84 LECTURES 



cording to which the vibrations of the nervous substance 

 originate from extrinsic and intrinsic causes, the laws ac- 

 cording to which these vibrations pass to and fro in the 

 body, acting and reacting upon each other, and the laws 

 according to which they finally break up and are lost, 

 either in those larger swings of muscular contraction 

 whereby the movements of the body are effected, or in 

 some other way. (3) And, lastly, we have to attack the 

 abstruser problems of how these neural vibrations, often 

 mysteriously attended with changes of consciousness, as 

 well as the less subtle vibrations of the contracting 

 muscles, are wrought out of the explosive chemical de- 

 compositions of the nervous and muscular substances; 

 that is, of how energy of chemical action is transmuted 

 into and serves as the supply of that vital energy which 

 appears as movement, feeling, and thought.'' 



These being the lines along which physiology must 

 progress, my inclinations strongly prompt me to next 

 point out to you what will probably 'be some of the ad- 

 vances made in the future, in "physiological psychology," 

 psychology pure acd simple, and in psychics; for I am 

 especially interested in such fields, and my connections 

 with the British Society for Psychical Research have, 

 through the admirable "Proceedings" they publish, given 

 me unusual opportunity to keep pace with the science; 

 but neither our space nor our time will admit of much in 

 this direction. The society I have just mentioned has, 

 enrolled among its long list of corresponding, active, and 

 associate members, many distinguished men and women 

 of many nationalities, and all are heartily interested in 

 the progress of every department of psychology. We 

 need no better proof, as a guarantee of its sincerity of 

 purpose and aims, than to see the names of Lord Tenny- 

 son, the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, the bishops of 

 Carlisle and of Ripon, John Ruskin, and a host of other 

 weighty names as we do upon its list of -members. 

 Among the best workers of the society there is a strong 

 tendency to treat psychology by precisely similar methods 

 whereby we deal with any of the natural sciences. As- 

 suming such things as thoughts and feelings to exist it is 

 contended that they present themselves as vehicles of 

 knowledge, and it becomes one of the most important 

 tasks of the psychologist to ascertain by strictly scientific 

 experimental methods the correlations existing between 

 those various sorts of thoughts and feelings on the one 

 hand, with the definite conditions of the brain on the 

 ther. Bey ond such premises psychology passes into 



