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

  • Brewer, Ebenezer Cobham, 1810-1897.
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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    CONSTANCE ' HYLO ID HERE cannot be a doubt that Dr. Lewins, of the Army Medical Department, gave IMiss Naden her mental bias. He met her first at Southport, some fifteen years ago (1876), when she was still in her teens; and I first met the Doctor some sixteen or seventeen years before, when resident in Tours. It would be quite impossible to be long in the company of Dr. Lewins without knowing him to be a man of great originality of thought, with an excellent memory, and of very extensive reading, especially in Scotch and Gerinap philosophy as well as in Poetry. Put Dr. Lewins lives fora purpose, and that purpose is to advocate his own world thought—that every individual is bounded by his own egoity, and is both his own “ Be all and end all.” His fulness is captivating, and his per- sistency irresistible. I am by no means sure that I ever fully grasped his idea, but he always told me that Miss Haden had both mastered and asselfed it. Probably my education and habits of thought prejudiced my Judgment, and shaped difficulties which the fresher mind of Mi.ss Naden never saw. She was too young to be strongly biassed, and listened to learn rather than to dispute. As Miss Naden herself puts it: “ Philosophers set problems which poets and artists, and every-day men and women and little children, unwittingly solve. Symbol and song and healthy sensation yield a clue not always grasped by the weary metaphysician who wanders amid a crowd of ideas which have too often outgrown all resemblance to their parent facts, and of words which have forgotten their ancestry of ideas.” The seed wliich falls into the virgin soil of a young girl just opening into womanhood, may readily take root and flourish ; but the same seed dro]>ped into a, soil choked with the cares of