SIR WILLIAM CROOKES ON PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. 189 



II.— ADDRESS BEFORE THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.' 



The task I am called upon to perform to-da}^ is to my thinking by 

 no mcins a merely formal or easy mattei". It tills mc with deep con- 

 cern to give an address, with such authority as a president's chair con- 

 fers, upon a science which!; though still in a purely nascent stage, 

 seems to me at least as important as any other science whatever. 

 Ps^^chical science, as we here try to pursue it, is the embryo of some- 

 thing which in time may dominate the whole Avorld of thought. This 

 possibility — nay, probability — does not make it the easier to me now. 

 Embrj'onic development is apt to be both rapid and interesting; yet 

 the prudent man shrinks from dogmatising on the egg until he has 

 seen the chicken. 



Nevertheless, I desire, if I can, to say a helpful word. And I ask 

 m5\self what kind of helpful word. Is there any connection between 

 my old-standing interest in psychical problems and such original work 

 as I may have been able to do in other branches of science? 



I think there is such a connection — that the most helpful quality 

 which has aided me in psychical problems and has made me lucky in 

 physical discoveries (sometimes of rather unexpected kinds) has 

 simply been my knowledge — my vital knowledge, if I may so term it — 

 of my own ignorance. 



Most students of nature sooner or later pass through a process of 

 writing off a large percentage of their supposed capital of knowledge 

 as a merely illusory asset. As we trace more accurately certain 

 familiar sequences of phenomena we begin to realize how closely these 

 sequences, or laws, as we call them, are hemmed round by still other 

 laws of which we can form no notion. With mj\self this writing off 

 of illusory assets has gone rather far and the cobweb of supposed 

 knowledge has been pinched (as some one has phrased) into a par- 

 ticularly small pill. 



I am not disposed to bewail the limitations imposed by human igno- 

 rance. On the contrary, 1 feel ignorance is a healthful stimulant; and 

 my enforced conviction that neither I nor anyone can possiblj^ lay 

 down beforehand what does not exist in the universe, or even what is 

 not going on all round us everyday of our lives, leaves me with a ch<^er- 

 f ul hope that something very new and ver}^ arresting may turn up 

 anywhere at any minute. 



Well, it was this attitude of a mind "to let" which first brought 

 me across Mr. D. D. Home, and which led to my getting a glimpse of 



'Address by the president, William Crookes, to the Society for Psychical Research, 

 January 29, 1897. Reprinted from Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 

 London, Vol. XII, March, 1897, pp. 338-355. 



