PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 



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PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 



if she once looked upon him he should be 

 obliged to leave her forever. For a long time 

 they were very happy, but at last Psyche's jeal- 

 ous sisters convinced her that her invisible hus- 

 band was a frightful monster and persuaded 

 her to kill him in his sleep. That night Psyche 

 crept up to him with a lighted lamp in one 

 hand and a dagger in the other; and when, by 

 the light of the lamp, she saw the beautiful god, 

 she was so startled that a drop of the burning 

 oil fell upon his shoulder and awakened him. 

 Seeing her standing over him with her dagger, he 

 guessed her intentions and with a reproachful 

 word vanished out of sight, leaving her dis- 

 tracted with grief. 



Far and wide she sought him without avail, 

 and many were the difficult tasks that were laid 

 on her by Venus. At last she was sent by this 

 hard-hearted deity to the underground realm 

 to obtain from Proserpina some of the latter's 

 fabled beauty. On her return journey curiosity 

 overcame her and she opened the box, only to 

 be overcome by poisonous fumes. Cupid came 

 upon her as she lay asleep by the roadside, for- 

 gave her, and after much pleading reconciled 

 his mother to the reunion and took her up to 

 Olympus, where she was made immortal. As 

 Cupid represents the heart, Psyche was thought 

 to typify the human soul, and the trials through 

 which she went were symbolic of the struggles 

 through which the soul must go before it is 

 made pure. References to Psyche in literature 

 are very numerous, and it is almost impossible 

 to read any of the poets without coming upon 

 some mention of her. See BUTTERFLY, subhead 

 Life Hi&lory, page 1023. 

 PSYCHICAL, si'kikal, RESEARCH. 'The 

 a became current in 1882 through the estab- 

 h.-hincnt in England of the Society for Psy- 



il Research for the investigation chiefly of 

 phenomena suggestive of the operation of pow- 

 ers beyond the recognized use of the senses and 



accredited behavior of matter and mind. 



investigation was to include the traditional 

 beliefs in premonitions, haunted houses, the 

 happenings in the presence of mediums, such 

 peculiar states as trance, hypnosis and ih 

 istcnce of seemingly supernatural forces tran- 

 scending the known behavior of matter. This 

 program may not seem wholly scientific, but 



>rresponds to widespread interest in certain 

 classes of occurrences, whatever their nature 

 and explanation; these require special methods 

 of investigation, and their proper comprehen- 

 sion is a legitimate function of educational m- 



ferwt 



The most definite problem was that of the 

 transference of thought apart from the ordinary 

 channels, for which the term telepathy was 

 adopted. Persons appeared claiming such pow- 

 ers; experiments were conducted on a large 

 scale in which the successes of such "percipi- 

 ents" in guessing numbers, names or cards were 

 carefully recorded, and the conclusion reached 

 that after allowing for chance a proportion of 

 success remained that implied an authentic 

 transfer. Although critical students have sub- 

 scribed to these conclusions, they cannot be 

 said to be generally accepted; on the contrary, 

 the prevailing attitude of scientific men is that 

 the conclusion is unwarranted. Of the ele- 

 ments that may account for the results, the 

 most perplexing is the question of fraud, inten- 

 tional and unintentional. Distinctly fraudulent 

 methods were discovered by members of the 

 society, and such results were disregarded; but 

 it is true in a number of cases that confessions 

 of fraud were made after the results had been 

 accepted as genuine. Apart from the "money" 

 interest the desire for notoriety and the interest 

 in deception act as motives for .frauds. It has 

 also been found that involuntary whisperings 

 and all manner of subtle indications were sub- 

 consciously conveyed, and may afford a clue to 

 the successes as well as to the methods em- 

 ployed. In such experiments the proper allow- 

 ance to be made for chance is not easily deter- 

 mined; the mental habits of two persons may 

 be sufficiently alike to cause apparent transfer. 



A truly formidable amount of evidence was 

 amassed of "veridical" premonitions and ap- 

 paritions, that is, such as correspond to actual 

 happenings. A person at a distance has a sud- 

 den and strong feeling that something momen- 

 tous is happening to a friend; quite as com- 

 monly an actual feeling of his presence or the 

 apparition of a form is reported. Later reports 

 in many cases prove that something momen- 

 tous had really occurred, and in many cases the 

 premonition or apparition fairly coincided with 

 the moment of death of the absent friend. To 

 this class of cases the theory of telepathy was 

 applied. Such cases offer large room for sin- 

 cere error: the coincidence is often exagger- 

 ated ; the remarkable details are in some cases 

 illusions of memory ; the negative instances are 

 ignored; the fact that persons in positions of 

 danger are naturally frequently in mind of their 

 friends, would favor coincidences of thought and 

 occurrence; some such coincidences must occur 

 by chance; cases depending upon written rec- 

 ords made before verification are rare. 



