708 



TELEPATHY. 



curious exhibition of the popular will, the Con- 

 servatives and Clericals, in the hope of 'cheek- 

 ing the tide of Radical legislation, are inclined 

 to favor one of the academic tenets of the Rad- 

 ical programme which the Democrats are not 

 ready to put into practice in the present stage 

 of political enlightenment. This is the making 

 of the referendum obligatory, so that no deci- 

 sion of the Federal Assembly shall become 

 law until it has been confirmed by a popular 

 vote. 



While the International Congress of Social 

 Democrats was discussing at Zurich, in August, 

 measures for the international establishment of 

 the eight-hour day, political tactics of the Social 

 Democracy, universal peace, the attitude to be 

 taken by Social Democrats in case of war, the 

 protection of working women, the national and 

 international extension of labor unions, and its 

 other agenda, a petition was circulated calling 

 for the insertion in the Federal Constitution of 

 an article recognizing the right to labor, which 

 obtained 52,387 signatures. The proposed amend- 

 ment is expected to secure work at sufficient 

 wages to every Swiss citizen by Federal, cantonal, 

 and communal legislation directed toward the 

 shortening of hours of labor, the establishment 

 of public and gratuitous intelligence offices, the 

 protection of employees against undeserved dis- 

 missal, adequate support or assistance from the 

 public funds for all who are wholly or partly 

 thrown out of work through no fault of their 

 own, the securing of laborers in the right to form 

 or to join unions for the protection of their in- 

 terests, and the establishment of legal rights for 

 laborers in respect to their work and their em- 

 ployers. The Socialists set forth as their ulti- 

 mate object the nationalization of the means of 

 production and exchange, by the abolition of in- 

 dividual capitalists and the substitution of state 

 and municipal enterprise in their stead. 



An international congress of anarchists was 

 held in Zurich in the same month as the Socialist 

 congress, from which the anarchists were ex- 

 cluded. No binding platform was adopted, for 

 that would be contrary to the anarchistic prin- 



ciple, but a series of resolutions were approved, 

 the first of which declared that revolutionary 

 Socialists and communistic anarchists could 

 work harmoniously together so long as they 

 agreed in holding that all slavery and all misery 

 were the result of the oppression and plundering 

 of the great mass by a minority of the people, 

 and that the oppressed must strive for the an- 

 nihilation of the existing capitalistic society by 

 all means in their power, legal or illegal, pacific 

 or violent. The parliamentary system was de- 

 nounced as an institution of the bourgeoisie, 

 which only serves to codify and legalize the ideas 

 of oppression. 



In the elections for the Nationalrath, held Oct. 

 29, the Socialists were defeated wherever they 

 set up an independent ticket or where they com- 

 bined with the Conservatives, and were only suc- 

 cessful where they allied themselves with the 

 Democrats. 



In December a drastic law was passed for the 

 repression of anarchistic outrages, which pro- 

 vides that persons who incite others, through the 

 press or otherwise, to commit outrages by the 

 use of explosives or otherwise, are liable to penal 

 servitude ; persons found in possession of chem- 

 icals to be used in manufacturing explosives for 

 criminal purposes, or aiding or abetting such 

 manufacture, are liable to imprisonment for at 

 least fifteen years ; persons causing explosions 

 render themselves liable to imprisonment at hard 

 labor, ranging from ten years to a life sentence ; 

 and persons knowingly spreading incitements to 

 commit outrages are punishable by a fine of 2,000 

 francs, or imprisonment, or both. 



The Federal Council has proposed the intro- 

 duction of a tobacco monopoly, to provide means 

 for a scheme of Government insurance against 

 accidents and illness. The alcohol monopoly, 

 which insures the purity of the spirits sold in 

 the retail trade, without limiting or regulating 

 their sale, has had the effect of diminishing the 

 total consumption. One tenth of the profits of 

 the monopoly, which were about $110,000 in 1891, 

 must be spent in combating the causes and effects 

 of alcoholism. 



TELEPATHY. It requires no long search to 

 find a person who at some time has had an im- 

 pression that an absent friend was in need of his 

 presence, and has found that at the time this 

 impression was perceived the absent one was 

 passing through some crisis of danger or the su- 

 preme crisis of life dissolution. The impression 

 has varied, in different instances, from an indefi- 

 nite sense of anxiety concerning the absent one 

 to an apparition of the person, which seemed to 

 speak. These experiences have been habitually 

 ignored by psychologists, who have deemed the 

 evidence concerning them either honest delusion 

 or intentional deception. But in 1882 the So- 

 ciety for Psychical Research was organized in 

 England, for the purpose of investigating this 

 and other neglected spots in the field of psy- 

 chology. The name telepathy was devised by the 

 society to denote ' the ability of one mind to 

 impress or be impressed by another mind other- 



wise than through the recognized channels of 

 sense." Plence, besides the spontaneous trans- 

 ferences of thought alluded to above, the term 

 includes those made designedly in " mind read- 

 ing " or the parlor amusement known as the 

 " willing game." The giver of the impression is 

 called the " agent," the receiver of it the " per- 

 cipient." 



Under the title "Phantasms of the Living" 

 two bulky volumes have been published by 

 Messrs. Gurney, Myers, and Podmore, three mem- 

 bers of the Society for Psychical Research, with 

 the sanction of the council of the society. These 

 volumes contain a large number of cases of ap- 

 parently telepathic action, with comments, and 

 much similar material is appearing in the " Pro- 

 ceedings" of the society. Among the experi- 

 ences thus recorded are the following : 



The Rev. P. H. Newnham, an English clergy- 

 man, in March, 1854, was a student keeping his 



