SIR WILLIAM CROOKES ON PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. 203 



pineal eye in man, nia}^ be onl}^ vestigial. By such an hypothesis no 

 physk-al laws are violated; neither is it necessary to invoke what is 

 commonly called the supernatural. 



To this hypothesis it may be objected that brain waves, like an}'^ 

 other waves, must obey physical laws. Therefore, transmission of 

 thought must be easier or more certain the nearer the agent and recip- 

 ient are to each other, and should die out altogether before great 

 distances are reached. Also it can be urged that if brain waves diffuse 

 in all directions they should affect all sensitives within their radius of 

 action, instead of impressing only one brain. The electric telegraph is 

 not a parallel case, for there a material wire intervenes to conduct and 

 guide the energy to its destination. 



These are weighty objections, but not, I think, insurmountable. Far 

 be it from me to say anything disrespectful of the law of inverse 

 squares, but I have already endeavored to show we are dealing with 

 conditions removed from our material and limited conceptions of space, 

 matter, form. Is it inconceivable that intense thought concentrated 

 toward a sensitive with whom the thinker is in close sympathy may 

 induce a telepathic chain of brain waves, along which the message of 

 thovight can go straight to its goal without loss of energy due to dis- 

 tance ^ And is it also inconceivable that our mundane ideas of space 

 and distance may be superseded in these subtile regions of unsubstantial 

 thought, where "near'" and "far"' mav lose their usual meanino-j' 



I repeat that this speculation is strictly provisional. I dare to sug- 

 gest it. The time may come when it will be possible to submit it to 

 experimental tests. 



I am impelled to one further reflection, dealing with the conserva- 

 tion of energy. We sa3% with truth, that energy is transformed but 

 not destroyed, and that whenever we can trace the transformation we 

 tind it quantitatively exact. So far as our very rough exactness goes, 

 this is true for inorganic matter and for mechanical forces. But it is 

 only inferentially true for organized matter and for vital forces. We 

 can not express life in terms of heat or of motion. And thus it hap- 

 pens that just when the exact transformation of energy will be most 

 interesting to watch, we can not really tell whether any fresh energy 

 has been introduced into the system or not. Let us consider this a 

 little more closely. 



It has, of course, always been realized b}- physicists, and has been 

 especialh' pointed out by Dr. Croll, that there is a wide difference 

 between the production of motion and the direction of it into a par- 

 ticular channel. The production of motion, molar or molecular, is 

 governed by phj'sical laws, which it is the business of the philosopher 

 to find out and correlate. The law of the conservation of energy over- 

 rides all laws, and it is a preeminent canon of scientific belief that for 

 ever}' act done a corresponding expenditure of energy must be trans- 



