NA TURK 



12 I 



THURSDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1S94. 



PECULIARITIES OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. 

 Apparitions and JhoKght Transference. By Frank 

 Podmore, M.A. (London : Walter Scott, 1894.) 



MR. PODMORE, in the opening chapter of this 

 popular exposition of telepathy, pleads for the 

 recognition of psychical research by the general body of 

 scientific workers. He reminds us of the opposition 

 geological and biological discoveries have encountered, 

 and ventures to compare the circumstances of the small 

 group of investigators with which he is connected, and 

 more particularly the prejudice and derision they 

 encounter, with the experiences of Cuvier and Agassiz. 

 Convincing as this comparison may appear to the general 

 reader, in one respect at least it fails. Three hundred 

 years ago, all these phenomena of crystal gazing, thought 

 transference, and apparitions had a broader basis of 

 belief than they have to-day ; even a hundred years ago, 

 the ordinary scientific investigator was at little or no 

 advantage over the exponent of magic arts. But though, 

 as Mr. Podmore reminds us, the leading propositions of 

 natural science once encountered popular prejudice, 

 ridicule, contempt, hatred, far more abundantly than has 

 ever been the lot of psychical interpretations, they have 

 won through and triumphed, while the credit accorded 

 such evidence as the S.P.R. accumulates has, if any- 

 thing, diminished. A thing Mr. Podmore scarcely lays 

 sufficient stress upon is the fundamental difference in the 

 quality of the facts of " psychical research," as dis- 

 tinguished from those of scientific investigation — using 

 scientific in its stricter sense. It is true he has, with 

 an appearance of frankness, devoted a chapter to " special 

 grounds of caution," in which he concedes the truth of 

 various criticisms, and owns to several undeniable im- 

 postures ; but even here he passes from admissions to a 

 skilful argument in favour of telepathy, and avoids the 

 cardinal reason for keeping aloof from this field of 

 inquiry, that lies in the quality of the evidence. 



The scientific advances of Cuvier and Agassiz, like all 

 true scientific discoveries, were based upon things that 

 could be perceived directly by themselves, and which 

 could be reproduced whenever required, and completely 

 examined under this condition and that, by those who 

 doubted the facts. That is the essential difference 

 between natural science and such a subject as history ; 

 science produces its facts, history at best produces 

 reputable witnesses to facts. Scientific men have never 

 attached much importance to unverifiable statements, 

 however eminent the source. If, to suppose an instance, 

 the greatest living anatomist were to announce that he had 

 dissected a dogfish and discovered lungs therein, adduce 

 his wife, a local general practitioner, two servants, and a 

 lady " named MissZ." in evidence, and add that he had 

 lost the specimen, there can be scarcely any doubt that, 

 in spite of his position and his character, the science of 

 anatomy would remain exactly where it was before his 

 discovery was proclaimed. But in this " psychical re- 

 search " the deliberate reproduction of phenomena under 

 conditions that admit of exhaustive sceptical examina- 

 tion appears to be generally impossible, and we are re- 



NO. I3IO. VOL. 51] 



peatedly asked to form opinions on the hearsay of Mr. 

 Podmore and his fellow-investigators. 



This is not all. Few of the phenomena are directly 

 observed. Dr. Dee had his Kelly, Prof. Oliver J. Lodge 

 his Mrs. Piper. If Prof. Sedgwick would read the 

 thoughts of Prof. Oliver J. Lodge, or— as a phantasm of 

 the living— take to haunting some sceptical person, we 

 should have at least a statement at first hand, to doubt : 

 but as it is, these investigators manifest, as a rule, 

 no other mental phenomena than belief and repe- 

 tition. Reading through Mr. Podmore's book, the 

 student will be struck by the fact that the persons 

 who are in imm.ediate contact with the alleged pheno- 

 mena, the hireling eyes of the psychological in- 

 quirer, are persons usually youthful and coming from a 

 social level below that of the investigators. Take, for in- 

 stance, the Guthrie cases, to which Mr. Podmore attaches 

 considerable importance. Mr. Guthrie is a draper in 

 Liverpool, and by some means, not stated, he became 

 aware of psychic powers possessed by two of his em- 

 ployees — young ladies — whose identity is for some reason 

 veiled under the initials " E." and " R." These young 

 ladies were accordingly liberated at intervals from the 

 toils of shop or workroom, and made the subjects of 

 various experiments'; Mr. Guthrie, for instance, putting 

 cayenne pepper in his mouth, during a profound silence, 

 and Miss E. experiencing a taste of " mustard." Now 

 we must insist upon the fact, because it seriously affects 

 this question of evidence, that to a young lady following 

 the irksome and precarious calling of a drapers assistant, 

 the manifestation of psychic gifts opens up eminently 

 desirable possibilities and interests. Then, among other 

 of these intermediaries, we find "Jane"— a pitman's wife 

 — " Bertha J.," a peasant woman, hospital nurses and 

 out-patients, two men " who had been subjects of an 

 itinerant lecturer upon hypnotism," most of the letters 

 of the alphabet, several American M D.'s, lady medical 

 students, a baker's assistant, Mr. P., "a clerk in a whole- 

 sale house, aged nineteen, who possesses a good deal of 

 humour," and so forth. 



Scarcely ever is the medium a person really inde- 

 pendent, in a financial sense, of the investigators who are 

 craving for pjienomena. It is necessary for us to believe 

 in the general good faith of this extremely dubious 

 material, or in the adequacy of the precautions against 

 fraud taken by persons whose scientific reputations are 

 now hopelessly bound up with the reality of the alleged 

 facts, before one can even begin to accept the experi- 

 mental basis upon which the theory of telepathy rests. 

 And this is the character of the investigations that Mr. 

 Podmore has compared with the work of Cuvier and 

 Agassiz : In no other field of inquiry is so much faith in 

 personal character and intelligence demanded, or so little 

 experimental verification possible. Indeed, the book is 

 oddly suggestive in places, with its use of initials and 

 second-hand guarantees of character, of the testimony 

 one finds adduced in favour of patent medicines. 



Now, to the attentive reader of Mr. Podmore, the per- 

 suasion is unavoidable that the ordinary psychical in- 

 vestigator is endowed with a considerable facility of 

 belief, and is by no means instinct with the scientific 

 method. And this, where we are to take very much on 

 faith, is a material consideration. Anonymous statements 



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