124 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In tlie second place, there was a 

 known cause of the effect produced 

 in a powerful electric disturbance 

 of an attenuated gaseous medium. 

 There was something here which 

 might very conceivably possess an 

 action resembling that of light upon 

 a photographic plate, and, seeing that 

 ordinary light rays can pass through 

 vai'ious solids, it was not taxing be- 

 lief unduly to state that the X rays 

 could pass through solids imperme- 

 able to ordinary light. If intelligent 

 persons will only use the full meas- 

 ure of their intelligence in discrimi- 

 nating between authenticated and 

 unauthenticated announcements, be- 

 tween consistent and inconsistent 

 statements, between alleged facts 

 that have a history behind them, 

 and appear in some natural order of 

 development, and others that have 

 as little previous history and as little 

 in the way of development as " the 

 shield that fell from heaven," they 

 "will be all the better for it. They 

 will gain in intellectual power, and, 

 as a result, will be less at the mercy 

 of the manufacturers of the marvel- 

 ous. It may be a little difficult to 

 exercise discrimination to this de- 

 gree, but who can deny that the 

 effort to do so would be eminently 

 beneficial? The late Mr. Bagehot 

 once wrote an instructive article on 

 The Emotion of Belief, in which he 

 showed to how large an extent emo- 

 tion is responsible for belief. It is so 

 to altogether too large an extent : 

 when people believe, they are very 

 often indulging an emotion instead 

 of completing an intellectual process. 

 This emotion is continually demand- 

 ing nutriment and stimulus; and we 

 need to be on our guard if we would 

 not be continually believing simply 

 for the sake of the pleasure accom- 

 panying the act. 



We therefore see a good moral as- 

 sociating itself very closely with Prof. 

 Jordan's jeu d'esprit; and there is 



consequently reason to hope that, 

 when the returns are all in, the bal- 

 ance will be on the right side. 



FABINQ FADS. 



A CORRESPONDENT of The Nation, 

 writing from Geneva, thus reports in 

 regai'd to the Third International 

 Congress of Psychologists lately 

 held in that city : " The fact that the 

 papers on 'hypnotism' were less 

 than in earlier congresses, in pro- 

 portion to the entire number, and 

 that there were a bare half dozen on 

 thought-transference and telepathy, 

 shows the general tendency of psy- 

 chology. The hypnotic period is past 

 even in France. . . . As to telepathy, 

 I think there is a real decay of in- 

 terest in the subject, much as this is 

 to be deplored." We must confess 

 we do not feel like deploring the de- 

 cay of interest to which the corre- 

 spondent alludes. There would not 

 be such a decay if facts were forth- 

 coming of a nature and in sufficient 

 number to sustain the interest. Te- 

 lepathy is one of those things that 

 appeal most strongly to popular cre- 

 dulity. The subject, or rather the 

 alleged facts, might be studied with- 

 out injury by a man of scientific 

 training ; but, handed over to the 

 multitude, it is well adapted to be- 

 come the fruitful source of every 

 kind of intellectual mischief. There 

 are hundreds of minds to-day that 

 are perilously near the border land 

 of insanity, and still more that are 

 in a most unwholesome fever of un- 

 rest, simply on account of the oblit- 

 eration, so far as they are concerned, 

 of the boundaries of the possible and 

 impossible. They do not know what 

 to believe in or what to expect in 

 the way of incursions from an invis- 

 ible and intangible world, or what 

 law of Nature they can safely regard 

 as irreversible. Can any good come 

 of this ? We should certainly say 



