August 20, 1891] 



NATURE 



385 



sliould ever be allowed to obtrude itself before us. Our ancestors 

 fought hard and suffered much for the privilege of free and open 

 inquiry, for the right of conducting investigation untrammelled 

 by prejudice and foregone conclusions, and they were ready to 

 examine into any phenomenon which presented itself. This 

 attitude of mind is perhaps necessarily less prominent now, 

 when so much knowledge has been gained, and when the 

 labours of many individuals may be rightly directed entirely 

 to its systematization and a study of its inner ramifications ; but 

 it would be a great pity if a too absorbed attention to what has 

 already been acquired, and to the fringe of territory lying im- 

 mediately adjacent thereto, were to end in our losing the power 

 (if raising our eyes and receiving evidence of a totally fresh 

 kind, of perceiving the existence of regions into which the same 

 processes of inquiry as had proved so fruitful might be extended, 

 wiih results at present incalculable and perhaps wholly unex- 

 pected. I myself think that the ordinary processes of observa- 

 tion and experiment are establishing the existence of such a 

 region ; that, in fact, they have already established the truth of 

 some phenomena not at present contemplated by science, and 

 to which the orthodox man shuts his ears. 



For instance, there is the question whether it has or has not 

 been established by direct experiment that a method of com- 

 munication exists between mind and mind irrespective of the 

 ordinary channels of consciousness and the known organs of 

 sense, and, if so, what is the process. It can hardly be through 

 some unknown sense organ, but it may be by some direct phy- 

 sical influence on the ether, or it may be in some still more subtle 

 manner. Of the process I as yet know nothing. For brevity 

 it may be styled "thought-transference," though the name may 

 turn out to be an unsuitable one after further investigation. 

 Further investigation is just what is wanted. No one can expect 

 others to accept his word for an entirely new fact, except as 

 establishing a. primajacie case for investigation. 



But I am only now taking this as an instance of what I mean ; 

 whether it be a truth or a tiction, there is not, I suppose, one of 

 the recognized scientific societies who would receive a paper on 

 the subject.^ There are individual scientific men who have 

 investigated these matters for themselves ; there are others who 

 are willing to receive evidence, who hold their minds open and 

 their judgment in suspense ; but these are only individuals. The 

 great majority, I think I am right in saying, feel active hostility 

 to these researches and a determined opposition to the reception 

 or discussion of evidence. And they feel this confirmed 

 scepticism, as they call it, not after prolonged investigation, for 

 then it might be justified, but sometimes after no investigation 

 at all. A few tricks at a public performance, or the artifices of 

 some impostor, and they decline to consider the matter further. 



That individuals should take this line is, however, natural 

 enough ; they may be otherwise occupied and interested. Every- 

 body is by no means bound to investigate everything ; though, 

 indeed, it is customary in most fields of knowledge for those who 

 have kept aloof from a particular inquiry to defer in moderation to 

 those who have conducted it, without feeling themselves called 

 upori to express an opinion. Some there are, no doubt, who 

 consider that they have given sufficient time and attention to the 

 subject with only negative results. Their evidence is, of course, 

 important ; but plainly, negative evidence should be of immense 

 bulk and weight before it can outweigh even a moderate amount 

 of positive evidence. However, it is not of the action of 

 individuals that I wish to speak, it is of the attitude to be 

 adopted by scientific bodies in their corporate capacity ; and for 

 a corporate body of men of science, inheritors of the hard -won 

 tradition of free and fearless inquiry into the facts of nature 

 untrammelled by prejudice, for any such body to decline to 

 receive evidence laboriously attained and discreetly and in- 

 offensively presented by observers of accepted competency in 

 other branches, would be, if ever actually done and persisted 

 in, a terrible throwing away of their prerogative, and an imita- 

 tion of the errors of a school of thought against which the 

 struggle was at one time severe. 



In the early days of the Copernican theory, Galileo for some 

 years refrained from teaching it, though fully believing its truth, 

 because be considered that he had better get more fully settled 

 in his University chair before evoking the storm of controversy 

 which the abandonment of the Ptolemaic system would arouse. 

 The same thing in very minor degree is going on to-day. I know 

 of men who hesitate to avow intere.it in these new investigations 



1 his, however, is mere conjecture. I am not aware that the experiment ' 

 has been tried. 



