1885.] 
( 305 ) 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
‘onininnf ^ t0r d0e ? . no ^ hold himself responsible for statements of farts or 
0^hT re ^“ d .ShOT' re ' P0 " den “■ °' in Ar,ides bearins ,he sienat " re 
EGO-COSMISM ; or THE IDENTITY OF SENSE 
AND ITS OBJECTS. 
“ So like the soul [life] of me. What if it were me? ” 
Emerson, On Nature. 
In “ Knowledge ” of February 27th is a letter, “ Mind and Body,” 
witch, aftei balancing the probabilities pro and con the venerable 
doctrine of the immortality of the soul, anxiously asks : — “ But 
w 10 will solve this problem, and for ever set the mind at rest ?” 
I he query recals the self-torturing poet and sophist Shelley’s 
piteous appeal on the same qucestio vexata : — 
“ One step to the death-bed, 
And one to the bier ; 
And one to the charnel, 
And one — Oh ! where ?” 
None of which usual sequels of death fell to his lot, having been 
drovvned at sea, and his body cremated on its shore. But in 
reality the query now-a-days is a very simple one — an enigma 
requiring a Davus only, not an CEdipus, for its solution. For I 
confidently submit to the judgment of your readers that it really 
was settled, once for all, nearly two centuries ago, when Newton, 
by his discovery of universal gravitation, proved the automatism 
or self-activity of Matter. By this ideal he exhibited the macro- 
cosm as a mechanism — an organism or inorganism matters 
nothing, since Chemistry has removed the distinction — endowed 
with self-centred motor force sufficient to perform all its own 
operations, and therefore neither requiring or admitting of any 
soul, anima, or spirit to perform functions already provided for 
by its own vis insita or propria. This self-evident fact, though 
ignored by Newton himself, — who from his other writings must 
be regarded as a Pre-Newtonian College Don, saturated with all 
the Baconian idola, — was at once recognised by the younger 
