THE PRESENT COMMERCIAL CRISIS. 491 



tremities of the nerves ; or, whether it is the result of some specific 

 effluence from the operator, which may act without actual contact, 

 independently of the subject's knowledge or expectation. On the 

 whole, the committee's evidence leans toward the last and antecedently 

 the least probable explanation. But as yet no definite answer is pos- 

 sible on this point. 



The literary committee has done very important work, for, in addi- 

 tion to the collection of a considerable library of books on psychical 

 subjects, it has more than one hundred cases, with the evidence taken 

 at first hand, of apparitions closely coinciding w r ith the time of the 

 death of the person seen ; and it is only in a small minority of such 

 cases that informants, according to their own account, have had any 

 other hallucination than the apparition in question. While no deduc- 

 tion from this evidence is yet justifiable, yet we may safely agree with 

 Professor Balfour Stewart when he says that " the great importance 

 of this statement will be manifest to all." 



There the work stands at present. We have given a brief outline 

 of the objects and method of the society, and have endeavored to 

 make clear just how far its work has progressed. The society is ac- 

 tively at work, the literature of the subject is increasing, and at no dis- 

 tant period more definite conclusions may be laid before the scientific 

 world, and the supporting evidence given at length. That the interest 

 in this work is general is proved by the formation of societies for 

 psychical research in Boston and Chicago, and the character of their 

 oflicers and conductors is, as is the case in the parent society in Eng- 

 land, surety for the careful and scientific prosecution of their investi- 

 gations. In France too, the psychologists are turning their attention 

 to these phenomena, and men like Janet, Ribot, and Charcot are at 

 the head of a society similar to those we have mentioned. 



So far the results are certainly indefinite, but they are interesting 

 and suggestive. The time may soon come when we shall either be 

 able to speak definitely and accurately about these abnormal phe- 

 nomena, or else to say on demonstrable grounds that their causes and 

 laws lie beyond the limits of human knowledge. Whatever w T e know 

 will be incorporated in the vast body of scientific truth, and the raison 

 d'etre of a small army of frauds and impostors, as well as of innumer- 

 able superstitions, will have been swept away. 



-*++- 



CAUSES OF THE PRESENT COMMERCIAL CRISIS. 



By PAUL LEROY-BEAULIEU. 



THE whole world has been suffering for two years under an intense 

 commercial crisis. Hardly any country has escaped the strin- 

 gency. For special reasons, France has suffered the most. But Eng- 

 land, Belgium, Italy, Germany, and even the United States and the 



