ABSTRACT
New and great ideas, if duly assimilated, must modify our views of all “things” previously known or imagined, and many a cherished illusion must fall when the “Autocentric” “Autoplastic,” “Autopsic,” or “Hylo-Ideal” theory is finally established. From combinations of these phenomena, all our conceptions must be exclusively drawn, and by similar combinations they must be corroborated or disproved. All ideas, notions, or fantasies, are of course equally subjective, since none can boast an origin higher than the human brain; but some may be in harmony, and others in open discord, with the observed course of nature, while a third group may stand apart from facts altogether, assuming a position neither of amity nor of enmity. The two latter classes are alike illegitimate, the one being false, and the other simply irrelevant. Matter would still, as in geologic and pregeologic ages, continue its immortal existence; but matter, untouched, unseen, unperceived by sensation or thought, must be a void and formless chaos.
