144 SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND 



disprove the phenomena under dispute. He investi- 

 gated with some care a case of rappings at a Wiltshire 

 house, in circumstances which recall the similar dis- 

 turbances connected with the Wesley family. Again, 

 associated in friendship with More, we find the 

 " stroker," Valentine Greatrakes or Great or ex, who 

 served in the Parliamentary forces under Roger Boyle, 

 afterwards Lord Broghill and Earl of Orrery, and in 

 later life found himself possessed of the power of curing 

 many diseases, especially scrofula, by the touch of 

 his fingers, accompanied with prayer. The efficacy of 

 Greatrakes' ministry of healing, to which he devoted the 

 latter part of his life, is testified to by Robert Boyle, 

 the chemist, by Andrew Maxwell, by Benjamin 

 Whichcote, and by many of the best-reputed men of 

 the day. Two hundred years later, when another 

 school of materialistic philosophy was in the ascendant 

 in England, a second Society for Psychical Research 

 was again founded by Cambridge men to investigate 

 kindred phenomena, and a fresh outburst of healing 

 by prayer and contact spread through certain sections 

 of the community. 



At the close of the seventeenth century Cambridge 



was the home of a group of idealist scholars and 



The Christian divines of mystical tendencies, who were 



Platonists. endeavouring to combine the new know- 

 ledge with the mysteries of the Christian faith. 

 They felt that any merely mechanical explanation 

 of the Universe, such as that attempted by Descartes, 

 was unconvincing and inadequate in its essence, and 

 expressed their conviction that the primordials of the 

 world are not mechanical but vital. They developed 



