SIR WILLIA.M CROOKES ON PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. 193 



vVheii and if spiritual bein^-s make themselves visible either to our 

 bodily e3'es or to our inward vision, their object would be thwarted 

 were the\' not to appear in a recognizable form; so that their appear- 

 ance would take the shape of the bod\' and clothing to which we have 

 been accustomed. Materiality, form, and space, I am constrained to 

 believe, are temporary conditions of our present existence. It is dif- 

 ficult to conceive the idea of a spiritual being having a body like ours, 

 conditioned by the exact gravitating force exerted Iw the earth, and 

 with organs which presuppose the need for food and necessity for the 

 removal of waste products. It is equally difficult, hemmed in and 

 l)ound round as we are by materialistic ideas, to think of intelligence, 

 thought, and mil existing without form or matter and untrammeled 

 by gravitation or space. 



Men of science before now have had to face a similar problem. In 

 some speculations on the nature of matter, Faraday ' expressed himself 

 in language which, mutatis mutandis, applies to my present surmises. 

 This earnest philosopher was speculating on the ultimate nature of 



^ " If we must assume at all, as indeed in a branch of knowledge like the present 

 we can hardly help it, then the safest course appears to be to assume as little as pos- 

 sible, and in that respect the atoms of Boscovich appear to me to have a great advan- 

 taj^e over the more usual notion. His atoms are mere centers of forces or powers, not 

 particles of matter in which the powers themselves reside. 



"If in the ordinary view of atoms we call the particle of matter away from the 

 I)o\vers a, and the system of powers or forces in and around it m, then in Boscovich's 

 tlieory <i disappears, or is a mere mathematical point, while in the usual notion it ia 

 a little vmchangeable, impenetrable piece of matter, and m is an atmosphere of force 

 grouped around it. 



"To my mind, therefore, the a or nucleus vanishes, and the substance consists of 

 the powers, or m; and indeed, what notion can we form of the nucleus independent 

 of its powers? All our perception and knowledge of the atom, and even our fancy, 

 is limited to ideas of its powers. What thought remains on which to hang the imagi- 

 nation of an a independent of the acknowledged forces? 



"A mind just entering on the subject may consider it difficult to think of the 

 pfiwers of matter independent of a separate something to he called 'the matter;' hut 

 it is certainly far more difficult, and indeed impossible,- to think of or imagine that 

 matter indej)endent of the powers. Now, the powers we know and recognize in every 

 phenomenon of the creation, the abstract matter in none; why, then, assume the 

 I'xistence of that of which we are ignorant, which we can not conceive, and for which 

 there is no ])hilosophical necessity? 



"If an atom be conceived to be a center of i)ower, that which is ordinarily referred 

 to under the term 'shape' would be now referred to the disposition and relative 

 intensity of the forces. * * * Nothing can be supposed of the disposition of forces 

 ia and about a solid nucleus i>f matter which can not be ecpially conceived with 

 respect to a center. 



"The view now stated of the constitution of matter would seem to involve neces- 

 sarily the conclusion that matter fills all space. * * * In that view matter is not 

 merely mutually i>enetrable, but each atom extends, so to say, throughout the whole 

 of the solar system, yet always retaining its own center of force." (Faraday, " ( )n 

 the nature of matter," I'liil. Ma;/., 1S44, Vol. XXIV, p. 1:56.) 



SM itl) 18 



