54 NATURAL SCIENCE. Jan., 



guessing games and got "results." Next there are named nonentities 

 who have done likewise. Lastly there are awful warnings who also 

 have done likewise. 



It is plain that the witness of the two first classes of people i s 

 worthless. We assume readily that the society is generally 

 successful in excluding conscious fraud from its records. But con- 

 sider the case of these people. If they see no visions, if they assist 

 at unsuccessful guessing, they remain unknown and subject maybe to 

 the intolerable laughter of those acquainted with their aspirations. 

 But, if they succeed, they invest themselves with a mysterious 

 superiority. They are no longer plain " Miss A." and " Mrs. B.," 

 but Miss A. and Mrs. B., " Percipients." It is small wonder, then, 

 that their minds should be strongly biased in favour of success. No 

 wonder that, as instanced on page 48 of this book, "a cry of joy 

 should unfortunately escape them " after a guesser has made a 

 successful venture. Most of our readers have met some example of 

 this class, either in the early stage of "thought-reading" or blossomed 

 into the lamentable fruit of spiritualism, and no doubt they share our 

 ■friendly contempt for the victims of a pardonable ambition to achieve 

 the mysterious and the unknown, and our indignant reprobation of the 

 people who encourage and exploit them. 



The third class of persons who vouch for certain among the 

 events recorded in this book are individuals of more or less scientific 

 repute, whom we have ventured to denote as " awful warnings." We 

 have known personally, or followed in public print, the careers of 

 well nigh " four-and-twenty leaders of revolt," doctors of medicine, 

 professors of chemistry, professors of physics, and professors of 

 biology, who have begun harmlessly by taking a hand in the card- 

 games of thought-readers. But the same bough is limed for them 

 all : with the same fluttering protests that it happened in daylight 

 and in darkness, that the medium had electric bells on her toes and 

 her hands in their hands, they are caught by the spiritualists. They 

 retire to secluded chambers or to lonely isles with a medium and a 

 circle of enthusiasts, and they have their hair tweaked (and their 

 leg pulled, although on this they are silent) by ghostly " Jacks " and 

 " Marys" and " Indian boys." 



We do not intend to offer arguments against spiritualism : we 

 rejoice to blazon the fact that we have a prejudice so deeply rooted 

 as to be ineradicable against the manifestations that appear in the 

 vicinity of spiritualists ; and we are content to base on this prejudice 

 the dogmatic statements that there is always gross fraud connected 

 with the banjo-playing, hair-pulling phenomena, and that the opinion 

 upon occult phenomena is absolutely worthless of anyone who allows 

 himself to write or say anything about such manifestations, without 

 the clearest statement that he regards them as fraudulent, though the 

 fraud may be beyond his detection. 



Let the Society for Psychical Research have an end of their 

 folly. The strange dilemmas and paradoxes of our senses, the be- 

 wildering problems of personality, the examination of the channels 

 by which impressions reach us, and even the existence of incorporeal 

 psychical entities, are matters for the experts of our laboratories of 

 physiological psychology, and neither for straying professors of other 

 subjects, untrained nonentities, nor above all for hired mediums. If 

 they will insist upon continuing to collect and publish marvels for the 

 open-mouthed, let them, in the wake of the astute Mr. Stead, publish 

 such in shilling Christmas numbers 



