Hylo-Idealism Is a Fig Leaf for Crass Materialism

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Black versus White Magic Series · 41 pages

Forty-one pages against a philosophical position now largely forgotten, and the more enjoyable for it. Hylo-idealism held that mind is wholly a function of nervous tissue, and Blavatsky quotes its proponents against themselves: that the origin of man must be sought in the vesiculo-neurine of his hemispherical ganglia, and that even ingratitude is a phenomenon of atavism. Her chapter heading for the first part is 'Privileged man! Evolution-forsaken baboon!'

The second part turns on terminology, and on what she regards as a mislabelling: psychical research, she argues, is a misnomer for what is actually pneumatical research — the study of spirit conducted under a name that concedes in advance that only mind is at issue. The wider charge is the one the title makes: that hylo-idealism is not a genuine third position between materialism and idealism but a covering for the first, adopting the vocabulary of mind while granting it no independent existence. It is among the most sustained pieces of philosophical argument in the section, and among the most readable.

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