Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/354

338  of the Future Life. On this range of subjects Rohde's book has, as far as I know, no single work as a predecessor; and in this general field it has no rival in importance since the appearance of Nägelsbach's Homerischt Theologie and Nachhomerische Theologie des griechischen Volksglaubens, some forty years ago.

The first part of this work, including, I believe, about one-fourth of the present volume, was published in Helsingfors, in 1889, as a doctor's dissertation at the University of Finland. It was written in English, so the earlier part stated, in order to reach a larger circle of readers than a book in Swedish or Finnish could do, and because England was found the best place in which to study the subject. Of the list of authorities cited in the present volume containing nearly 1000 titles I have counted about one-sixth, and find ninety English works, forty German, twenty-one French, and twelve in other languages. As the author has been working of late in London, and might possibly be influenced by that in his citations, I turned to another book in the same field but written in Copenhagen, Starcke's Primitive Family, and counted in another part of the alphabet over one-half of his much briefer list of authorities with much the same result. There were seventy-six books in English, forty-four in German, twenty-one in French, and seven in other languages. We are entitled, therefore, to conclude that in this one field of the study of the prehistoric family, probably more than one-half of the literature is in the English language.

In his introduction the author admits that "the various investigators have in many important questions come to results so widely different that the possibility of thus getting any information about the past might easily be doubted" (p. 2), but finds that the fault lies with their method rather than with the material. The proper method is, first, to find the causes of any phenomenon under consideration, and, secondly, to assume that the phenomenon extends beyond the range of our observation in time or space only when the causes are known so to have extended and there is no evidence of counteracting influences. He puts "particular stress upon the psychological causes which have often been deplorably overlooked or only imperfectly touched upon" (p. 5). Marriage is defined as "a more or less durable connection between male and female, lasting beyond the mere act of propagation till after the birth of the offspring" (p. 19). As a confessed "disciple" of Darwin (p. 242), he believes that the cause of marriage or "the tie which