128 
CONSTANCE C. W. NADEN. 
June, 1890. 
in the 2nd Epistle of his Essay on Man, from the line “ Know 
then thyself, presume not God to scan,” to the couplet: 
“ Sole Judge of Truth, in endless error hurl’d, 
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.” 
Make “ thing ” only think or idea—an Ideal Pope vigorously 
and virulently combats and denounces in the 4th Book of the 
Dunciad —and the whole standing problem, usually pro¬ 
nounced insoluble, including the origin of “ Evil,” Determinism 
and Indeterminism, etc., is disentangled at one blow, like the 
Gordian Knot by the sword of the Macedonian conqueror. 
“ Our Universe,” writes Miss Naden, at page 10 of Humanism 
v. Theism , in one of many passages to the same effect 
throughout her writings, “ is made up of sensations [or states 
of consciousness]. For even thought is but the special sense 
of the cerebral cortex, and beyond sensation we cannot pass. 
Even Hyle, the substance, the Unknowable, if you will, must 
be defined in terms of thought. * * Practically we may 
say of Self, as Paul of Christ: In it are all things created in 
the Heavens and upon Earth, things visible and things 
invisible; all things have been created by it, and Self is 
before all things, and in Self all things consist.” Of course 
this is the Gospel of Selfism, far as the poles asunder from 
vulgar Selfishness and Egotism. Lord Byron hails Berkeley’s 
theory as a “ sublime discovery,” from its making the Universe 
universal Egotism, or rather Egoism. And the above quo¬ 
tation from Miss Naden converts this speculative dream into a 
sober, scientific excogitation not possible in his age. It quite 
corresponds with Sir Humphry Davy’s ejaculations during 
the orgasm induced by Nitrous Oxide Gas : “ Nothing exists 
but thoughts. The Universe is composed of impressions, ideas, 
pleasures, and pains.” And when, quite restored to his 
normal condition, he describes himself as “ by degrees losing 
all connection with external things, and as existing in a 
world of newly connected and newly modified ideas, and as 
seeming a new and sublime being, newly created.” The 
Stoic and Christian Palingenesia, Pentecostal descent of the 
Paraclete, and all analogous raptures or K?istases of- Saints 
and Martyrs, “ raising their longing eyes on high as though it 
were a bliss to die,” can be nothing else than this hyper¬ 
neurotic condition of the supreme nerve centres, and 
therefore a natural physiological phenomenon. The ecstatic or 
enstatic rhapsody of the emancipated Baccalaureus in Part 
II. of Goethe’s Faust, translated by Miss Naden at page 
173 of her Modern Apostle, and the quasi-divine vision of 
her Modern Apostle himself, on which she—through the 
medium of Ella—throws cold water, to say nothing of Calen- 
