488 



♦ KNOW^LEDGE ♦ 



[June 5, 1885. 



made which, it seems to me, conclusively prove that a picture can 

 be transmitted from the mind of the agent to that of the percipient 

 by some other means than by the five " recognised gateways of 

 knowledge." The pictures obtained in this way are not, of course, 

 absolutely correct ; bat there is always a general, and sometimes a 

 Tery close, resemblance between that thought of by the agent and 

 that drawn by the percipient. This will be clear from a careful 

 study of the pictures published in the " Proceedings of the S.P.R.," 

 a few of which will be found in Kxowr.FUGE, Vol. II., pp. 364, 3G5. 



Upon one occasion, in order to remove all doubt as to ]iossible 

 auditory communications, the committee "stopped Mr. Smith's 

 ears with ])utty, then tied a bandage round his eyes and cars, then 

 fastened a bolster-case over his head, and over all threw a blanket, 

 which enveloped hia entire head and trunk." The result in this 

 case was ver>' good. 



JMuscle-reading can hardly account for such phenomena as these. 

 And we seem cast back upon a purely thought-reading hypothesis. 

 Now that which is subjectiveh' thought, is objectively a condition 

 of matter — a motion of the particles of which different portions of 

 the brain are composed. And the process known subjectively as 

 thought transference might on its objective side be stated thus : — 

 One portion of matter in the condition known as thought can so 

 influence another portion of matter, which is of a similar nature 

 and composition, as to place it in a similar condition. Surely there 

 are certain kindred phenomena in the world of physical science 

 which may at any rate lead us to admit the possibility of the 

 thought-reading hypothesis being the true one. A. Fountain. 



[Premising that I have not read " The Proceedings of the Society 

 for Psychical P>esearch," and am hence ignorant whether the Mr. 

 Blackburn to whom Mr. Fountain refers is a member of its com- 

 mittee, or whether Mr. Smith and he always act together, and have 

 been jointly imported by the Society nh extra for experimental pur- 

 poses, I would just remark that, if the latter be the case, M. Verbeck's 

 performances with his subject, Mdlle. de Marguerit, tend to throw 

 grave doubt on the bojta fides of any apparent actual transference 

 of thought. I must repeat, however, that I know nothing of the 

 relations of Messrs. Blackburn and Smith to the Society, or to each 

 other. If collusion between them be iinpos.'sihie, then undoubtedly 

 a strong prhni. facie case is made out for the possibility of the 

 molecular motion of the grey matter of one brain exciting corre- 

 sponding movements in that of another ; but really, after my own 

 personal experience while engaged in the investigation of that 

 wicked imposture, " Spiritualism," I am tempted slightly to alter 

 the conclusion of Bret Ilarte's immortal poem, and to say — 

 " Which is why I remark — 



And my language is plain — 

 That for ways that are dark 



And for tricks that are vain 

 The thought-reading medium is peculiar. 



Which the same I am free to maintain." — Ed.] 



IS THOUGHT AN ENTITY ? 



[173G] — ^Ir. Edwin Wooton, in his able article on nervous ex- 

 haustion, introduces what seems to me an erroneous simile, viz., 

 " that a soul is comparable to a musician playing on an organ." 

 Haeckel, Biichner, and other eminent German scientists now quite 

 discard the idea of a soul being an entity — independent, and some- 

 thing se]>arate from brain activity. However, the simile, if 

 applied, should be, " thought, mind, ior soul, are like the music, 

 or sound proceeding from the piano or organ." For as music is 

 the " effect " of the player acting on the instrument, so must 

 thought, mind, or soul be the " effect " of stimuli acting on living, 

 self-acting brain. If Mr. Wooton can call " music " or sound an 

 entity, I am willing to gi'anc that thought is an entity. 



Again, the player does not reside within the piano or its material 

 parts; the soul, however, of an entity must reside with a brain 

 and its material parts. Further, a player can play a dozen 

 "different" organs; a "soul" is confined to its single organ. 

 Given a " self-acting" instrument, like a self-acting brain, what 

 need for a player or soul? The one produces the " music," the 

 other the thought ; but neither would be called an entity. 

 Thought seems like the scent of a flower, brought into existence 

 by the warmth of life and sun, to dcjiart when they are gone. Or, 

 like a picture, a reflection, produced by an object reflected by the 

 polished surface of a mirror — intangible, yet real — the effect of 

 stimulus and response to stimulus. F. W. H. 



BRAIN AND THOUGHT. 



