188 SIR WILLIAM CROOKES ON PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. 



task needs a rigorous employment of the method of exclusion— a con- 

 stant setting aside of irrelevant phenomena that could be explained by 

 known causes, including those far too familiar causes, conscious and 

 unconscious fraud. The inquiry unites the difficulties inherent in all 

 experimentation connected with mind, with tangled human tempera- 

 ments, and with observations dependent less on automatic record than 

 on personal testimony. But difficulties are things to be overcome even 

 in the elusory branch of research known as experimental psychology. 

 It has been characteristic of the leaders among the group of inquirers 

 constituting the Society for Psychical Research to combine critical 

 and negative work with work leading to positive discovery. To the 

 penetration and scrupulous fair-mindedness of Prof. Henry Sidgwick 

 and of the late Edmund Gurney is largely due the entablishment of 

 canons of evidence in psychical research, which strengthen while they 

 narrow the path of subsequent explorers. To the detective genius 

 of Dr. Richard Hodgson we owe a convincing demonstration of the 

 narrow limits of human continuous observation. 



It has been said that "Nothing worth the proving can be proved, 

 nor yet disproved." True though this may have been in the past, it 

 is true no longer. The science of our century has forged weapons of 

 observation and analysis by which the veriest tyro may profit. Science 

 has trained and fashioned the average mind into habits of exactitude 

 and disciplined perception, and in so doing has fortified itself for tasks 

 higher, wider, and incomparably more wonderful than even the wisest 

 among our ancestors imagined. Like the souls in Plato's myth that 

 follow the chariot of Zeus, it has ascended to a point of vision far 

 above the earth. It is henceforth open to science to transcend all we 

 now think we know of matter and to gain new glimpses of a pro- 

 founder scheme of Cosmic law. 



An eminent predecessor in this chair declared that " by an intellectual 

 necessity he crossed the boundary of experimental evidence, and dis- 

 cerned in that matter, which we in our ignorance of its latent powers, 

 and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have 

 hitherto covered with opproljrium, the potency and promise of all 

 terrestrial life." I should prefer to reverse the apothegm, and to say 

 that in life I see the promise and potency of all forms of matter. 



In old Egyptian days a well-known inscription was carved over the 

 portal of the temple of Isis: "I am whatever hath been, is, or ever 

 will be; and my veil no man hath yet lifted." Not thus do modern 

 seekers after truth confront nature— the word that stands for the 

 baffling mysteries of the universe. Steadily, unflinchingly, we strive 

 to pierce the inmost heart of Nature, from what she is to reconstruct 

 what she has been, and to prophesy what she yet shall be. Veil after 

 veil we have lifted, and her face grows more beautiful, august, and 

 wonderful with every barrier that is withdrawn. 



