290 



NA 7 URE 



\yan. 27, 1887 



Societies the publications of the Royal Society are sent 

 gratuitously ; there is no dilBcuIty in obtaining access 

 either to the libraries or to the reading-rooms when the 

 members are in London, for the reason that all necessary 

 knowledge as to how these privileges are to be obtained 

 is of course possessed by those at home, whereas the 

 member of a colonial Society who finds himself in England 

 is in a very different position He may know nobody, 

 he may not know even of the existence of the facilities 

 afforded, and he may leave England without having been 

 present at any meetings of the Society, and without the 

 knowledge that almost anyone who chooses can attend 

 them. We are glad then on these and on other grounds 

 that the question has been raised, and we believe that 

 great good may be accomplished by acting on Prof. 

 Huxley's suggestion. 



.S- UPERNORMA L PS YCHOL OGY 



Phantasms of the Living. By Edmund Gurney, Frederic 

 W. H. Myers, and Frank Podmore. (London : 

 Trijbner and Co., 1886.) 



UNDER the title "Phantasms of the Living," three 

 of the leading members of the Society for Psychi- 

 cal Research have presented to the world at large, in 

 two bulky volumes running to upwards of 1400 pages, 

 the evidence they have collected in support of the hypo- 

 thesis of telergy and telepathy, or the influence of one 

 mind on another, near or at a distance, without the inter- 

 vention of the ordinary channels of ssnse. The division 

 of labour, for such we may truly term it, seems to have 

 been as follows ; Mr. F. W. H. Myers writes an intro- 

 duction and a concluding chapter on "A Suggested 

 Mode of Psychical Interaction " ; Mr. Edmund Gurney 

 is responsible for the compilation of the body of the 

 work, the presentation and criticism of the evidence ; 

 while in the collection of evidence and examination of 

 witnesses Mr. Podmore '' has borne so large a share, 

 that his name could not possibly have been omitted from 

 the title-page." 



It is a matter of peculiar difficulty to do justice, in the 

 space that Nature can place at my disposal, to a work 

 of such portentous bulk, one written in such obvious 

 good faith, one on which the authors have bestowed so 

 much time, labour, and thought, and yet one presenting 

 views which no one who has learnt to believe in the 

 parallelism or identity of neuroses and psychoses can 

 accept without abjuring his scientific and philosophic 

 faith. I hold it to be the duty of a reviewer not merely 

 to air his own opinions, but to give his readers a sketch 

 of the contents of the volumes before him. But how 

 can one sketch in two or three columns so vast a 

 mass of evidence, the chief value of which is, we are 

 told, its cumulative nature .'' And if the reviewer owes it 

 to his readers to present some sort of outline of the 

 picture his author presents, he none the less owes it to 

 himself, his author, and his journal, to endeavour to 

 estimate the value of the original thus roughly outlined. 

 Difficult as the task is, it must be faced. 



The evidential part of the work opens with a record of 

 cases which form, it is held, an experimental basis for 

 thought-transference. The following description is given 



by the Rev. H. M. Creery of experiments with his own 

 daughters : 



" Each went out of the room in turn, while I and the 

 others fixed on some object which the absent one was to 

 name on returning to the room. We began by selecting 

 the simplest objects in the room, then chose the names of 

 towns, dates, cards out of a pack, &c. I have seen 

 seventeen cards, chosen by myself, named right in suc- 

 cession, without a mistake." 



In similar experiments the investigating committee 

 acted as agents. This excluded, in their opinion, the 

 possibility of trickery. Tabulating the results thus ob- 

 tained, they submitted them to Mr. F. Y. Edgeworth, 

 who applied to them the calculus of probabilities, obtain- 

 ing " a row of tliirty-four nines following a decimal 

 point," or practical certainty in favour of their being due 

 either to collusion or to thought-transference. 



Details are given of experiments on the transference 

 of tastes under conditions which, in the opinion of the 

 authors, precluded the possibility of collusion or decep 

 tion. The following are a few successive results : — 



Substances tasted Answers given 



Vinegar A sharp and nasty taste. 



Mustard Mustard. 



Stigar I still taste the hot taste of the 



mustard. 



Worcestershire sauce Worcestershire sauce. 



Port wine (quality not stated !) Between eau-de-cologne and 



beer. 

 Bitter aloes Horrible and bitter. 



Instances of the localisation of pains are given. " The 

 percipient being seated, blindfolded, and with her back 

 to the rest of the party, all the other persons present in- 

 flicted on themselves the same pain in the same part of 

 the body. Those who took part in the collective agency 

 were three or more of the following : Mr. Malcolm 

 Guthrie, Prof. Herdman, Dr. Hicks, Dr. Hyla Greves 

 Mr. R. C. Johnson, F.R.A.S., Mr. Birchall, Miss Red 

 mond, and, on one occasion, another lady. The per- 

 cipient throughout was Miss Relf. In ten out of twenty 

 cases the percipient localised the pain with great pre- 

 cision ; in seven, the localisation was nearly exact ; in 

 two, no local impression was perceived ; and in one, the 

 last, the answer was wholly wrong." 



Facsimiles are given of pictures reproduced by thought- 

 transference. In a continuous series of six — none of which 

 can be said to have been complete failures — two were 

 reproduced by the percipient with great fidelity ; even 

 the comparative failures are instructive from their par- 

 tial success. The position of the agent, we are told, 

 rendered it absolutely impossible that she should obtain 

 a glimpse of the original. 



Such is some of the experimental evidence for thought- 

 transference. Readers of N.\TURE will understand why 

 this section of the authors' work, giving results obtained 

 under conditions within control, is noticed at greater 

 length than can be devoted to other branches of the 

 evidence. 



The next chapter deals with cases transitional between 

 experimental thought-transference — in which both agent 

 and percipient are voluntarily taking part with a definite 

 idea of certain results in view — and spontaneous telepathy, 

 where neither has voluntarily or consciously formed an 

 idea of any result whatever. These transitional cases are 



