September 8, 1898] 



NATURE 



447 



Sometimes many weeks of hard experiment failed to produce 

 any separation, and then a new method of splitting up was 

 k'vised and applied. By unremitting work — the solvent of 

 iiost difificuUies— eventually it was possible to split up the 

 -cries of bands into various groups. Then, taking a group 

 which seemed to offer possibilities of reasonably quick result, 

 'ine method after another of chemical attack was adopted, with 

 I he ultimate result of freeing the group from its accompanying 

 fellows and increasing its intensity and detail. 



As I have said, my researches are far from complete, but 

 about one of the bodies I may speak definitely. High up in 

 the ultra-violet, like a faint nebula in the distant heavens, a 

 group of lines was detected, at first feeble and only remarkable 

 on account of their isolation. On further purification these 

 lines grew stronger. Their great refrangibility cut them off 

 from other groups. Special processes were employed to isolate 

 the earth, and using these lines as a test, and appealing at 

 every step to the spectrograph, it was pleasant to see how each 

 week the group stood out stronger and stronger, while the other 

 lines of yttrium, samarium, ytterbium, &c., became fainter, and 

 at last, practically vanishing, left the sought-for group strong 

 and .solitary. Finally, within the last few weeks, hopefulness 

 has emerged into certainty, and I have absolute evidence that 

 another member of the rare earth groups has been added to the 

 list. Simultaneously with the chemical and spectrographic 

 attack, atomic weight determinations were constantly performed. 



As the group of lines vvhich betrayed its existence stand 

 alone, almost at the extreme end of the ultra-violet spectrum, I 

 propose to name the newest of the elements Monium, from the 

 Greek \i.6vo%, alone. Although caught by the searching rays of 

 the spectrum, Monium offers a direct contrast to the recently 

 discovered gaseous elements, by having a strongly marked 

 individuality ; but although so young and wilful, it is willing to 

 enter into any number of chemical alliances. 



Until my material is in a greater state of purity I hesitate to 

 commit myself to figures ; but I may say that the wave-lengths 

 of the principal lines are 3120 and 3117. Other fainter lines 

 are at 3219, 3064, and 3060. The atomic weight of the element, 

 based on the assumption of R^O:,, is not far from 118 — greater 

 than that accepted for yttrium and less than that for lanthanum. 



I ought almost to apologise for adding to the already too 

 long list of elements of the rare earth class — the asteroids of the 

 terrestrial family. But as the host of celestial asteroids, un- 

 important individually, become of high interest when once the 

 idea is grasped that they may be incompletely coagulated 

 remains of the original nebula, so do these elusive and insig- 

 nificant rare elements rise to supreme importance when we 

 regard them in the light of component parts of a dominant 

 element, frozen in embryo, and arrested in the act of coalescing 

 from the original protyle into one of the ordinary and law- 

 abiding family for whom Newlands and Mendeleeff have pre- 

 pared pigeon-holes. The new element has another claim to 

 notice. Not only is it new in itself, but to discover it a new 

 tool had to be forged for spectroscopic research. 



Further details I will reserve for that tribunal before whom 

 every aspirant for a place in the elemental hierarchy has to 

 substantiate his claim. 



These, then, are some of the subjects, weighty and far- 

 reaching, on which my own attention has been chiefly concen- 

 trated. Upon one other interest I have not yet touched — to 

 me the weightiest and the farthest reaching of all. 



No incident in my scientific career is more widely known 

 than the part I took many years ago in certain psychic re- 

 searches. Thirty years have passed since I published an account 

 of experiments tending to show that outside our scientific know- 

 ledge there exists a force exercised by intelligence differing 

 from the ordinary intelligence common to mortals. This fact 

 in my life is of course well understood by those who honoured 

 me with the invitation to become your President. Perhaps 

 among my audience some may feel curious as to whether I shall 

 speak out or be silent. I elect to speak, although briefly. To 

 enter at length on a still debatable subject would be unduly to 

 insist on a topic which — as Wallace, Lodge, and Barrett have 

 already shown — though not unfitted for discussion at these meet- 

 ings, does not yet enlist the interest of the majority of my 

 scientific brethren. To ignore the subject would be an act of 

 cowardice— an act of cowardice I feel no temptation to 

 commit. 



