52 



NATURE 



[November 21, 1895 



passage of Ai'istophanes where this law is quoted thinks 

 it is an invention of the poet's. But in any case the 

 invention was probably founded on fact). In the text of 

 the speech of Demosthenes against Makartatos is a law 

 dating from Eukleides (403 B.C.), which seems to refuse 

 to bastards even the limited right granted by Solon, as 

 nothing is said of the case of legitimate children failing. 

 But it is unwise to press the interpretation of the laws 

 quoted in the speeches of Demosthenes, as they are 

 notoriously in most cases interpolations of a later date. 

 In any case it is clear that under ordinary circumstances 

 the bastard could not be ayx'-^'^h'^ in his father's family. 

 He could only claim as inheritance the voBeia, which 

 was a very limited sum. But this must not be interpreted 

 in the sense that he was altogether an outcast. Politically 

 he suffered little. Gilbert (" Greek Constitutional Anti- 

 quities," Eng. trans, p. 191, note i) believes that vodoi ex 

 cive Attica were ipso facto citizens. When both parents 

 were citizens, the bastard would probably belong to the 

 Phyle of his mother, and when of age would be 

 admitted to her Deme. The position of the bastard, 

 however, brought into play the same device for evading 

 the law as that suggested by our new death-duties, and 

 wealth, as the scholiast already quoted informs us, was 

 made over by the father by gift before his death. Greek 

 society thus did something to alleviate the lot of the 

 illegitimate son, whose position in the family, or rather 

 out of it, might otherwise have been somewhat hard. 



Mr. Seebohm is nervous lest, in ascribing to the struc- 

 ture of Athenian society a direct parentage amongst 

 tribal institutions, he should meet with considerable 

 criticism. It is improbable that any one will dispute his 

 main conclusions. At any rate he is sensible of most of 

 the difficulties attaching to his subject. There are many 

 features in Greek society which seem foreign to the tribal 

 system. The absence of Homeric evidence for regular 

 ancestor-worship is not very satisfactorily explained by 

 the suggestion that " the aristocratic tone of the poet did 

 not permit him to bear witness to the intercourse with 

 any deity besides the one great family of Olympic gods, 

 less venerable than a river or other personification of 

 nature." The Homeric poems, especially the Odyssey, 

 are too full of the small details of daily life to permit us 

 to accept this explanation — for Homer deals with swine- 

 herds as well as kings. Or take, again, the question of 

 burial. De Coulanges (" La Cit^ Antique," p. 68) states 

 roundly that the ancient custom was to bury the dead, 

 not in cemeteries or by the way-side, but in the field 

 belonging to each family. He adduces evidence for the 

 survival of this custom even in the time of Demosthenes. 

 But if this was the rule, what are we to say of the 

 innumerable cemeteries dating from all periods, pre- 

 historic downwards, which have been discovered all over 

 Greece and on the islands and shores of the Aegean ? In 

 some parts, such as Lycia, we find the true tribal system 

 of burial in use down to late times ; but it is hardly an 

 exaggeration to say that this is exceptional. 



The essay before us touches on several questions of 

 this kind, but space doubtless prevented the author from 

 dealing with them at greater length. It is to be hoped 

 that he will continue this line of study, and produce the 

 volume dealing with Roman customs to which he alludes 

 in his preface. G. F. HiLL. 



N O. I 360, VOL. 5 3] 



A BIOLOGIST AS METAPHYSICIAN. 

 Mind and Motion and Monism. By the late George 

 John Romanes, M. A., LL.D., F.R.S. Pp. vii. 4- 170. 

 (London : Longmans, 1895.) 



THIS little volume of Mr. Romanes' metaphysical 

 writings possesses great interest. The type of 

 philosophical theory which he represents has a singular 

 fascination. He himself, it is plain, possessed genuine 

 metaphysical powers, and he wrote at first hand, and 

 with the acuteness and freshness of mind which are 

 worth more than much learning. At the same time, he 

 suffers for his disengagement from the work of other 

 philosophers. The naivete which forms the opening- 

 sentence of the book, that Hobbes is "the earliest writer 

 who deserves to be called a psychologist," is a trifle. 

 But there is no evidence that he had studied the father 

 of monists, Spinoza ; and though some points in his 

 essay might have been modified if he had lived, it pre- 

 sents difficulties which, to a student of Spinoza, seem to 

 be of the first magnitude. Yet, like the rest of his 

 philosophical writing, even when it is unsatisfactory (and 

 it seems to us unsatisfactory), it stimulates thought. 



The volume consists of two essays, the Rede Lecture 

 of 1885 on Mind and Motion, and a longer treatise on 

 Monism, which amplifies and expounds the metaphysical 

 ideas of the earlier essay, but makes many additions. 

 Romanes holds with Clifford (who seems to have inspired 

 his speculative thinking) that wherever there is matter 

 there is mind in some form or other, and that mind and 

 matter are everywhere but two aspects (two modes of 

 apprehension he calls them) of one and the same reality. 

 He makes admirably clear the truth that a physiological 

 process which is accompanied by consciousness would 

 not be what it is, if it were unaccompanied by conscious- 

 ness, any more than we can separate the light and heat 

 of an Edison burner. He shows that if we apply the 

 idea of causality to mental action, we must apply it to 

 the twofold reality, which is both physical and mental. 

 But he throws no light on the difficukies raised by the 

 phenomena of so-called unconsciousness. His disproof 

 of spiritualism, as implying a creation of energy, is satis- 

 factory ; his disproof of materialism is less so. It is a 

 shorter way with the materialists than even Berkeley's. 

 To treat mind as a function of matter would be to treat 

 it as a function of itself, since all that we know of the 

 external world is our own mental modifications. Whereas 

 Berkeley held matter to have no existence, save as an 

 object of mind, Romanes goes further, and regards it 

 as in some way mind itself But if one fact is clearer 

 than another, it is that we rarely have knowledge of our 

 mental states, and that we primarily know objects. On 

 the other hand, the simpler solution, that a physical 

 process which is accompanied by consciousness cannot 

 be merely physical, would afford no foundation for the 

 theory of monism. 



The most interesting portions of the essay are those in 

 which he goes beyond Clifford. Clifford had stopped 

 with attributing to each part of matter some portion of 

 mind, mind-stuff, but said nothing of the universe itself 

 Romanes holds that we may regard the whole world of 

 objects as itself an eject (?>. an inferred subject), which 

 we may regard as super-conscious. He founds himself on 



