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NA TORE 



[Sei'Tember 8, \\ 



ceedings of the Society for Psychical Research ; and ils \ariDUS 

 aspects are being interpreted and welded into a comprehensive 

 whole by the pertinacious genius of F. W. H. Myers. Con- 

 currently, our knowledge of the facts in this obscure region has 

 received valuable additions at the hands of labourers in other 

 countries. To mention a few names out of many, the observ- 

 ations of Richet, Pierre Janet, and Binet (in France), of Breuer 

 and Freud (in Austria), of William James (in America) have 

 strikingly illustrated the extent to which patient experimentation 

 can probe subliminal processes, and can thus learn the lessons 

 of alternating personalities, and abnormal states. Whilst it is 

 clear that our knowledge of subconscious mentation is still to be 

 developed, we must beware of rashly assuming that all varia- 

 tions from the normal waking condition are necessarily morbid. 

 The human race has reached no fixed or changeless ideal ; in 

 every direction there is evolution as well as disintegration. It 

 would be hard to find instances of more rapid progress, moral 

 and physical, than in certain important cases of cure by sug- 

 gestion — again to cite a few names out of many — by Liebeault, 

 Bernheim, the late Auguste Voisin, Berillon (in France), 

 Schrenck- Notzing (in Germany), Forel (in Switzerland), van 

 Eeden (in Holland), Wetterstrand (in Sweden), Milne-Bram- 

 well and Lloyd Tuckey (in England). This is not the place for 

 details, but the vis viedicatrix thus evoked, as it were, from 

 the depths of the organism, is of good omen for the upward 

 evolution of mankind. 



A formidable range of phenomena must be scientifically sifted 

 before we effectually grasp a faculty so strange, so bewildering, 

 and for ages so inscrutable, as the direct action of mind on 

 mind. This delicate task needs a rigorous employment of the 

 method of exclusion — a constant setting aside of irrelevant 

 phenomena that could be explained by known causes, including 

 those far too familiar causes, conscious and unconscious fraud. 

 The inquiry unites the difficulties inherent in all experiment- 

 ation connected with mind, with tangled human temperaments 

 and with observations dependent less on automatic record than 

 on personal testimony. But difficulties are things to be over- 

 come even in the elusory branch of research known as experi- 

 mental psychology. It has been characteristic of the leaders 

 among the group of inquirers constituting the Society for 

 Psychical Research to combine critical and negative work with 

 work leading to positive discovery. To the penetration and 

 scrupulous fair-mindedness of Prof. Henry Sidgwick and of the 

 late Edmund Gurney is largely due the establishment of canons 

 of evidence in psychical research, which strengthen while they 

 narrow the path of subsequent explorers. To the detective 

 genius of Dr. Richard Hodgson we owe a convincing de- 

 monstration of the narrow limits of human continuous 

 observation. 



It has been said that " Nothing worth the proving can be 

 proved, nor yet disproved." True though this may have been 

 in the past, it is true no longer. The science of our century 

 has forged weapons of observation and analysis by which the 

 veriest tyro may profit. Science has trained and fashioned the 

 average mind into habits of exactitude and disciplined percep- 

 tion, and in so doing has fortified itself for tasks higher, wider, 

 and incomparably more wonderful than even the wisest among 

 our ancestors imagined. Like the souls in Plato's myth that 

 follow the chariot of Zeus, it has ascended to a point of vision 

 far above the earth. It is henceforth open to science to trans- 

 cend all we now think we know of matter, and to gain 

 glimpses of a profounder scheme of Cosmic Law. 



An eminent predecessor in this chair declared that " by an 

 intellectual necessity he crossed the boundary of experimental 

 evidence, and discerned in that matter which we, in our ignor- 

 ance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding our professed 

 reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, 

 the potency and promise of all terrestrial life." I should prefer 

 to reverse the apophthegm, and to say that in Tife I see the 

 promise and potency of all forms of matter. 



In old Egyptian days a well-known inscription was carved 

 over the portal of the temple of Isis : — " I am whatever hath 

 been, is, or ever will be ; and my veil no man hath yet lifted." 

 Not thus do modern seekers after truth confront nature — the 

 word that stands for the baffling mysteries of the universe. 

