486 PHYSIOLOGY CHAP. 



style thought-transference. . . . The opinion is justified by the 

 fact that the spontaneously occurring impressions can be artificially 

 and experimentally imitated by conscious attempts to produce 

 them. . . . These experiments also want repeating. They require 

 care, obviously ; but they are very valuable pieces of evidence, and 

 must contribute immensely to experimental psychology. 



"What now is the meaning of this unexpected sympathetic 

 resonance, this syntonic reverberation between minds ? Is it con- 

 ceivably the germ of a new sense, as it were something which 

 the human race is, in the progress of evolution, destined to receive 

 in fuller measure ? Or is it the relic of a faculty possessed by our 

 animal ancestry before speech was ? I have no wish to intrude 

 speculations upon you, and I cannot answer these questions except 

 in terms of speculation. I wish to assert nothing but what I 

 believe to be solid and verifiable facts." 



After an interesting discussion of experimental thought-trans- 

 ference, Lodge continues : " An attitude of keen and critical inquiry 

 must continually be maintained, and in that sense any amount of 

 scepticism is not only legitimate but necessary. The kind of 

 scepticism I deprecate is not that which sternly questions and 

 rigorously probes, it is rather that which confidently asserts and 

 dogmatically denies ; but this kind is not true scepticism, in the 

 proper sense of the word, for it deters inquiry and forbids examina- 

 tion. It is too positive concerning the boundaries of knowledge 

 and the line where superstition begins. . . . 



" The whole of our knowledge and existence is shrouded in 

 mystery : the commonplace is itself full of marvel, and the business 

 of science is to overcome the forces of superstition by enlisting 

 them in the service of genuine knowledge." 1 



Far too large a proportion of scientific men, however, scorn to 

 occupy themselves with telepathic phenomena, because to them 

 such problems only mean a retrogression, a recrudescence of 

 mediaeval mysticism. They include under the heading mysti- 

 cism those philosophical, spiritualist, or idealist tendencies which 

 constitute the central, more or less conscious or subconscious, 

 nucleus of human nature. For them Kant himself would be a 

 mystic ! The materialists of the nineteenth century went so far 

 along this false track as to confound with mysticism i.e. with 

 the complex creeds and practices of superstition the different 

 forms of vitalism or physiological teleology professed implicitly or 

 explicitly by the most illustrious biologists, past or present, in 

 both the animal and the vegetable kingdoms. 



When, after minute and patient experimental analysis of the 

 physical, chemical, and morphological characters of the organism 

 the physiologist in order to embrace the whole phenomenology 

 of Life passes on to the study of the great biological laws, 



1 The Survival of Man, Sir Oliver Lodge, pp. 88 et seq. 



