92 A. E. TAYLOR : as taking a radically empirical view e.g. of the axioms of geometry merely because he said that you cannot frame a theory of the logical character of geometrical reasoning until there is some geometry there to theorise about? My reader is now in a position to judge how far Mr. Schiller has succeeded in " tracing to their sources all these doctrines of Prof. Taylor's," and with what measure of justice he has charged me with an "adroit attempt to graft the new Humanism" on a re- calcitrant metaphysic. Perhaps, like myself, he will be a little inclined to wonder how Mr. Schiller can have convinced himself on such flimsy evidence that I must have been meaning him and his friends in so many passages of my book. I cannot suppose that he reached the identification by the logic of Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Seriously, I should like to appeal to Mr. Schiller to reflect a little on the discredit he is inflicting on a study for which he manifests a commendable enthusiasm by importing into philosophical dis- cussion the tone of those religious fanatics whose simplicity divides all doctrines into the " truth " as it is in the latest popular Messiah, on the one hand, and the soul- destroying delusions of the heathen who are still in the outer darkness, on the other. And I hope I may be forgiven if I go on to appeal to some of Mr. Schiller's friends, whom those of us who cannot follow them implicitly admire none the less honestly on that account, to consider whether they are not in danger of doing an ill service to Philosophy by lending themselves too readily to a kind of mutual admirationism which has flourished before now in many branches of science, but never, that I could hear of, did any lasting good to any. 1 Why it would not in my opinion be desirable for me to deal with the body of Mr. Schiller's paper, which, so far as I can see, merely ignores difficulties and ambiguities which I have already commented on as fully as I am able, has already been sufficiently explained. If there is a satisfactory reply to these difficulties from the Pragmatist 1 Mr. Schiller brings (loc. cit., p. 353, note 1), a minor charge against me of inaccurate quotation in support of which he gives two references to pages of iny article in the McGilt University Magazine for April, 1904. On the second of the two pages of that article which he specifies I cannot find any quotation at all, and must conclude either that his reference is incorrect or that he has by an oversight spoken of misquotation where he means simply misapprehension (not that I can admit the presence even of the latter in the context referred to). The other misquotation appears to be a jesting version of a certain remark of Mr. Schiller's a propos of Goethe's Faust. As to this sentence I have only to say (1) that it does not profess to be an actual quotation, and is not given as such ; (2) that it appears to me quite within the limits of good-humoured parody, and that until I read Mr. Schiller's present article it never struck me that he himself could possibly resent it ; and (3) that the remark plays no part whatever in the serious argumentation of my essay. I am sorry if so harmless a jest has disturbed Mr. Schiller's mental equilibrium, but 1 think I may fairly complain that the form of his reference to it is such as might naturally suggest to his readers that I had rested some part of my case against himself and his friends upon misquotations.
