II.

But Mr. Spencer adduces, as if it were a fact, an instance of my grave mistakes. He says that I failed to distinguish between “consciousness” and “conscientiousness.” Mr. Spencer makes much of a small matter, which, if it were as he assumes, would have to be considered as a misprint.

Mr. Spencer’s statement is so positive that it must make on any reader the impression of being indubitably true. However, in the whole first article of mine, and indeed in both articles, “conscientiousness” is nowhere mentioned and it would be wrong to replace the word “consciousness” in any of the passages in which it occurs by “conscientiousness.”

I should be glad if Mr. Spencer would kindly point out to me the passage which he had in mind when making his statement, for since there is not even so much as an occasion for confounding consciousness and conscientiousness, I stand here before a psychological problem. Mr. Spencer’s statement is a perfect riddle to me. Either I have a negative hallucination, as psychologists call it, so that I do not see what is really there, or Mr. Spencer must have had a positive hallucination. That which Mr. Spencer has read into my article, was never written and it is not there. The alleged fact to which he refers, does not exist.

This kind of erroneous reference into which Mr. Spencer has inadvertently fallen is a very grievous mistake. It appears more serious than a simple slip of the pen, when we consider that Mr. Spencer uses the statement for the purpose of incrimination. He justifies upon this exceedingly slender basis his doubt concerning the correctness of the translations of the quoted passages, and Mr. Spencer’s doubt concerning the correctness of these translations is his main argument for rejecting my criticisms _in toto_.

It is not impossible, indeed it is probable, that Mr. Spencer meant “conscience” instead of “conscientiousness.” There is one passage in which a superficial reader might have expected “conscience” in place of “consciousness.” However that does not occur in any of the translations, but in a paragraph where I speak on my own account. This passage appears in the appended reprint on page 23, line 14. Whatever anybody might have expected in that passage, I certainly intended to say “consciousness,” and only a hasty reader, only he who might merely read the first line of the paragraph, would consider the word “consciousness” a mistake.

To avoid any equivocation, however, even to hasty readers, and to guard against a misconstruction such as Mr. Spencer possibly has given to the sentence, I propose to alter the passage by adding a few words as follows:

“It is quite true that _not only conscience, but_ every state of consciousness is a feeling,” etc.

The italicised words are inserted, simply to show that here I mean “consciousness,” and _not_ “conscience.” For the rest, they do not alter in the least the sense of the sentence. In this passage as throughout the whole article the terms “consciousness,” and “conscience” have been used properly.

* * * * *

Observing that Mr. Spencer appears to have committed the same mistake for which he erroneously blames me, I do not mean to say that he “failed to distinguish between” conscientiousness and conscience. I should rather regard it as trifling on my part if I drew this inference from what is either a slip of the pen or an oversight in proof-reading. But it strikes me that that knavish rogue among the fairies whom Shakespeare calls Puck and scientists define as chance or coincidence played in a fit of anger and perhaps from a sentiment of pardonable irony a humorous trick upon Mr. Spencer. The moral of it is that when an author censures his fellow authors with undue severity for things that might be mere misprints, he should keep a close eye on his own printer’s devil.