556 EEPOUT — 1891. 



been the great creed in the strength of which all intellectual advance has been 

 attempted, and all scientific progress made. 



At first things always look mysterious. A comet, lightning, the aurora, the 

 rainbow — aU strange anomalous mysterious apparitions. But scrutinised in the 

 dry light of science, their relationship with other better-known things becomes 

 apparent. They cease to be anomalous ; and though a certain mystery necessarily 

 remains, it is no more a property peculiar to them, it is shared by the commonest 

 objects of daily life. 



The operations of a chemist, again, if conducted in a haphazard manner, would 

 be an indescribable medley of effervescences, precipitations, changes in colour and 

 in substance ; but, guided by a thread of theory running through them, the pro- 

 cesses fall into a series, they all become fairly intelligible, and any explosion or 

 catastrophe that may occur is capable of explanation too. 



Now I say that the doctrine of ultimate intelligibility should be pressed into 

 other departments also. At present we hang back from whole regions of inquiry 

 aud say they are not for us. A. few we are beginning to grapple with. The 

 nature of disease is yielding to scrutiny with fruitful result : the mental aberrations 

 and abnormalities of hypnotism, duplex personality, and allied phenomena, are now 

 at last being taken under the wing of science alter long ridicule and contempt. The 

 phenomena of crime, the scientific meaning and justification of altruism, and 

 other matters relating to life and conduct, are beginning, or perhaps are barely yet 

 beginning, to show a vulnerable front over which the forces of science may pour. 



Facts so strange that they have often been called miraculous are now no longer 

 regarded as entirely incredible. All occurrences seem reasonable when contemplated 

 from the right point of view, and some are believed in which in their essence are still 

 quite marvellous. Apply warmth for a given period to a sparrow's egg, and what 

 result could be more incredible or magical if now discovered for the first time. 

 The possibilities of the universe are as infinite as is its phj'sical extent. Why should 

 we grope with our eyes always downward, and deny the possibility of everything 

 out of our accustomed beat ? 



If there is a puzzle about free-will, let it be attacked ; puzzles mean a state of 

 half-knowledge ; by the time we can grasp something more approximating to the 

 totality of things the paradoxicality of paradoxes drops away and becomes unrecog- 

 nisable. I seem to myself to catch glimpses of clues to many of these old questions, 

 and I urge that we should trust consciousness, which has led us thus far ; should 

 shrink from no problem when the time seems ripe for an attack upon it, and should 

 not hesitate to press investigation, and seek to ascertain the laws of even the most 

 recondite problems of life and mind. 



What we know is as nothing to that which remains to be known. This is 

 sometimes said as a truism ; sometimes it is half doubted. To me it seems the most 

 literal truth, and that if we narrow our view to already half-conquered territory only, 

 we shall be false to the men who won our freedom, and treasonable to the highest 

 claims of science. 



If I were asked (as I am not) to suggest any practical proposal for immediate 

 action in the direction indicated, I should not urge anything at all revolutionary. 

 I do not think that the time is ripe for the Royal Society, for instance, to move in 

 the matter ; the early stages of such an investigation, in which the human element 

 is so obtrusive and perturbing, may very properly be left to a societj' devoted to 

 that special end ; and, thanks to the single-hearted, persistent, aud admirably judi- 

 cious labours of a few workers, whose names I need not mention because they are 

 so well known, such a society exists. I do, however, think that whenever in the 

 view of the leaders of that society the time may have come to put the scientific 

 world in official possession of their more securely ascertained facts — for instance, 

 by presenting a report to this or some other section — they ought not to ask in vain 

 for some recognition of the work accomplished by them. It seems to me desirable 

 that the work in which they have been so long engaged should be established 

 on a more permanent basis, such a basis as scientific recognition would be likely 

 to bestow, so that the existence of the society may not be imperilled by the mor- 

 tality of individuals. I will not press the suggestion further ; it may bear fruit 



