568 



NA TURE 



LUCiwLLk 20, 1923 



answer to the question, " What is the distinction 

 between living and non-living matter ? " will be that, 

 within the categories of science as here expounded, 

 there is no final distinction. 



One is not surprised to find in the application of 

 this theory of the nature of science to the question of 

 religion, or rather of theism, in the two concluding 

 chapters, that Dr. Hobson's attitude is frankly, com- 

 pletely and impartially agnostic. He examines the 

 various forms of theistic belief very briefly and points 

 out their difficulties. He also — and this is perhaps 

 the most valuable part of this section — indicates the 

 change which has taken place in the line of defence in 

 recent times. In pre-Kantian times the defenders of 

 theistic theories based them on evidences of design, 

 on the objective universe. This Dr. Hobson dis- 

 misses with the remark that those who argued from the 

 mechanism of the world to a Great Mechanic forgot 

 that the watchmaker has his material supplied ready 

 to hand : his design consists in the adaptation of the 

 given material to his own idea. The Great Mechanic 

 of the universe has to supply his own material, and it 

 is precisely in understanding the origin of the material 

 itself, the life itself, that the supreme difficulty hes. 

 The more recent arguments from design arise from the 

 purposive activities, thfe entelechy as Driesch names it, 

 of particular organisms, not from a general purpose in 

 the universe as a whole. The arguments which now 

 appeal most to mankind — apart from these purposive 

 activities of individual living beings — are the need of a 

 Universal Rational Mind to justify and act as a basis 

 to the general intelligibility of the universe ; and the 

 moral argument, that we need the conception of an 

 Ideal Being to supply the notions of value towards 

 which mankind is always striving, and which he does 

 not find in the humble origins of life towards which 

 scientific research is constantly pressing him. This 

 latter attitude dates in its modern prominence from 

 the work of Kant. On the former our author aptly 

 quotes from Dr. Rashdall : " We cannot understand 

 the world of which we form a part except upon this 

 assumption of a Universal Mind for which, and in 

 which, all that is exists. Such is the line of thought 

 which presents itself to some of us as the one abso- 

 lutely convincing and logically irrefragable argument 

 for establishing the existence of God." 



Here Dr. Hobson leaves it, being content in this part 

 of his argument, as in the rest, to state the rival positions 

 which he considers either that science has not yet 

 conquered, or that do not properly belong to science 

 at all. For his own view of science, as a man-made 

 scheme bringing together, clarifying and co-ordinating 

 our percepts for our own convenience of thinking and 

 applying our thought to action, a purely human 

 N(^. 2816, VOL. I 12] 



3)71 thesis is quite sufficient. The perceptual domain 

 is such that whole tracts of it, and processes in it, 

 are capable of description by rational schemes; amj 

 these schemes are so far justified by successes in tht 

 past that we can see no limit to their extension in the 

 future on the .same lines. These lines are, truthfil 

 observation, the simplest hypothesis which co-ordinatt > 

 the facts and verification by a subsequent return to 

 Nature. The progress which man has made in fr. 

 such schemes so far surpasses what he has ach.; . . 

 either in ordering his surroundings or improving his 

 own nature, that we are justified in treating it 

 index of his advance. It was the most remarj. 

 and permanent achievement of the Greeks. Its return 

 in the sixteenth centur\' marks the beginning of tht 

 modem world. Its dominance in the present ago 

 confronts us with our most serious problems and 

 inspires us with the strongest source of hope for their 

 solution. F. S. Marvin. 



A Reconstruction of Polynesian Culture. 



The BelieJ in Immortality arid the Worship of the Dead. 

 By Sir James G. Frazer. Vol. 2 : The BelieJ among 

 the Polynesians. Pp. ix 4-447. (London: Mac- 

 millan and Co., Ltd., 1922.) 185. net. 



IN Polynesian mythology the god Maui, fishing in 

 the waste waters of primeval chaos, hauls up 

 the island world at the end of his line. It requires no 

 less skilful a fisherman to bring up again the Pol)Tiesian 

 world of savage life and custom from the chaos of 

 insufficient and scattered data embedded in travellers' 

 and missionaries' records. Sir James Frazer, by the 

 present volume, deserves to take his rank beside the 

 primeval fishers — though his work of rescuing a world 

 in dissolution must have been much less joyous and 

 probably more difficult than that of the earlier sports- 

 men. Those who know the immense difficulty of 

 extracting truth from amateur ethnographic material, 

 and of giving it scientific and literary form, will be able 

 to appreciate the industry- and genius contained in 

 this latest contribution of Sir James Frazer. 



There is probably no more fascinating chapter of 

 ethnography than the life and customs of the Poly- 

 nesian islanders, as they were before European con- 

 tamination. The present volume is the best all-round 

 picture of Polynesian life available, for here, as in his 

 other books, Sir James Frazer gives more than he 

 promises. The title indicates that the research will 

 be concerned with native beliefs in immortahty and 

 with the worship of the dead. In order not to tear 

 the subject out of its context, however. Sir James 

 describes the Poljnesian ideas of the next world 

 against the background of their religious and magical 