NO. II 38, VOL. 44"] 



(I do not mean credence — the time is too early for avowing 

 credence in any but the most rudimentary and definitely ascer- 

 tained facts— but hesitate to avow interest) until they have settled 

 down more securely and made a name for themselves in other 

 lines. Caution and slow progress are extremely necessary ; fear 

 of avowing interest or of examining into unorthodox facts is, I 

 venture to say, not in accordance with the highest traditions of 

 the scientific attitude. 



We are, I suppose, to some extent afraid of each other, but 

 we are still more afraid of ourselves. We have great respeot for 

 the opinions of our elders and superiors ; we find the matter 

 distasteful to them, so we are silent. We have, moreover, a 

 righteous mistrust of our own powers and knowledge ; we perceive 

 that it is a wide region extending into several already cultivated 

 branches of science, that a many-sided and highly-trained mind 

 is necessary adequately to cope with all its ramifications, that 

 in the absence of strict inquiry imposture has been rampant in 

 some portions of it for centuries, and that unless we are pre- 

 ternaturally careful we may get led into quagmires if we venture 

 on it at all. 



Now let me be more definite, and try to state what this field 

 is, the exploration of which is regarded as so dangerous. I 

 might call it the borderland of physics and psychology. I might 

 call it the connection between life and energy ; or the connection 

 between mind and matter. It is an intermediate region, 

 bounded on the north by psychology, on the south by physics, 

 on the east by physiology, and on the west by pathology 

 and medicine. An occasional psychologist has groped down 

 into it and become a metaphysician. An occasional physicist 

 has wandered up into it and lost his base, to the horror 

 of his quondam brethren. Biologists mostly look at it 

 askance, or deny its existence. A few medical practi- 

 tioners, after long maintenance of a similar attitude, have begun 

 to annex a portion of its western frontier. The whole region 

 seems to be inhabited mainly by savages, many of them, so far 

 as we can judge from a distance, given to gross superstition. It 

 may, for all I know, have been hastily traversed, and rudely 

 surveyed by a few clear-eyed travellers ; but their legends con- 

 cerning it are not very credible, certainly are not believed. 



Why not leave it to the metaphysicians? I say it has been left 

 to them long enough. They have explored it with insufficient 

 equipment. The physical knowledge of the great philosophers 

 has been necessarily scanty. Men of genius they were, and their 

 writings may, when interpreted, mean much. But to us, as 

 physicists, they are unsatisfactory ; their methods are not our 

 methods. They may be said to have floated a balloon over the 

 region with a looking-glass attached, in which they have caught 

 queer and fragmentary glimpses. They may have seen more 

 than we give them credit for, but they appear to have guessed 

 far more than they saw. 



Our method is diff"erent. We prefer to creep slowly from our 

 base of physical knowledge, to engineer carefully as we go, 

 establishing forts, making roads, and thoroughly exploring the 

 country ; making a progress very slow, but very lasting. The 

 psychologists from their side may meet us. I hope they will ; 

 but one or other of us ought to begin. 



A vulnerable spot on our side seems to be the connection 

 between life and energy. The conservation of energy has been so 

 long established as to have become a commonplace. The relation 

 of life to energy is not understood. Life is not energy, and the 

 death of an animal affects the amount of energy no whit ; yet 

 a live animal exerts control over energy which a dead one 

 cannot. Life is a guiding or directing principle, disturbing 

 to the physical world but not yet given a place in the scheme 

 of physics. The transfer of energy is accounted for by the 

 performance of work ; the guidance of energy needs no 

 work, but demands force only. What is force ? and how 

 can living beings exert it in the way they do ? An automaton 

 worked by preceding conditions — that is, by the past — say the 

 materialists. Are we so sure that they are not worked by the 

 future too ? In other words, that the totality of things, by which 

 every one must admit that actions are guided, includes the future 

 as well as the past, and that to attemj t to deduce those actions 

 from the past only will prove impossible. ' In some way matter 

 can be moved, guided, disturbed, by the agency of living beings ; 

 in some way there is a control, a directing-agency active, and 

 events are caused at its choice and will that would not otherwise 

 happen. 



_ * The expression "controlled by the future" I first heard in a conversa 

 tion with G- F. Fitzgerald, who seemed to consider it applicable to all 

 events, without exception. 



