Constance Naden and hylo-idealism : a critical study / by E. Cobham Brewer ; annotated by R. Lewins.

  • E. Cobham Brewer
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Constance Naden and hylo-idealism : a critical study / by E. Cobham Brewer ; annotated by R. Lewins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    be encompassed by impregnable barriers, if between man and man there is a great gulf fixed, which none can pass over; how can the common earth and sky, which belong to the whole human race, be an integral part of any individual mind ? These, one would think, must be outside not inside... They yield their meaning not to one pair of eyes and ears, but to all who have hearing and vision. We all see the same sun, stars, and flowers; we all hear the same thunder and the same music. How else were conversation ])0ssible? How else could we carry on the ordinary business of life ? ” That is the question of the supposed objector, and this is Miss Haden’s answer: “ Science says You are wrong. No two persons ever see the same sun ; and no one person sees the same sun for two minutes or two seconds together. There are as many suns as human beings, and as many earths as brains. Qiiot mentes tot mundi” This is quite true so far as the latter part of the objection is concerned, but it is no answer to the main question. It does not matter a jot if, on looking at the rainbow, “ your eye,” as Miss Naden says, “ receives one set of light waves, while a friend half a head taller receives from the same source quite a different set of waves, corresponding to a different colour.” The question to be answered is this: Not if two persons see the same phase of the sun, but whether they see the sun at all. Not whether the shorter man sees the same identical rays as the taller man, but whether the rays which reach them both come from the same rainbow; or, in other words, whether, if the sun and rainbow were not in the heavens, outside the spectators, they would see any phase of the one, or colours of the other.* Miss Naden does not deny the existence of an objective world, how could she ? She might with the same consistency * On the liylo-idctil liypothe.sis nothing can be outside the Mind, rigid Auto-Monism being its Ideal.—lb L.
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