crude narratives and cheap marvels which will not stand the strain of careful inquiry; and it is well known that the subject has the unfortunate knack of attracting the attention of cranks and weakheaded persons all over the world-though, indeed, in this respect Röntgen rays and wireless telegraphy run it very close. While engaged in some strenuous quest in physical science, I, too, am quite ready to feel something akin to contempt for the outlying partly savage territory not yet incorporated as a state.

It is only when I have been induced specially to explore some district of this region, and have myself taken part in its investigation, that I am occasionally constrained to make a report such as I feel at the time must be received with incredulity, annoyance, and some ridicule, by the greater part of the scientific world-by that body of men, in fact, which, with admirable resourcefulness, is pushing on its conquests over comparatively civilised country.

It was therefore without restiveness or hostility, but with a sort of fellow feeling, that I was prepared to welcome the challenging summons which Professor Newcomb has sent over the border into the region which I and others are trying to reduce to something like order. But I confess that there are features about his article which surprise me. One is his too evident dearth of acquaintance with what has been accomplished: he seems to know of nothing that has happened within the last twenty years. And another ground of surprise is the literature which he permits himself to read and apparently to regard as instructive-speaking, for instance, of a book compiled by a not specially competent and quite irresponsible journalistic writer as ⚫ the latest work with which I am acquainted.'

If circumstances should prevent my attention to psychical subjects for so many years, and if I should happen during that time to concentrate my attention solely on the material universe, with its splendid prospect of law and order and its opportunity for quantitative and exact statement; if, further, I were unfortunate enough to encounter only tricksters and self-deceivers on the few occasions when I ventured off the beaten track, I feel that I, too, might be tempted to take up Professor Newcomb's attitude, and challenge the workers who had left the high road by what right they presumed to consider that those desert wastes could ever become part of the province of ordered knowledge. The recent history of Professor Newcomb seems not to have been altogether unlike this. All the world knows him as a brilliant astronomer, but the world is not acquainted with efforts of his in the psychical domain. Yet in the past he has made a few. In 1884 he allowed himself to be President of the American S.P.R., which in 1889 became for a time a branch of the English Society. And that was no slight service in those early days. He is not one of those who have scoffed, with resolutely shut mind and averted eyes, at all possibilities beyond those long familiar to the human race through their

customary channels of sense. There was a time when he seems to have contemplated 'occult' matters with some little interest, and even to have undertaken an inquiry or two. But it was evidently long ago, and the particular inquiries seem to have resulted in negation.

I am surprised, however, that he should include among those inquiries a reference to the exhibition, some years ago, of muscular feats and tricks by a young woman called by her exhibitors the little Georgia Magnet'; whereof he gives the explanation which we all gave, and which was published in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. xi. pp. 219-225. The performance turned out to have nothing whatever to do with our subject, and it is unfortunate that Professor Newcomb should speak of that legitimate public entertainer as 'the most wonderful performer yet seen,' or should regard her feats as an example of occult power seriously vouched for.

Another untoward occasion, which, strange to say, he speaks of as an event of prime importance,' occurred to him in the year 1858, likewise with a negative conclusion. This seems to have originated in a pecuniary challenge by some anonymous writer in the Boston Courier. Such pecuniary offers, so far as they are allowed to exert any influence, do indeed tend to place any subject beyond the pale of science.

As to the case of Mrs. Piper, he feels able to dismiss it in a few words, which to me convey no definite meaning. Let it be clearly understood that what Professor Newcomb is denying is not some out of the way phenomenon for which only weak or scanty evidence can be adduced, but it is any kind of supernormal phenomena whatever, and therefore especially the one which we consider definitely established, namely telepathy, or the action of one mind on another by other means than through the known organs of sense. I will only say that if he can point out a way by which we might dispense with the necessity for applying telepathy as a working hypothesis to some of the facts obtained through the agency of Mrs. Piper, he would mightily simplify the problem which just at present is lying before us. For at the present time telepathy has become almost a sort of bugbear which constantly obstructs our view and increases our difficulties, because it is a vera causa which we feel bound to stretch to the utmost as a working hypothesis before advancing to some further and more questionable theory.

Like myself and many other scientific investigators, Professor Newcomb himself is devoid of telepathic faculty. That fact alone does not prove that the faculty is non-existent. I have known people devoid of any faculty for music, and for mathematics; but nevertheless these faculties do exist, in favoured individuals.

In recent times he seems to have abandoned any study of the matter, and is moved to ask therefore, somewhat naïvely, why has everything stopped? Why are the operating deities, or demons, no longer active? How comes it that he has heard nothing of

mediumistic performances for ten or even twenty years,' 'except the trance mediums and fortune tellers who still ply their trade, and an occasional "materialiser " " ?

Well, I do not know how it comes about that Professor Newcomb has not heard of what has been going on. I accept the fact, and consider that it amply explains his present attitude. With only the amount of experience to which he confesses, and with that unfruitful lapse of time, the impression of any reasonable probability of truth in the phenomena is bound to fade and become extinct.

Under those conditions I must suggest that the maturity' of his opinions is hardly an advantage. My own experience agrees with that of others in this particular: reminiscences of occurrences do not improve with keeping, it is necessary to have them fresh and fresh. Scepticism among scientific men is doubtless meritorious, but in this case it seems to have been too jealously guarded. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue.'

But his article is by no means limited to a statement of personal incredulity; a more important part of it remains. He shows cause why the asserted facts should be extruded, not only from individual belief, but from the cognisance of the world at large. He urges that they should take their place among discredited superstitions and impostures. And he does not, like smaller antagonists, merely disdain and ridicule; he bestows on the subject a friendly, even a respectful glance, out of politeness for those who think it their duty to work therein; and he adduces reasoned objections to the deducing from all their labour any positive conclusion in favour of the existence of anything unusual.

