300 BARON REICHENBACH'S 



endeavoured to go over the same ground as Baron Reichen- 

 bach, is it even pretended that the results testified to by him 

 have happened in their entirety ; and for the most part, and 

 to by far the majority of investigators, his chronicled results 

 have not happened at all. 



So intimate is the connection between a suggestion and 

 its issue, so delicate, and to the human individual so im- 

 perceptible, that the practice is generally most fallacious of 

 putting faith in results acquired through the instrumentality 

 of human perceptions immediately referable to the judgment. 

 By ' immediately referable ' is meant, not acquired through 

 the unbiassed record of instruments. For example, physicists 

 well know that the feeling the sense of touch can by no 

 means be trusted to pronounce concerning temperatures, abso- 

 lute, or even relative. When correct information as to this 

 matter is needed, we use instruments thermoscopes, ther- 

 mometers, and pyrometers. Now the record set forth by 

 Baron Reichenbach, so far as I have already adverted to it, 

 deals wholly with the question of luminosity of magnets, on 

 the evidence of his four hysterical young ladies and a deli- 

 cate boy. 



Testimony of this sort without imputing any dishonesty 

 or desire to mislead to the witnesses, or perhaps I should 

 rather say the instruments is, as every investigator knows, 

 fallacious in the extreme. The feminine temperament, how- 

 ever healthy and strong-minded, is ill adapted to the purposes 

 of philosophic investigation and unbiassed judgment thereon. 

 It is too imaginative, too sensitive, too ideal. Every medical 

 man knows that if a male individual in whom a woman takes 

 pride a philosopher, we will say, with all the glamour and 

 mystery of his superior learning as shadowed forth to the fair 

 one about him if such an individual gets (for purposes of 

 experiment) a delicate and impressionable young lady into a 

 darkened room, she will generally see, or believe she sees, any 

 possible thing he may wish her to see. 



