1884.] 
Hylo-Idealism ? 
325 
G. H. Lewes says — “ The Sophistical art may have been 
essentially corrupting, although to contemporaries it did 
not appear so. We believe it was so, if it is to be made 
responsible for all the consequences which can be logically 
deduced from it. But logical consequences are unjust 
standards. Men are not responsible for what others may 
consider their doctrines lead to.” 
G. H. Lewes’s opinions appear to have excited the re- 
verence of the Hylo-Idealists : a philosophy they term it. 
His concluding remarks in his '* Biographical History of 
Philosophy ” suggest the impossibility of philosophy : he 
says, “ If any one remains unconvinced by the accumulated 
proofs this history affords of the impossibility of philosophy, 
let him distinctly bear in mind that the first problem he has 
to solve is — Have we ideas independent of experience ? ” (I 
unhesitatingly answer, Yes. Our ideas of God are not the 
results of experience. We adduce them from the homo- 
geneity of Nature, based on the scientific axiom that the 
known must interpret the unknown.) “ Look at the state of 
philosophy : there is no one system universally accepted ; 
there are as many philosophies as there are speculative 
notions, — almost as many as there are professors.” The 
opposition between Religion and Philosophy is “inevitable; 
it lies in the very nature of philosophy ; and although now, 
as heretofore, many professors eagerly argue that the two 
are perfectly compatible and accordant, the discordance is, 
and always must be, apparent.” The evil of the speciality 
of scientific men, or their incapacity, is not confined to the 
neglecting the whole for the sake of the parts; it affeCts the 
very highest conditions of Science, namely, its capacity of 
instructing and directing society. So we have general ideas 
and positive science : the general ideas are powerless, because 
they are not positive ; the positive sciences are powerless, 
because they are not general.” Lewes says, so far as re- 
gards philosophy, we in the nineteenth century are precisely 
in the same position as we were in the fifth, 
Speaking of Idealism, on the discussion of Berkeley’s 
Idealism, Lewes says, “ In admitting all this, what do we 
admit ? Simply that human knowledge is not the measure 
of all things. Objects to us can never be more than ideas ; 
but are we the final measure of all existence ? It was the 
dogma of the Sophist that man is the measure of all things; 
it should not be the dogma of the sober thinker. Because 
we can only know objects as ideas, is it a proper conclusion 
that objects only exist as ideas ? For this conclusion to be 
rigorous we must have some proof of our knowledge being 