To stop short in any jesearch that bids fair to widen the 

 gales of knowledge, to recoil from fear of difficulty or adverse 

 criticism, is to bring reproach on science. There is nothing 

 for the investigator to do but to go straight on, " to explore up 

 and down, inch by inch, with the taper his reason"; to follow 

 the light wherever it may lead, even .should it at times resemble 

 a will-o'-the-wisp. I have nothing to retract. I adhere to my 

 already published statements. Indeed, I might add much 

 thereto. I regret only a certain crudity in those early exposi- 

 tions which, no doubt justly, militated against their acceptance 

 by the scientific world. My own knowledge at that time 

 scarcely extended beyond the fact that certain phenomena new 

 to science had assuredly occurred, and were attested by my 

 own sober senses, and better still, by automatic record. I was 

 like some two-dimensional being who might stand at the 

 singular point of a Riemann's surface, and thus find himself in 

 infinitesimal and inexplicable contact with a plane of existence 

 not his own. 



I think I .see a little further now. I have glimpses of some- 

 thing like coherence among the strange elusive phenomena ; of 

 something like continuity between those unexplained forces and 

 laws already known. This advance is largely due to the labours 

 of another Association of which I have also this year the honour 

 to be President— the Society for Psychical Research. And were 

 I now introducing for the first time these inquiries to the world 

 of science I should choose a starting-point different from that of 

 old. It would be well to begin with telepathy ; with the funda- 

 mental law, as I believe it to be, that thoughts and images may 

 be transferred from one mind to another without the agency of 

 the recognised organs of sense — that knowledge may enter the 

 human mind without being communicated in any hitherto 

 known or recognised ways. 



Although the inquiry has elicited important facts with 

 reference to the mind, it has not yet reached the scientific 

 stage of certainty which would entitle it to be usefully brought 

 before one of our Sections. I will therefore confine myself to 

 pointing out the direction in which scientific investigation can 

 legitimately advance. If telepathy take place we have two 

 physical facts — the physical change in the brain of A, the sug- 

 gester, and the analogous physical change in the brain of B, 

 the recipient of the suggestion. Between these two physical 

 events there must exist a train of physical causes. Whenever 

 the connecting sequence of intermediate causes begins to be 

 revealed, the inquiry will then come within the range of one 

 of the Sections of the British Association. Such a sequence 

 can only occur through an intervening medium. All the phe- 

 nomena of the universe are presumably in some way continuous, 

 and it is unscientific to call in the aid of mysterious agencies 

 when with every fresh advance in knowledge it is shown that 

 ether vibrations have powers and attributes abundantly equal to 

 any demand— even to the transmission of thought. It is sup- 

 posed by some physiologists that the essential cells of nerves do 

 not actually touch, but are separated by a narrow gap which 

 widens in sleep while it narrows almost to extinction during 

 mental activity. This condition is so singularly like that of a 

 Branly or Lodge coherer as to suggest a further analogy. The 

 structure of brain and nerve being similar, it is conceivable 

 there may be present masses of such nerve coherers in the brain 

 whose special function it may be to receive impulses brought 

 from without through the connecting sequence of ether waves 

 of appropriate order of magnitude. Rontgen has famHiarised 

 us with an order of vibrations of extreme minuteness compared 

 with the smallest waves with which we have hitherto been 

 acquainted, and of dimensions comparable with the distances 

 between the centres cf the atoms of which the material universe 

 is built up ; and there is no reason to suppose that we have here 

 reached the limit of frequency. It is known that the action of 

 thought is accompanied by certain molecular movements in the 

 brain, and here we have physical vibrations capable from their 

 extreme minuteness of acting direct on individual molecules, 

 while their rapidity approaches that of the internal and external 

 movements of the atoms themselves. 



Confirmation of telepathic phenomena is afforded by many 

 converging experiments, and by many spontaneous occurrences 

 only thus intelligible. The most varied proof, perhaps, is drawn 

 from analysis of the sub-conscious workings of the mind, when 

 these, whether by accident or design, are brought into conscious 

 survey. Evidence of a region, below the threshold of conscious- 

 ness, has been presented, since its first inception, in the Pro- 



NO. 1506, VOL. 58] 