 Steadily, unflinchingly, we strive to pierce the inmost heart of 

 nature, from what she is to reconstruct what she has been, 

 and to prophesy what she yet shall be. Veil after veil we have 

 lifted, and her face grows more beautiful, august, and wonderful 

 with every barrier that is withdrawn. 



NO. 1506, VOL. 58] 



SECTION A. 



MATHEMATICS AND PHYSICS. 



Opening Address by Prof. W. E. Ayrton, F.R.S., 

 President ok the Section. 



A YEAR ago Section A was charmed with a Presidential 

 Address on the poetry of mathematics, and if, amongst those 

 who entered the Physics lecture-theatre at Toronto on that 

 occasion, there were any who had a preconceived notion that 

 mathematics w^as a hard, dry, repellent type of study, they 

 must, after hearing Prof. Forsyth's eloquent vindication of its 

 charms, have departed convinced that mathematics resembled, 

 music in being a branch of the fine arts. Such an address, 

 however, cannot but leave a feeling of regret amongst those of 

 us who, engulfed in the whirl of the practical science of the day, 

 sigh for the leisure and the quiet which are necessary for the 

 worship of abstract mathematical truth, while the vain eff"ort to 

 follow in the footsteps of one gifted with such winning eloquence 

 fills me with hopeless despair. 



Section A this year is very fortunate in having its meetings 

 associated with those of an "International Conierence on 

 Terrestrial Magnetism and Atmospheric Electricity," which is 

 attended by the members of the "Permanent Committee for 

 Terrestrial Magnetism and Atmospheric Electricity" of the 

 "International Meteorological Conference." It has been 

 arranged that this Permanent Committee, of which Prof. 

 Rticker is the President, shall form part of the General Com- 

 mittee of Section A, and also shall act as the Committee of the 

 International Conference, which will itself constitute a separate 

 department of Section A. For the purpose, however, of pre- 

 paring a Report to the International Meteorological Conference, 

 and for similar business, this Permanent Committee will act 

 independently of the British Association. 



My first duty to-day, therefore, consists in expressing the 

 honour and the very great pleasure which I feel in bidding y(}u, 

 members of the International Conference, most heartily 

 welcome. 



Among the various subjects which it is probable that the 

 Conference may desire to discuss, there is one to which I will 

 briefly refer, as I am able to do so in a triple capacity. The 

 earth is an object of much importance, alike to the terrestrial 

 magnetician, the telegraph electrician, and the tramway 

 engineer ; but while the first aims at observing its magnetism, 

 and the second rejoices in the absence of the earth currents 

 which interfere with the sending of messages, the third seems 

 bent on converting our maps of lines of force into maps of lines 

 of tramway. 



It might, therefore, seem as if electric traction — undoubtedly 

 a great boon to the people, and one that has already effected im- 

 portant social developments in America and on the continent of 

 Europe — were destined in time to annihilate magnetic observa- 

 tories near towns, and even to seriously interfere with existing 

 telegraph and telephone systems. Already the principle of the 

 survival of the fittest is quoted by some electrical engineers, 

 who declare that if magnetic observatories are crippled through 

 the introduction of electric tramways, then so much the worse 

 for the observatories. And I fear that my professional brethren, 

 only look at me askance for allowing my devotion to the 

 practical applications of electricity to be tainted with a keen 

 interest in that excessively small, but none- the less extremely 

 wonderful, magnetic force which controls our compass needles. 



But this interest emboldens me to ask again. Can the system 

 of electric traction that has already destroyed the two most 

 important magnetic observatories in the United States and 

 British North America be the best and the fittest to survive ? 

 Again, do we take such care, and spend such vast sums, in 

 tending the weak and nursing the sick because we are con- 

 vinced that they are the fittest to survive ? May it not perhaps 

 be because we have an inherent doubt about the justness of the 

 survival of the strongest, or because even the strongest of us 

 feels compelled to modestly confess his inability to pick out the 

 fittest, that modern civilisation encourages not the destruction 

 but the preservation of what has obvious weakness, on the 

 chance that it may have unseen strength ? 



When the electrical engineer feels himself full of pride at the 

 greatness, the importance, and the power of his industry, and 

 when he is inclined to think slightingly of the deflection of a 

 little magnet compared with the whirl of his 1000 horse-power 

 dynamo, let him go and visit a certain dark store-room near the 

 entrance hall of the Royal Institution, and, while he looks at 



