the interspersed occasional
compliments, since these have only the effect of disguising the
libellous intent of the whole from a simple-minded or careless reader,
and since they subserve the purpose of furnishing to the writer a
plausible and ready-made defence of his libel against a foreseen
protest. Compliments to eke out a libel are merely insults in
masquerade. The libellous plan of the article as a whole is shown in
the _regular system_ of gross and studied misrepresentation, of
logically connected and nicely dovetailed misstatements of facts,
which I exposed at the outset. Every intelligent reader of my two
books is perfectly aware that they are both devoted to an exposition
of the fundamental and irreconcilable conflict between philosophical
idealism and scientific realism, and to a defence of the latter
against the former, as the only possible method by which a spiritual
theism can be intellectually, and therefore successfully, defended in
this age of science. Only one who has read and digested the two books
can fully appreciate the enormity and the unscrupulousness of the
initial misrepresentation, slipped in, as it were, quite casually, and
without any argument, in the apparently incidental and
matter-of-course statement that my "conclusion" is "essentially
idealistic." It is _not_ "idealistic" at all, but as radically
realistic as the premises themselves; and no professor of philosophy
could ever have called it "idealistic" by a mere slip of the tongue or
pen. The intelligent origin of this misrepresentation is clearly
enough suggested in the use to which it is at once put: namely, to
render plausible the otherwise ridiculous charge that my theory of
universals was "borrowed" from an idealist. Next, the same origin is
more than suggested by th