and I cannot make any parade of charity, he can speak patronizingly of me now and then, and makes his main attacks on my logic and metaphysics.  He says, that in writing his first book, he knew no characteristics of me, except that I was “a gentleman, a scholar, and a very indifferent metaphysician” At the risk of encountering yet more of banter and insult, I shall here quote what the third “Prospective Reviewer” says on this topic. (Vol. x. p. 208):—­

“Our readers will be able to judge how well qualified the author is to sneer at Mr. Newman’s metaphysics, which are far more accurate than his own, or to ridicule his logic.  The tone of contempt which he habitually assumes preposterously reverses the relative intellectual status, so far as sound systematic thought is concerned, of the two men.”

I do not quote this as testimony to myself but as testimony that others, as well as I, feel the contemptuous tone assumed by my adversary in precisely that subject on which modesty is called for.  On metaphysics there is hitherto an unreconciled diversity among men who have spent their lives in the study; and a large part of the endless religious disputes turns on this very fact.  However, the being told, in a multitude of ingenious forms, that I am a wretched logician, is not likely to raffle my tranquillity.  What does necessarily wound me, is his misrepresenting my thoughts to the thoughtful, whose respect I honour; and poisoning the atmosphere between me and a thousand religious hearts.  That these do not despise me, however much contempt he may vent, I know only too well through their cruel fears of me.

I have just now learned incidentally, that in the last number (a supplementary number) of the “Prospective Review,” there was a short reply to the second edition of Mr. Rogers’s “Defence,” in which the Editors officially deny that the third writer against Mr. Rogers is the same as the second; which, I gather from their statement, the “British Quarterly” had taken on itself to affirm.

I proceed to show what liberties my critic takes with my arguments, and what he justifies.

I. In the closing chapter of my third edition of the “Phases,” I had complained of his bad faith in regard to my arguments concerning the Authoritative imposition of moral truth from without.  I showed that, after telling his reader that I offered no proof of my assertions, he dislocated my sentences, altered their order, omitted an adverb of inference, and isolated three sentences out of a paragraph of forty-six lines:  that his omission of the inferential adverb showed his deliberate intention to destroy the reader’s clue to the fact, that I had given proof where he suppresses it and says that I have given none; that the sentences quoted as 1,2,3, by him, with me have the order 3, 2,1; while what he places first, is with me an immediate and necessary deduction from what has preceded.  Now how does he reply?  He does not deny my facts; but he justifies his process.  I must set his words before the reader. (Defence, 2nd ed., p. 85.)