June, 1890 . 
CONSTANCE C. W. NADEN. 
127 
Monism—unity of body and mind—which defines sentient 
vitality as organic function, or organization in action, is the 
accredited creed of Science. That histological canon holds 
a separate soul or spirit, or Nous, to be in Physiology what 
Phlogiston or Caloric is in Chemistry and Physics—an 
imaginary factor or Nonentity. This thesis is well expressed 
by the late Sir Wm. Gull, M.D., in the sentences : “ Until 
to-day [or rather yesterday] the theory that the living 
quality in us was due to a mysterious vital force \i.e., im¬ 
material spirit or principle] out of reach of science, pre¬ 
occupied the mind and stood in the way of observation and 
experiment. But now it has become the immovable stand¬ 
point of Physiology that a living creature is dependent for 
all its bodily functions upon the forces of inorganic matter ; 
or, in other words, that our corporeal life is but the opera¬ 
tion of material atoms and material forces within the reach 
of experimental enquiry.” 
Indeed, how can this be any longer a question, 
since the solidarity of the organic and inorganic was 
set at rest bv Wohler’s transmutation of the one into 
«/ 
the other by his artificial manufacture in the laboratory 
of the organic product Urea from inorganic ones, more 
than sixty years ago (1828) ? So that now-a-days organic 
chemistry is only that of the carbon compounds. One step 
further, but that an epoch making, all shattering one, revers¬ 
ing past and present authoritative notions of human Ethics 
and Practice, Miss Naden takes, when she resolves Hylozoism 
into Hylo-idealism, of which the somatic Self is centre, 
radius, and periphery. As must be the case if all our know¬ 
ledge be only an Autopsy, or Self-inspection—a thought- 
world and thought being an alias of cerebration, as impos¬ 
sible of vicarious or altruistic performance as sleep or alimen¬ 
tation. The mere affirmation that the Brain is sensi/acient , or 
sense and mind creating, solves the whole immemorial pro¬ 
blem, which in all ages and climes has maddened the hitherto 
only semi-rational family of Man in doubt whether to deem 
himself a God or Beast. Most seem quite content with being 
the latter or worse. And until the human race can be made to 
realise, and act upon the fact, that each of its units is its own 
measure and standard no progress worth the name, but only 
processes of alternate action and reaction, can, in the way of 
Self- and world-reformation, come to pass. Wanting this 
criterion of truth and untruth, the extension of Luther’s plea 
for Private (individual) Judgment and liberty of conscience, 
human nature must remain indefinitely what Pope describes 
