February 25, 1892] 



NA TURE 



389 



Table xxxi. (p. 408) is headed, " Percentage of nitrogen 

 and minerals in the fasted live weights of cattle, sheep, 

 and pigs." This heading should be, "Amounts of nitrogen 

 and minerals in 1000 pounds fasted live weights, &c." 



The illustrations in chapters xxv. and xxvi. are very 

 poor indeed, especially Fig. 190, which is perhaps in- 

 tended as a puzzle print. Also Figs. 17 1-3 are very bad 

 attempts to convey an idea of what a cow is like. Figs. 

 160-4 are equally poor. 



Apart from these details, we cannot but say that the 

 book as a whole is an admirable work, and superior to 

 anything of its kind which we have yet seen. It will 

 prove a boon, alike to students and to educated farmers. 



W. T. 



HYLO-WEALISM. 

 Further Reliqiies of Constance Naden. Edited by George 

 M. McCrie. (London: Bickers and Son, 1891.) 



WE have already in these pages expressed our 

 opinion, in a notice of her " Induction and 

 Deduction," that, had the hand of Death been withheld. 

 Miss Naden would have made valuable contributions to 

 philosophic thought. The volume of " Further Reliques " 

 now before us serves to justify this opinion. It is ques- 

 tionable, however, whether her friends have been well- 

 advised in including the "Geology of the Birmingham 

 District," admirable as it is as a student's prize essay. 

 In any case, since it was included, it would have been 

 only just to Miss Naden to have requested someone 

 acquainted with geological nomenclature to revise the 

 proofs. On a single page we have Triaftic for Triassic, 

 Keupes for Keuper, Llandeils for Llandeilo, and Para- 

 doyidian for Paradoxidian. This essay is dotted over 

 with such misprints (the genus Orthis being printed, on 

 p. 25, both Orttiis and Orttus), Nor are other parts of 

 the book entirely free from errors due to careless editing. 

 On p. 4, destruction is printed where the sense requires 

 distinction ; and on p. 160, evidence, where the author 

 clearly meant to write eloquence. 



As we before pointed out, for Miss Naden the funda- 

 mental principle in philosophy is the famous Protagorean 

 formula of relativity, that " Man is the measure of all 

 things, of things that are that they are, and of things that 

 are not that they are not." In a kind of parable she 

 describes the creation of the external world : — 



" A myriad etherial waves, of inconceivable minute- 

 ness, enter the tiny window of the eye, and beat against 

 the delicate lining of its darkened chamber. The pulsa- 

 tions are taken up, and transmitted along the optic nerve 

 to the base of the brain, and thence to the gray thought- 

 cells of the cerebral hemispheres. And in these gray 

 thought-cells lives the God who says, ' Let there be light,' 

 and there is light. If the optic nerve be an inefficient 

 messenger ; if, maimed or paralyzed, it fail to convey the 

 vibrations received from without, the creative fiat will 

 never be issued, and the world will remain, for the God 

 of that one cerebrum, without form, and void. He is not 

 a First Cause, since a stimulus is needed to set him in 

 action ; but he is certainly the only authentic Creator of 

 the world as yet discovered by science, philosophy, or 

 religion." 



Whether this way of putting the matter is in the best 

 possible taste, we do not pretend to decide. It is with 

 NO. T 165, VOL. 45] 



Miss Naden's philosophical position, not with any other 

 aspect of her views, that we can deal here. Philosophic- 

 ally, her view is, that the gray thought-cells are for her, 

 and for each and all of us, the creators of the world. 

 " But here," she continues — in her article on " Hylo- 

 idealism," prefixed to certain letters addressed to her by 

 Dr. Lewins, of the Army Medical Department — 



*' But here comes the most critical point of the inquiry. 

 If the universe be simply a more or less coherent vision ; 

 if its very solidity and extension be but parts of the 

 ' realistic ' drama, how are we to know that there is any 

 such thing as matter ? . . . How are we to be sure that 

 the brain itself really exists, and that the all-generating 

 cells are not mere illusory appearances ? " 



How does Miss Naden answer this question, by which 

 she is by no means the first to be puzzled .'' 



" The puzzle," she says, " is not so hard as it looks. 

 The uttermost sceptic tacitly assumes the possibility of 

 argument ; that is, of a course of reasoning, in which 

 every step is dependent on the preceding step, while the 

 origin of the whole is some group of observed facts. If 

 this be a delusion, and the last step stand in no kind of 

 causal connection with the first, evidently argument is 

 impossible, and the sceptic's lucubration shares the 

 general invalidity. A succession of mere mental pheno- 

 mena, of mere inert pictures, cannot constitute reasoning, 

 because one inert picture cannot produce or condition 

 another. If a mental state possess no property except 

 the property of being perceptible, it is obviously purely 

 passive, and exerts no real influence upon subsequent 

 mental states. Now, as this position is utterly unthink- 

 able, and is not less destructive to scepticism than to 

 materialism, we are obliged to assume the existence of 

 some active basis of thought — that is, of something 

 which thinks. What we assume of the individual self 

 we extend analogically to other men, who are to us other 

 selves. And having seen that sensation and motion 

 follow upon excitation of the brain, and are suspended 

 or destroyed by paralysis of the brain, we are justified 

 in restoring our thought-cells to their proud creative 

 eminence, and in proclaiming that they constitute this 

 ' active basis of thought ' ; that they think, and therefore 

 exist." 



In an earlier paper on " Scientific Idealism," included 

 in the " Further Reliques," Miss Naden says : — 



" For the present I must be content to plagiarize from 

 Descartes, and to say of the cerebrum, ' Cogitat ergo est.' 

 It can appear to us only phenomenally, and we cannot 

 speak of it otherwise than in terms of phenomena ; but 

 here, at least, we are forced to assume an underlying 

 noumenon, while renouncing the vain hope of penetrating 

 to its essential nature by reason or intuition." 



So, after all, the thought-cells which have been restored 

 to their proud creative eminence and proclaimed as con- 

 stituting the "active basis of thought," turn out to be 

 phenomena like the rest of the " realistic drama," and 

 " even the vibrations supposed to impinge on the surface 

 of the body, and the molecular tumult propagated along 

 the nerves, are merely convenient intellectual representa- 

 tions of the unknown " — to which Dr. Lewins adds in a 

 footnote, " and nothing until asselfed," without, however, 

 explaining how "nothing" in the process of asselfment 

 becomes something. 



Such, so far as we understand it, is hylo-idealism. In 

 it one recognizes an old friend under a new name. It 

 would seem that Miss Naden admitted with reluctance 

 the phenomenal nature of the all-creative thought-cells. 



