“While I cannot honestly retract anything in the substance of what I then wrote, there are expressions in the article which I very much regret, so far as they might be taken to imply want of personal respect for Mr. Spencer. For reasons sufficiently given in my reply to Mr. Hodgson, I cannot plead guilty to the charge of misrepresentation which Mr. Spencer repeats; but on reading my first article again in cold blood I found that I had allowed controversial heat to betray me into the use of language which was unbecoming—especially on the part of an unknown writer (not even then a ‘professor’) assailing a veteran philosopher. I make this acknowledgment merely for my own satisfaction, not under the impression that it can at all concern Mr. Spencer” (vol. i., p. 541).
Possibly some of Prof. Green’s adherents will ask how, after he has stated that he cannot honestly retract, and that {332} he is not guilty of misrepresentation, I can describe his criticism as unscrupulous. My reply is that a critic who persists in saying that which, on the face of it, is dishonest, and then avers that he cannot honestly do otherwise, does not thereby prove his honesty, but contrariwise. One who deliberately omits from his quotation the word “partial,” and then treats, as though it were complete, that which is avowedly incomplete—one who, in dealing with an argument which runs through three chapters, recognizes only the first of them—one who persists in thinking it proper to do this after the consequent distortions of statement have been pointed out to him; is one who, if not knowingly dishonest, is lacking in due perception of right and wrong in controversy. The only other possible supposition which occurs to me, is that such a proceeding is a natural sequence of the philosophy to which he adheres. Of course, if Being and non-Being are the same, then representation and misrepresentation are the same.
I may add that there is a curious kinship between the ideas implied by the letter above quoted and its implied sentiments. Prof. Green says that his apology for unbecoming language he makes merely for his “own satisfaction.” He does not calm his qualms of conscience by indicating his regret to those who read this unbecoming language; nor does he express his regret to me, against whom it was vented; but he expresses his regret to the editor of the Contemporary Review! So that a public insult to A is supposed to be cancelled by a private apology to B! Here is more Hegelian thinking; or rather, here is Hegelian feeling congruous with Hegelian thinking.
ENDNOTES TO PROF. GREEN’S EXPLANATIONS.
[44] Contemporary Review, December, 1877, p. 35.
[45] Contemporary Review, December, 1877, p. 37
[46] If I am asked why here I used the phrase “states of consciousness” rather than “manifestations of existence,” though I had previously preferred the last to the first, I give as my reason the desire to maintain continuity of language with the preceding chapter, “The Dynamics of Consciousness.” In that chapter an examination of consciousness had been made with the view of ascertaining what principle of cohesion determines our beliefs, as preliminary to observing how this principle operates in establishing the beliefs in subject and object. But on proceeding to do this, the phrase “state of consciousness” was supposed, like the phrase “manifestation of existence,” not to be used as anything more than a name by which to distinguish this or that form of being, as an undeveloped receptivity would become aware of it, while yet self and not-self were undistinguished.
[47] Contemporary Review, December, 1877, pp. 49, 50.
[48] Contemporary Review, March, 1878, p. 753.
[49] Ibid., March, 1878, p. 755.