[1737] — Perhaps I may be allowed, in the interest of medical 

 science as well as of common sense, to draw attention to the follow- 

 ing anti-scientific statement in Mr. Edwin Wooton's otherwise 



instructive article on " Nervous Exhaustion," at page 435 of 

 Knowledge, May 22 : — " The brain is the organ of thought. It is 

 an instrument used as a medium by a spiritual entity — the soul — 

 which modern researches woukl lead us to believe is evolved fron» 

 the nervous force with the development of the body iyi ulcro. Using 

 a simile, the brain may be compared to a well-constructed organ, 

 and the soul to the musician." Now there are no physiological or 

 embryolcgical experiments whatever to justify this occult dualism 

 of soul (which, etymologically, = Iite) and body. It is an example 

 of the same pre-scientific and anti-scientific fallacy as that of the 

 Archa?us, or *' Vital Principles," as a separate entity apart from 

 organisation — a provisional theory quite discredited by the progress 

 of modern science, and which, in the court of reason, seems utterly 

 inconceivable. For how can we coherently figure to ourselves the 

 union and interaction of two such incompatible "entities" as t\ 

 material substance and an immaterial " I know not what." The 

 substantial and unsubstantial can in no degree cohere. Strch a 

 notion is as baseless in physiology as the corresponding chimera 

 " ruling angel " in astronomy, or the principle of levity (phlogiston) 

 in chemistry. The fact is, as lately stated in the Nineteenth 

 Century by Sir W. Gull, that the inter-cranial ganglia function by 

 virtue of their own vis insita, or native energy, just like extra- 

 cranial nerve centres or other organs, and neither require or admit 

 of any quasi "spiritual" factor, which can only be a nonentity 

 superadded to the somatic organism. PlObert Lewins, M.D. 



CONCEPTION AND SENSATION. 



[1738] — "C.N." (1714) surely meant to write " Conception is 

 of sensation, sensation is of the external " ; and I will continue, the 

 external therefore exists to me, for without it sensation and con- 

 ception would be impossible. On what ground does " C. N." 

 assume the non-correspondence of concepts with the things con- 

 ceived ? And supposing the assumption valid, would it destroy 

 the co-relationship of mind and the external world ? Were it veri- 

 fied ten thousand times, conception would still be dependant on 

 the external for its concepts, and this means, it it means anything, 

 that the external exists, and exists to me. I grant readily, as 

 G. H. Lewes says (" Eist. of Phil.," 1857, p. 171), "Nothing 

 exists" to us " but what is perceived." But I contend further 

 that conceptions are results, the stimulating cause being the 

 external. This must of necessity be so, otherwise mind is at once 

 object and subject, which is absurd. J. S. 



GENEKIC IMAGES. 



[1730] — The presentation of a number of images of the same 

 kind in succession to a sensitised photographic plate, referred to in 

 Miss Naden's paper, produces an analogous result to the rotation 

 of the prismatic colours before the sentient eye. The photographic 

 process is not yet perfected, but it may be. The revolving disc, 

 with the colours, produces a closer appro.ximation to a true rneaiL 

 impression than the photttgraphic plate. At the Antwerp Art 

 Congress in 1859 or 18G0 I showed, in illustration of my 

 theory of the beautiful, that generic images might be 

 jiroduced in the same manner as the neutralisation of 

 the colours by rotation. I contributed a short paper on 

 the subject of generic images to the British Association for 

 the advancement of science, in consequence, if I recollect rightly, 

 of Mr. Galton'a paper pointing out the deeper significance of the 

 teaching of his experiments. These ge^icric images^ in truth, con- 

 firm my theory of the evolution of art and of taste, as propounded 

 in a paper of mine read at the Social Science Congress several 

 years since — which was reported at the time— and which was 

 designed to demonstrate that evolution, in the sense of a progres- 

 sion towards improved conditions, is always towards mean or 

 proportioned conditions ; and, therefore, in taste and in art, to pro- 

 portioned taste, and proportioned art. I have known, in fact, that 

 the same doctrine that Aristotle applied to ethics is also appUcable 

 to aesthetics, and to evolution in general. 



W. C.WE TH0.MAS. 



GEORGE ELIOT SETTLING IT! 



[171-0] — George Eliot — name and individual alike antipathetic to 

 Tue; the woman who anonymously ]n"eached jjer " Dinah," while she 

 utterly disbelieved Dinah's rhetoric : the woman who was not afraid 

 of heing what "the divine" Desdemona was afraid of sailing; 

 and yet was furious if any one addressed her as "Miss Evans" — 

 George Eliot has pronounced upon the question of questions in the 

 negative which Plato and Jesus answered in the affirmative, with 

 an amount of " cocksureness " (you say the word is Shakespearian 



