Then is there not a cause for demanding that liberty should be allowed in the Church, for explaining, in the pulpit, the mystery of a Crucified Christ, so that it may no longer remain a mystery for want only of this liberty?
(Rev.) T. G. Headley.
HYLO-IDEALISM.—AN APOLOGY.
My attention has been directed to a somewhat slighting notice of the above theory of human nature, on pages 72 and 75 of your issue for September, the contents of which are, doubtless, most suggestive of the nouvelles couches mentales at the basis of all nouvelles couches sociales, and which Physical Science, in its vulgar realism, has altogether missed.
My main position, to which all else is but subsidiary, is that the worlds both of thought and thing, which thus become identified and unified, must be a product of our own personality or Egoity, which thus constitutes each Ego Protagonist and Demiurge, from whose tribunal there can be no possible appeal. This being granted, and even Max Müller, in his “Science of Thought,” considers the position impregnable, it matters not one jot, at least in the first line and as far as my main object is concerned, whether the Ego be a Body or a “Spirit.” Our own individuality, as sum and substance of all “things,” is the only essential point of the question. So that it may be argued either on the somatic (hylozoic) or “Spiritual” hypothesis of life and mind. I have always contended that Hylo-Idealism, or Auto-centricism, is the only thorough and legitimate outcome of the phenomenal world theory—this representative Weltanschanung having been, for some generations past, the accredited creed both of physical science and philosophy. It is well summed up in Kant’s negation of “Das Ding an sich.$1“$2”$3 Vulgar Physical Science, as interpreted by its greatest hierophants, from Newton to Huxley and Darwin, from its incarnate dualism, is fatally handicapped in its search after the final “good, beautiful, and true.” Even Cardinal Newman is in a similar case, when he predicates two luminous spectra, God and Self, as the sole entities. The former Spectrum, on the Hylo-ideal, or visional, or phenomenal hypothesis, must be only the functional imago of the latter; Self being thus proved to be “Alpha and Omega, beginning and ending, first and last.” Beyond Self, it is manifest, mortal mind can never range. Whether Self be body or “spirit” is, I repeat, for my chief contention, quite immaterial—I sit on both sides of the stile, facing both ways.
Robert Lewins, M.D.
HYLO-IDEAISM.
To the Editors of Lucifer.