aggregate of vivid states of consciousness? What if I am continually made to seem thus absolutely inconsistent, by omitting the fact that not the aggregate of vivid states itself is conceived by me as the object, but the _nexus_ binding it together? A single brief example will typify Prof. Green’s general method of procedure. On page 40 of his first article he says—“And in the sequel the ‘separation of themselves’ on the part of states of consciousness ‘into two great aggregates, vivid and faint,’ is spoken of as a ‘differentiation between the antithetical existences we call object and subject.’ If words mean anything, then, Mr. Spencer plainly makes the ‘object’ an aggregate of conscious states.” But in the entire passage from which these words of mine are quoted, which he gives at the bottom of the page, a careful reader will observe a word (_omitted_ from Prof. Green’s quotation in the text), which quite changes the meaning. I have described the result, not as “a differentiation,” but as “a _partial_ differentiation.” Now, to use Prof. Green’s expression, “if words mean anything,” a partial differentiation cannot have the same sense as a complete differentiation. If the ‘’object’ has been already constituted by this partial differentiation, what does the ‘object’ become when the differentiation is completed? Clearly, “if words mean anything,” then, had Prof. Green not omitted the word “partial,” it would have been manifest that the aggregate of vivid states was _not_ alleged to be the object. The mode of treatment which we here see in little, exemplifies Prof. Green’s mode of treatment at large. Throughout his two articles he criticizes detached portions, and ascribes to them meanings {331} quite different from those which they have when joined with the rest. With the simplicity of “a raw undergraduate” (to some of whose views Prof. Green compares some of mine) I had assumed that an argument running through three chapters would not be supposed to have its conclusion expressed in the first; but now, after the professorial lesson I have received, my simplicity will be decreased, and I shall be aware that a critic may deal with that which is avowedly partial, as though it were entire, and may treat as though it were already developed, a conception which the titles of the chapters before him show is yet but incipient. Here I leave the matter, and if anything more is said, shall let it pass. Controversy must be cut short, or work must be left undone. I can but suggest that metaphysical readers will do well to make their own interpretations of my views, rather than to accept without inquiry all the interpretations offered them. POSTSCRIPT.—From a note appended by Mr. Nettleship to his republished versions of Prof. Green’s articles, it appears that, after the foregoing pages were published by me, Prof. Green wrote to the editor of the _Contemporary Review_, saying:―