July 14, 1882. 



KNOWLEDGE • 



107 



he says, " has obtained a somewhat undue prominence of 

 late ; but if it is as simple and intelligible as it appears to 

 be to most who have investigated it with care, and with 

 minds free from mystical liias, any aid towards the extinc- 

 tion of what must then be regarded as an ig»is j'ahnts of 

 pseudo science carries with it its own justification." 

 Passing over cases in which there was actual contact 

 between the persons guiding and guided, Professor Donkin 

 remarks that in cases where there was no actual contact, 

 " common sense demands that every known mode of ex- 

 planation of facts should be exhausted before the possibility 

 of an unknown mode is considered." " It is equally 

 obvious that in all scientific inquiries the good faith of 

 individuals concerned should form no part of the data on 

 which the conclusion is to rest. We can never call on 

 science to put deception out of court by a belief in any 

 one's integrity. Half of the evidence which has propped 

 up the spiritualistic craze is based on the results obtained 

 through mediums of " unblemished character " in private 

 families, whose virtuous reputation has been largely sus- 

 tained liy the fact that they did not take money for their 

 trouble ; no regard being paid to innumerable other 

 motives and tendencies to deception." (This is very well 

 put.) He then considers the "code of signals" ex- 

 planation, which " fully serves to cover all the facts 

 in question," though it is only by straining the evi- 

 dence that the cases in which no members of the 

 family were present when an object was selected, that 

 Professor Donkin makes out this point. " From the 

 only rational point of view," he says, " that of scientific 

 scepticism, and, therefore, with total disregard of the 

 personal factor, this consideration seems in no way to 

 invalidate the line of comment here taken. It is not clear 

 to how many of the three observers the pronoun ' we ' in 

 the passage [above] refers, but, at any rate, we miss entirely 

 in the paper an_y specific quotation of results obtained in 

 the latter set of circumstances. But even if this evidence 

 liad been forthcoming, no mere ipse dixit on such a matter 

 could for one moment be admitted. Reason would 

 require us to entertain the great probability of mental 

 bias in some, at least, of the observers, or to discredit the 

 accuracy of their memory, rather than to allow that any- 

 thing has been adduced in this account of what (to say the 

 least) must be regarded as superficially-conducted experi- 

 ments, to warrant a recognition of any no\elty, or by con- 

 sequence to stand in need of explanation by a theory of 

 'brain-waves.'" 



The spirit of extreme caution here indicated is alto- 

 gether sound ; the objection to novelty, as such, is as entirely 

 unsound. Nothinr/ could prove that mind acts on mind if 

 Professor Donkin's principle were accepted in its full ex- 

 tent. The theory might be established so far as he him- 

 self was concerned, by an experience of his own, but no 

 one else would be bound to accept it, and it cannot possibly 

 be proved to cacli person separately and individually. 



Professor Donkin seems imaware of the fact that Dr. 

 Carpenter, who has dealt with such subjects more clcsely 

 perhaps than any living man of science, and always from 

 the sceptical side, admits all that, as I conceive, even 

 Professor Barrett and his colleagues consider proved. In 

 the following j)assage the reader will note the distinction 

 between what Dr. Carpenter has been led to suspect, and 

 what he regards as beyond question : — 



" Everyone who admits that ' there are more tilings in 

 heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our iihilosophy,' 

 will be wise in maintaining a ' reserve of possibility ' as to 

 phenomena wliich are not altogether op/ional to the laws of 

 physics or physiology, but rather transcend them. Some of 

 njy own experiences have led me to suspect that the power 



of intuitively perceiving what is passing in the mind of 

 another, which has been designated as ' thought reading,' 

 may, like certain fonns of sense perception, be extraor- 

 dinarily exalted by that entire concentration of the atten- 

 tion which is characteristic of the states we have been 

 considering. There can be no question that this divining 

 power is naturally possessed in a very remarkable degree 

 by certain individuals, and that it may be greatly improved 

 by cultivation. So far, however, as we are acquainted with 

 the conditions of its exercise, it seems to depend upon the 

 unconscious interpretation of indications (many of them 

 indefinable) furnished by the expressions of the coun- 

 tenance, by style of conversation, and by various involun- 

 tary movements; that interpretation, however, going, in 

 many instances, far beyond what can have been learned by 

 experience as to the meaning of such indications."* " Look- 

 ing at nerve force as a special form of physical energy, it 

 may be deemed not altogether incredible that it should 

 exert itself from a distance, so as to bring the brain of one 

 person into direct dynamical communication with that of 

 another, without the intermediation, either of verbal 

 language, or of movements of expression. A large 

 amount of evidence, sifted with the utmost care, would 

 1)6 needed to establish even a probability of such com- 

 munication. But would any man of science have a right 

 to say that it is impossible ^ " 



(To he ronlinuod.) 



A STUDY OF MINUTE LIFE. 



By Henry J. Slack, F.G.S., F.R.KS. 



A SPECIMEN" of bottom yeast— the unterhefe of the 

 Germans — taken from a vessel in which fermentation 

 had been arrested for some time, showed, under a magni- 

 fication of 200 linear, that the little plant cells had been 

 starved. All of them were much too small, and instead 

 of being appioximately globular, many were sausage- 

 shaped, some like thin cylinders, and amongst them many 

 minute beaded rods, which would be ranked amongst the 

 Bacteria. Any further fermentation carried on under such 

 circumstances would give rise to products not wanted in 

 any process of brewing or wine-making, and, if nothing 

 worse happened, a good deal of vinegar would be 

 formed at the expense of the alchohol which resulted 

 from the action of the true yeast cells. Beer or 

 wine in that condition is popularly said to be pricked. 

 Pure diluted alcohol has no tendency to undergo a 

 fermentation into the vinegar condition, but if any of 

 the microfungi of the ^■inegar-plant sort are present^ and 

 also some easily oxidable vegetable matter, the acetic 

 change soon occurs. One of the best modes of making 

 vinegar on a large scale is to cause a fluid containing 

 alcohol and sweet;-wort to trickle slowly over wood shavings 

 or birch twigs. A slimy substance forms in a few days 

 all over the shavings or twigs, and this modifies the alcoliol 

 into acetic acid. If the slimy stufT is examined under the 

 microscope, it is found to contain, besides yeastrlike cells, 

 millions of small beaded rods — a kind of bacterium. Both 

 brewers and wine-makers arc much troubled through 



• Dr. Carpenter then mentions some very curious oxamploa 

 related in the autobiograiihy of Henrieh Zsehokke, who (according 

 to his own Btateniont) possessed this power in a very remarkable 

 degree, frequently beinp able to describe, not only the gener.jl course, 

 but even many particulars, of tho past life of a person whom ho 

 saw for the fu-st time, and of whose history he knew nothing what- 

 ever. 



