But it is to the second sentence I here chiefly draw attention. Whether or not there be a sarcasm behind the words “blandly to confess,” it is clear that the sentence is meant to imply some dereliction on my part. Now in the programme of the Synthetic Philosophy, the division dealing with inorganic nature was avowedly omitted, “because even without it the scheme is too extensive”; and this undue extensiveness was so conspicuous that I was thought absurd or almost insane. Yet I am now tacitly reproached because I did not make it more extensive still--because an undertaking deemed scarcely possible was not made quite impossible. When blamed for attempting too much, it never entered my thoughts that I might in after years be blamed for not attempting more. Repeated reference to _First Principles_ as “the stereotyped philosophy” are manifestly intended by Professor Ward to reflect on me, either for having left that work during many years unchanged, or for implying that no change is needed. Much as I dislike personal explanations, I am here compelled to make them. If, in 1896, when the ten volumes constituting the Synthetic Philosophy were completed, I had done nothing toward revision of them, the omission would not have been considered by most men a reason for complaint. The facts, however, are, that in 1867 I issued a recast and revised edition of _First Principles_; in 1870 an edition of the _Principles of Psychology_, of which half was revised, and ten years later an enlarged edition of the same work; in 1885 a revised edition of the first volume of the _Principles of Sociology_; and now I have fortunately been able to finish a revised and enlarged edition of the _Principles of Biology_. Any one not willfully blind might have seen that when persisting, under great difficulties, in trying to execute the entire work as originally outlined, it was not practicable at the same time to bring all earlier parts of it up to date. Professor Ward, however, thinks that I should have sacrificed the end to improve the beginning, or else that I should have found energy enough to re-revise an earlier volume while writing the later ones; and my failure to do both prompts sarcastic allusions.[A]