A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University

Excerpt: ... that is the conscienceless misrepresentation with which Dr. Royce prepares the way for all that is to follow, deceives the reader at the very outset, predisposes him to believe the preposterous charge that I appropriated my main theory from the great idealist Hegel, arouses his indignation or mirth, as the case may be, at my alleged strutting about in borrowed plumes, and so leads him at last to applaud the righteous castigation of the professional warning, by which the peacock-feathers are made to fly in all directions and I myself am scourged back among my brother-jackdaws, the impostors, charlatans, and quacks of myriad kinds. This is the purport and the spirit of Dr. Royce's ostensible review, as a whole. Is it the fair criticism which the law allows? Or is it the libel which the law condemns? Is it the fair and critical judgment which your silence shall sanction, as Harvard's official verdict on my work? Or is it the libellous and vulgar abuse which your speech shall rebuke, as shaming Harvard more than me by bringing the ethics and manners of the literary Bedouin into the professor's chair? V. But, gentlemen, the gravest aspect of Dr. Royce's ostensible review remains still to be considered. Is libel