MENTAL STATES AND PROCESSES. 37 



sensations is an " idea " ; and since every brute * has 

 such groups of feelings, the point in dispute is thereby 

 at once assumed. 



Mr. Romanes affirms, and professes to agree with his 

 opponents in affirming, that the presence of " self-con- 

 sciousness " is the line of demarcation between man and 

 brute. We might fairly expect, then, that he should have 

 some clear apprehension of that which he thus puts 

 forward as so important. Yet he candidly avows f that 

 it is a problem "which does not admit of solution." 

 Now, the one task which Mr. Romanes has undertaken, 

 the one object of his whole book, is to show that the 

 difference between a self-conscious being and one with- 

 out self-consciousness is a difference not of kind, but of 

 degree. Yet, instead of placing before us, as we think 

 he should, his convictions as to consciousness, he post- 

 pones his consideration of that faculty till he comes to 

 his tenth chapter,}: and then declines to grapple with it, 

 retreating, as we shall see, into a profession of Idealism. 

 Yet Idealism is fatal to his position, which is essentially 

 that of a materialist. We did not, of course, expect to 

 find in Mr. Romanes's book a treatise on philosophy ; 

 but we did expect to find a statement of principles, and 

 one not inconsistent with the position he had taken up. 

 Chemistry and mathematics are different sciences ; but 

 nevertheless, if in a chemical treatise statements are 



* Mr. Romanes states (p. 395) that "nowadays no one 

 questions " that such phenomena are " common to animals and to 

 men." We should Hke to know what philosopher ever questioned 

 it, save some follower of Descartes? By all the Scholastics it 

 would not only have been unquestioned, but positively affirmed. 



f p. 104. + See below, bur chapter iv. 



