June, 1890. 
CONSTANCE C. W. NADEN. 
123 
data on the furthest rim of her horizon, which coloured and 
inspired all her utterances, in prose or rhyme; premising 
that ever since leaving College she had bid adieu to poetry, 
and was concentrating all her powers for the composition 
of what she called her magnum opus, embodying these esoteric 
convictions, to which she became a convert while still in her 
early girlhood—a composition cut short by her premature 
death. Without this revelation of her inner life much, 
especially of her later poetry and prose, must be as 
enigmatical, and indeed incomprehensible, as Volapiik. 
None of her readers, in its absence, will find it practicable to 
appreciate what the Germans term her Weltanshauung , or 
world-scheme, as regards either the Macrocosm or the Micro¬ 
cosm of Man. 
My chief difficulty in this exposition is the elementary 
naivete and simplicity of the concept, or ideal, involved 
—the conclusion being more self-evident than any pre¬ 
mises leading up to it which I could possibly posit—that 
conclusion being only common sense, and, indeed, common¬ 
place fact, proverbially grander and stranger than all fiction. 
Her own most explicit utterances of her esoteric faith or 
unfaith are contained in her essays on The Brain Theory of 
Mind and Matter, on Hylo-idealism, the Creed of the Coming Day, 
in her analysis of Carlyle’s genius and of his Spiritual Optics, 
in her critique of Professor Huxley’s Essays on Culture, in her 
tract What is Beligion ? and in her German poem, Das Ideal, 
at page 76 of her So?igs and Sonnets of Springtime, not to 
mention passages, passim, in which, less explicitly, the same 
world-scheme may be read between the lines. To these 
writings I beg to direct the attention of all serious students 
of her life-work solicitous to verify, at first hand, her settled 
opinions, aspirations, and convictions. All I can pretend to 
do in this synopsis is to indicate the nature of the primum 
mobile —at once Archimedean fulcrum and lever—by means of 
which she moves, and, indeed, evolves the universe—a 
principle based exclusively on well-established data of 
Physics, Physiology, and Moral Philosophy. From its far- 
reaching and exhaustive synthesis, it enables the “ Writ of 
Positive Science ” to run in regions, viz., those of Conscious¬ 
ness, in which, as the King’s beyond the Highland line during 
the heritable jurisdiction of the Chiefs, it has hitherto been 
invalid. It heralds, therefore, a new departure in the pro¬ 
vinces of Anthropology and Morals, clearing up nugce that 
have hitherto ruinously hampered human insight and progress 
in its highest forms, while yet, as above stated, introducing 
no new element into the Sphinx-like problem. Its main 
