AN ANSWER TO MR. HODGSON. 541
trine was, to criticise it from my own point of view rather than to compare it with other opinions elsewhere advanced by him. If I had been undertaking a general estimate of Mr. Spencer's work as a psychologist, it would have been my business to examine thoroughly his opinions on those points on which I express my own; and in doing this I should frequently have had occasion to express admiration for the felicitous statement of judgments which I believe to be important and true. With the special object before me, which I had set myself and which I announced, I do not conceive that it would have been to the purpose to do so. [1]
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- ↑ [Mr. Herbert Spencer criticised the 'Answer to Mr. Hodgson' in the Contemporary Review for February 1881. Professor Green did not continue the discussion further, but wrote to the editor of the Contemporary Review a private letter, of which a draft to the following effect is found amongst his papers:—'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 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.—Ed.]
