e use to which these two misrepresentations
together are put: namely, to show that any claim of "novelty" for a
merely "borrowed" philosophy is a "vast" and "extravagant pretension."
Lastly, the same origin is inductively and conclusively proved, when
these three inter-linked misrepresentations, as a whole, are made the
general foundation for a brutal "professional warning" to the public
at large against my "philosophical pretensions" in general. Not one of
these fundamental positions of Dr. Royce's article is a fact,--least
of all, an "admitted fact"; on the contrary, each of them is
energetically and indignantly denied. But the libel of which I
complain above all is the _regular system_ of gross and studied
misrepresentation by which the most essential facts are first
misstated and falsified, and then used to the injury of my literary
and personal reputation.

It may, I trust, be permitted to me here to show clearly what the law
is, as applicable to the case in hand, by a few pertinent citations.

"The critic must confine himself to criticism, and not make it the
veil for personal censure, nor allow himself to run into reckless and
unfair attacks, merely from the love of exercising his power of
denunciation. Criticism and comment on well-known and admitted facts
are very different things from the assertion of unsubstantiated facts.
A fair and _bona fide_ comment on a matter of public interest is an
excuse of what would otherwise be a defamatory publication. The
statement of this rule assumes the matters of fact commented on to be
somehow ascertained. It does not mean that a man may invent facts, and
comment on the facts so invented in what would be a fair and _bona
fide_ manner, on the supposition that the facts were true. If the
facts as a comment upon which the publication is sought to be excused
do not exist, the foundation fails.... The distinction cannot be too
clearly borne in mind between comment or criticism and allegations of
fact.... To state matters which are libellous is not comment or
criticism." (_Newell on Defamation, Slander, and Libel_, p. 568.)
Applying this to the case in hand: the "admitted facts" are these: (1)
my philosophy is realistic from beginning to end; (2) I have not
worked all my life, nor any part of my life, in a Hegelian
"atmosphere"; (3) I did not borrow my theory of universals from Hegel;
(4) I have made no vast or extravagant pretensions whatever as to my
own philosophy. But Dr. R