'Will any one believe (says my critic) that he deliberately omits the substance of the definition, and gives in its stead a parenthetical qualification, which might be left out of the original without injury either to the grammatical structure or to the general meaning of the sentence in which it occurs?
Was anything ever more amusing?
A parenthetical clause which might be left out of the original without injury to the grammatical structure or to the general meaning! _Might_ be left out?
Ay, to be sure it might, and not only 'without injury,' but with benefit; just as the dead fly which makes the ointment of the apothecary to stink might be left out of _that_ without injury.

But it was _not_ left out; and it is precisely because it was there, and diffused so remarkable an odour over the whole, that I characterized the definition as I did--and most justly.

Accessible to all men in a certain stage of development! When and how _accessible_?
What _species_ of development, I beseech you, is meant?
And what is the _stage_ of it?
The very thing, which, as I say, and as everybody of common sense must see, renders the definition utterly vague, is the very clause in question." Such is his _entire_ notice of the topic.

From any other writer I should indeed have been amazed at such treatment.

I had made the very inoffensive profession of agreeing with the current doctrine of Christians concerning spiritual influence.