PSYCH ICAL RESKARCH. 



By T. M. Forsyth. M.A., D.Phil., 

 Professor of Philosophy, Grey University College. 



Read July lo, 1919. 



The subject of psychical research is too vast and as yet too 

 little advanced to admit of any but a very meagre and general 

 statement, especially by one who has only begim anything like 

 a systematic study of the special problems which it involves. 

 What follows must be taken as a first and very tentative pre- 

 sentation of this large and difficult subject. It will state an 

 attitude more than a conclusion ; and it will concern itself with 

 hypotheses rather than established results. 



The first thing we have to get clear about is that psychical 

 research is as fit and genuine a field of scientific inquiry as any 

 other. Science and scientific method cannot be restricted to 

 spheres in which definite results have already been attained, or 

 to spheres which lend themselves more readily than others to 

 the attainment of such results. Fortunately, men of science, 

 after for long treating the subject wnth disdain or with con- 

 tumely, have begun to see that there is warrant for the bestowal 

 of the same open-mindedness, the same patient and thorough 

 research, on the psychic as en the physical aspects of existence. 

 Any other attitude than this, however much it masquerades in 

 the name of science, is not scientific, but entirely unscientific. 



Properly speaking, the term " psychical " or " psychic 

 phenomena " should be coextensive with mental states or pro- 

 cesses in general. But it — as well as the corresponding term " psy- 

 chical research " — ^has come to be used to denote not the 

 ordinary or normal manifestations of consciousness, such as the 

 exercise of the five senses and of thought, volition, etc., as 

 based upon these, but phenomena that are, in the literal sense 

 of the word, r.r/raordinary, i.e., out of the usual or diiTerent 

 from habitual and therefore generally recognized workings of 

 the mental life. At all ages in human history there have been 

 records or traditions of experiences that went beyond the im- 

 pressions of the recognized " five senses." But it is, speaking 

 generally, only within the last half-century that such experiences 

 have been made the subject of any thorough and systematic 

 investigation. I shall first give a survey of the ground* and state 



* In the delivery of this paper the different types of ohenomena were 

 illustrated by examples, quoted chiefly from Barrett, " Psychical Re- 

 search " and " On the Threshold of the Unseen," and Podmore, " Natural- 

 isation of the Supernatural." Many of the cases cited by these authors 

 are transcribed from the Proceedings or the unpublished Journal of the 

 Society for Psychical Research, and my aim was in every instance to 

 choose examples that were well-authenticated as facts, whatever might 

 be the explanation which they required. 



