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experiment Sir William Crookes made an important omission. 
He said nothing about the position of the light and the degree 
of the illumination. No doubt the room was darkened, and he 
(the lecturer) had no doubt that what light there was was at the 
back of the medium, so that his legs would be in the shadow of 
his own body. Then he felt sure in his own mind that the balance 
was worked by the medium by some such means as a black thread: 
fastened to the leg of his trousers. He could not say positively 
that this was how the trick was done, but he did say that Sir 
William Crooke’s record was not nearly sufficient evidence of 
the manifestation of psychic force. The untrained human senses 
were no match for the trained conjuror, and all such experiments 
should be tested by mechanical contrivances and not rest on a 
deception of the senses. Material ‘“‘ miracles’ could be investi- 
gated and found to be wrong. The real spiritual things that were 
not visible could not be so explained. The whole world was 
miraculous, or there was no miracle at all. 
Friday, April 7th, Sir Samuel Wilks, Bart., F.R.S., President, 
in the chair. 
_ Mr. Edward Clodd gave a lecture entitled ‘* Savage Philo- 
sophy in Folk Tale.’’ The lecturer, introducing the subject 
of Saga and nursery tales, said that the pastimes of children every- 
where were found to mimic the serious pursuits of men. The 
existence of a number of folk and fireside tales of hoary age and 
world-wide distribution, in which a common set of incidents was 
present, or, more important, in which a fundamental idea was 
prominent, invited the application of what was known as the 
scientific method—observation, comparison, and classification. It 
would be seen that, in the case of the nursery tale, it often had 
at its core some fragment of barbaric philosophy of things which 
had been a ruling influence for weal or woe upon folk at low stages 
of culture. That could be drawn from a group of stories of which 
the German “‘ Rumpelstiltskin ’”’ was the most familiar type. That 
well-known old folk-tale had no rival until its Suffolk variant, 
“Tom Tit Tot” appeared in the “ Ipswich Journal” of January 
15th, 1878, written in the archaic and racy dialect of East Anglia. 
The lecturer here read this story in dialect. The central idea of 
the story is that the name of any being, from the great Gods of 
the heavens, through all the gradation of spirits, down to mortal 
men and women, is an integral part of that being, and, what was 
of supreme importance, that whoever could find out the name 
had the god or godling, the fiend or mortal, in his power. This 
