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 the 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