196 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tions have also given succor to 1,382 persons. Their crews have, more- 

 over, notably performed wreckers' duty, and saved large amounts of 

 marine property. The virtue of organization is attested by these re- 

 sults, but large credit must always be given to the noble fidelity, capa- 

 bility, and dauntless courage of the stout groups of seven who man 

 the lonely stations. Wherever native manliness is held in honor, these 

 heroic Pleiads of the seaboard beaches, and the gangs of nine who drive 

 the life-boats through overwhelming seas upon the Lakes and the 

 Pacific, with hearts greater than danger, can never fail of their meed. 



DISEASED CONDITION OF THE FACULTY OF 



WOKDEB. 



By Professor GAIRDNEE, 



OF THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH.* 



I HAVE never gone into this matter professionally, or even as a 

 scientific man, but have always on the other hand held that the 

 duty of a physician toward these things was to have as little as pos- 

 sible to do with them. But, still, in my career instances have come 

 to my knowledge, and it was in consideration of all these that I was 

 led to attempt to formulate a few nights ago the state of my mind 

 upon the subject by saying and it is something like a distinct, and I 

 think not an untrue and unintelligible definition that I call the state 

 of mind of people inclined to spiritualism a diseased condition of the 

 famlty of wonder. I hold that the faculty of wonder, or reverence, 

 if you like to call it so, is an innate and necessary part of the human 

 mind. Nay, more, it is one of the most essential, one of the most 

 beneficial of all our endowments that faculty by which we grasp, by 

 which we strive to a certain extent to comprehend, and, if we do not 

 comprehend, submit ourselves to, and even delight in the unknown 

 by which we strive to apprehend that which we can not comprehend. 

 You will easily see that the higher aspect of this faculty of wonder is 

 the basis of the whole of our religious aspirations. Therefore it can 

 not be that I mean to denounce it to speak ill of it. But, like all 

 our other faculties, this part of our mental constitution is liable to 

 abnormal action in fact, to get into a state of disease. What I said 

 of this faculty is, th^t, when it is rightly applied by a thoroughly 

 healthy mind to the connection between the spiritual and the material 

 world, it does or should find abundant opportunity for its exercise 

 within the realms of strict law. I do not mean here to touch or raise 

 the question whether there are what are called miracles connected with 



* Extract from a lecture to his class, on the subject of spiritualism. 



