228 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. [CHAP. VIII. 



characterise the "Dark Sciences" to which Taylor's book 

 may unintentionally lend encouragement a result to be 

 deprecated. 



" The first question I would ask concerning a spiritual 

 theory would be, Is it favourable or adverse to the present 

 developments of Dark Science ? The Dark Sciences . . . 

 while they profess to treat of laws which have never been 

 investigated, afford the most conspicuous examples of the 

 operation of the well-known laws of association ... in 

 imitating the phraseology of science, and in combining its 

 facts with those which must naturally suggest themselves to 

 a mind unnaturally disposed. In the misbegotten science 

 thus produced we have speciously sounding laws of which 

 our first impression is that they are truisms, and the second 

 that they are absurd, and a bewildering mass of experi- 

 mental proof, of which all the tendencies lie on the surface 

 and all the data turn out when examined to be heaped 

 together as confusedly as the stores of button-makers . . . 

 and those undigested narratives which are said to form the 

 nutriment of the minute philosopher. . . . The most ortho- 

 dox system of metaphysics may be transformed into a dark 

 science by its phraseology being popularised, while its 

 principles are lost sight of." 



Three phases of dark science are described : 

 " (1.) At first they were or pretended to be physical 

 sciences. Their language was imitated from popular 

 physics, and their professed aim was to explain occult 

 phenomena by means of new and still more occult material 

 laws. Experiments in animal magnetism were always per- 

 formed with the nose carefully turned towards the north. In 

 electrobiology a scrupulous system of insulation was prac- 

 tised at first, and afterwards, when galvanism became more 

 popular than statical electricity, circuits were formed of 

 alternate elements, those of one sex being placed between 

 those of the other. . . . The fluid which in former times 

 circulated through the nerves under the form of animal 

 spirits, is in our day expanded so as to fill the universe, and 



