Page:Some New Philosophical Views.djvu/12

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Very likely, a reader of the above extracts who may happen to have also seen some of the critiques I earlier hinted at, speaking of the volume as written in an involved, confused, "Latinised" or "Grecised" style, will be a little perplexed at not finding the reading more difficult. Two of Mr. Cyples's largely-used technical phrases—i.e., "egoistic-actualisation" and "efferent-activity"—are brought into play; but for the rest, I myself believe that I see in the passages I have given traces of a practised, ready pen. The fact is, that the critics who have spoken in this way of the style of the author, have confused the deliberate and studied adoption of a set technology, used in perfect, and I may add relentless consistency, with a lack of ability to write simple composition. The above citations are from the plainest portion of the book, but the plainness there is owing merely to the absence of the new technical terms which are used so copiously elsewhere; and in any part of the book, the skill in composition, allowing for the nature of the topics dealt with, reappears whenever the use of the terminology is suspended.

I can conceive that the author had a misgiving that some of his reviewers would make the blunder of not knowing a technology when they saw it, and that he nearly wholly dispensed with it in the writing of this chapter, as providing himself with a trap wherein to catch them. If he did so, he has succeeded, for they have fallen right into it. At the same time, convicting your critics of not knowing their own business by first laying in their way a temptation to rail at your volume is not the height of wisdom in an author, and I think Mr. Cyples would have done much better to have made his book easier reading throughout. But he may, if he will, fairly retort that there is certainly some defect of skill in philosophical criticism among us at this moment when it makes no distinction between an author's purposed and careful use of a technical vocabulary, and mere ineptitude in