Scepticism is nothing new in the atmosphere of the Society for Psychical Research. Its enemies more frequently complain of its excessive and withering scepticism than they do of its credulity; and every scientific man who will take part in our researches and give us the benefit of his careful attention and criticism from inside, has always been heartily welcomed. The Society was founded to find out the truth about obscure phenomena and drag them into the light of day. It was not founded to establish, any more than to disestablish, a verity underlying popular beliefs. If the asserted facts cannot stand scrutiny and reasonable criticism, they are not worth the labour that has been bestowed upon them-let them perish!

But speaking for myself, and for most-I think all-of the investigators, I feel that they are worth the labour, and that in one form or another some of them will make good their claim to be admitted into the kingdom of science in due time.

That being so, I necessarily differ from the conclusion to which Professor Newcomb has come, and am glad of the opportunity to encounter, and to some extent ward off, the missiles he directs against our earthworks. Earthworks I must call them, for as yet they have

not been converted into permanent and substantial fortifications, such as those behind which, as astronomers and physicists, we are able so powerfully to entrench ourselves, when, as occasionally happens, some crazily ingenious paradoxer' questions the accuracy of physical data, the correctness of gravitational theory, or the truth of the legend of the sudden appearance of occasional new stars in historic times. Though this last, I parenthetically remark, is not the kind of thing that can be reproduced at will.

Nevertheless I commend to everyone interested a careful reading of Professor Newcomb's article. The first paragraph, for instance, abounds in passages which deserve attention, and some of which I am tempted to quote. I will be content with one.

Belief in witchcraft vanished from the minds of civilised men more than two centuries ago, and with it disappeared the belief in every form of mental interaction otherwise than through the known organs of sense.

Quite true, that is exactly what happened. But we have begun to suspect that, in the reaction or recoil, the disbelief went too far. Facts have driven us to this view. Moreover, even on a priori considerations, some of us venture to think it unlikely that our organs of sense, evolved as they have been by the animal kingdom for subsistence and continuance of the race, have already informed us of every existing class of phenomenon, and every real kind of mental interaction.' The possibility that the universe contains many truths of a kind as yet quite unsuspected, must have been one of the factors which caused certain of us, which caused such a man as Professor Sidgwick for instance, to enter upon a rather repugnant region of inquiry, at a time when it was even more widely despised and disliked than it is at present. I have said already that as a physicist I sympathise with colleagues who dislike the 'atmosphere of this quest. But it is a dislike which I have had to overcome, for when an avenue of truth is placed before him, woe be to the scientific man who resolutely shuts his eyes.

The inquiry has led us, then, to the view which Professor Newcomb so well expresses, namely, that some of the 'instincts of our ancestors did not err so greatly as we have supposed, and that beliefs which our fathers called superstitions are well grounded in the regular order of nature.'

I entirely acquiesce; and with the first line of the second paragraph also I can heartily concur: 'If these are truths, we can scarcely exaggerate their importance.'

It is indeed their profound importance that vociferously enjoins caution in acceptance of them. Popular incredulity is, and will be for some time yet, eminently desirable. It would be a calamity if any large proportion of the human race were to veer suddenly round from complete rejection to wholesale acceptance; for the sudden

change would initiate a new era of superstition, and would neutralise some of the benefit of that sound schooling in reverence for fact which the nineteenth century gave us.

The wisest course is for the phenomena to be studied, criticised, and, if it so happens, accepted, first by students of science, who can assimilate and digest them into pabulum meet for the multitude. I do not say that the more advanced investigators should, artificially and in a spirit of presumptuous Providence, hang back and withhold their results from general knowledge, in fear lest they should do harm. I do not urge any inaction or secrecy from motives of expediency; there would be lack of faith and over-much presumption in such a course. If we have received what we consider truth, it is our duty, after due pondering, to proclaim it. But in so far as other scientific men, acting as they believe also in full accord with truth, feel impelled to throw doubt upon our investigations and thereby to induce the multitude to hold aloof, suspend judgment, and continue in unbelief for a time, they are, I expect, doing useful service. That which our view of truth prevents us from doing, their view justly enables them to do; and by the interaction of the two groups, a steady and balanced progress may be hoped for.

Of course hostility could go too far. It might become so violent as to check all inquiry; it might surround the subject with so much ridicule and obstruction as to cover up the facts once more with a cloak of inattention. But that, I think, is hardly likely to happen again.

Thanks to the wisdom and sanity, the caution and candour, of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research, quorum pars non fui, the inquiry is already verging on a sort of respectability; it need no longer be pursued in holes and corners. Men of letters and statesmen are now willing to discuss our results, and presently even the courts of orthodox science will be open to receive communications on this subject, even as they have at last had to recognise hypnotism, in spite of its alien appearance.

Meanwhile Professor Newcomb says that our facts, even if true, are not science. Certainly they do not yet belong to orthodox science. But he says more than that, he says that they do not belong to the region of science at all, and, in giving his reason, he enunciates one of the few general considerations which I disallow, or at least fail to understand. He says they are not science because they are disconnected facts, because the evidence for them is sporadic and not continuous :

That coal will burn when brought into contact with fire is a proposition belonging to the domain of science. But if we could only say that someone in England had at some time made coal burn, then, a few years later, someone in Russia, then someone in America, and so on, such facts, though they mounted into the hundreds or the thousands, would not establish the law that coal was combustible, and therefore would not belong to science.