1884.] 
Hylo-Idealism ? 393 
believe that men can soberly stand forth and advance this 
doctrine, denying as it does the pure Materialism on which 
it is founded, and the pure Idealism, another branch of its 
subjects, yet attempting to combine the two, producing a 
monster which is even in its very enunciation a shock to 
practical common sense. As to the metaphysical argument 
advanced, viz., that the Ego has no cognisance of the non- 
Ego, it being only an image. When a man, an Ego, sees 
another man, a non-Ego, do in similar circumstances exactly 
what the Ego does, it seems reasonable to conceive that the 
non-Ego is rather more than an image or a think, the more 
especially if the non-Ego, as a requital for an insult, should 
obliterate an organ of sense, say the eye. It is doubtful 
whether the Ego, on so practical a demonstration of reality, 
would continue to think that the non-Ego was only an 
image, or a think, or the result of its own cogitation, — or 
whether the excitation of sensation resulting from this prac- 
tical analysis of the think would result in the belief that all 
the suffering inflidted was a mere synthesis of circumstances 
resulting from the think. The whole thing is too absurd to 
reason on. A ploughboy would confute the whole thesis by 
a rough and practical solution. In conclusion there are 
several pages couched in the peculiar style of these 
thinkers (?) ; but what can be expedted when a man 
attempts to defend an absurdity which if accepted would 
displace all the guards with which humanity is fenced, but 
which is pretended to be an exposition of the grand good, — the 
reality of life, the objedt of man’s place on earth. We meet 
such a phrase “ since the ” triumph of Christianity. What 
has the system to do with Christianity ? Is it canting, or 
ignorance of the meaning which the word Christianity should 
convey ? 
Mark the summing up. How grand ! What a boon to 
humanity, what a kindness to the non-Ego, that there should 
be a cognition of being ! “ In an age when some ideal of 
moral beauty inspires all the noblest and most beneficent 
natures, rigorous analysis is for the time undesirable. It 
would desecrate those elements of truth which are always 
interwoven with every vital and beautiful form of Error, and 
by a premature disenchantment and disintegration would 
destroy the old principle before the new one is ready to take 
its place. By dissedting away what was still throbbing with 
life, it would cripple where it was meant to heal, and would 
pull the skin from the snake instead of waiting until it 
became a slough. But in our days, when art, morality, 
thought, politics, and education are finally separated from 
VOL. VI. (THIRD SERIES). 2 D 
