SIR WILLIAM CROOKES ON PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. 195 



speculation.^ I can not place him actually amid the interplay of mole- 

 cules, for lack of power to imagine his environment; but 1 shall make 

 him of such microscopic size that molecular forces which in common 

 life we hardly notice — such as surface tension, capillarity, the Brown- 

 ian movements — become for him so conspicuous and dominant that he 

 can hardl}^ believe, let us say, in the universality of gravitation, which 

 we may suppose to have been revealed to him by ourselves, his creators. 



Let us place him on a cabbage leaf and let him start for himself. 



The area of the cabbage leaf appears to him as a boundless plain 

 many square miles in extent. To this minimized creature the leaf is 

 studded with huge glittering transparent globes, resting motionless on 

 the surface of the leaf, each globe vastly exceeding in height the tow- 

 ering pyramids. Each of these spheres appears to emit from one of 

 its sides a dazzling light. Urged by curiosity he approaches and 

 touches one of the orbs. It resists pressure like an india-rubber ball, 

 until accidentally he fractures the surface, when suddenly he feels 

 himself seized and whirled and l)rought somewhere to an equilibrium, 

 where he remains suspended in the surface of the sphere utterh' unable 

 to extricate himself. In the course of an hour or two he finds the 

 globe diminishing, and ultimately it disappears, leaving him at liberty 

 to pursue his travels. Quitting the cabbage leaf, he strays over the 

 surface of the soil, finding it exceeding rocky and mountainous, until 

 he sees before him a broad surface akin to the kind of matter which 

 formed the globes on the cabbage leaf. Instead, however, of rising 

 upward from its support, it now slopes downward in a vast curve from 

 the brink, and ultimately becomes apparently level, though, as this is at a 

 considerable distance from the shore, he can not be absolutely certain. 

 Let us now suppose that he holds in his hand a vessel bearing the same 

 proportion to his minimized frame that a pint measure does to that of 

 a man as he is, and that by adroit manipulation he contrives to fill it 

 with water. If he inverts the vessel he finds that the liquid will not 

 flow and can only be dislodged by violent shocks. Wearied l)y his 

 exertions to empty the vessel of water, he sits on the shore and idly 

 amuses himself by throwing stones and other objects into the water. 

 As a rule the stones and other wet bodies sink, although when dry they 

 o])stinately refuse to go to the bottom, but float on the surface. He 

 tries other substances. A rod of polished steel, a silver pencil case, 

 some platinum wire, and a steel pen, objects two or three tini(\s the 

 density of the stones, refuse to sink at all, and float on the surface like 

 so many bits of cork. Nay, if he and his friends manage to throw 

 into the water one of those enormous steel bars which we call needles, 



^I need hardly say that in this fanciful sketch, composed only for an illustrative 

 purpose, all kinds of problems (as of the honumculus's own structure and jiowers) 

 are left untouched, and various points which would really need to he mathematically 

 worked out are left intentionally vague. 



