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.