Mind and Motion and Monism

Abstract

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 naïveté 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 presents 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.

Mind and Motion and Monism.

By the late George John Romanes Pp. vii. + 170. (London: Longmans, 1895.)