30 REPORT— 1 898. 



liave passed since I published an account of experiments tending to sliow 

 that outside our scientific knowledge there exists a Force exercised by 

 intelligence differing from the ordinary intelligence common to mortals. 

 This fact in my life is of course well understood by those who honoured 

 me with the invitation to become your President. Perhaps among my 

 audience some may feel curious as to whether I shall speak out or bo 

 .silent. I elect to speak, although briefly. To enter at length on a still 

 debatable subject would be unduly to insist on a topic which — as Wallace, 

 Lodge, and Barrett have already shown — though not unfitted for dis- 

 cussion at these meetings, does not yet enlist the interest of the majority 

 of my scientific brethren. To ignore the subject would be an act of 

 cowardice — an act of cowardice I feel no temptation to commit. 



To stop short in any research that bids fair to widen the gates of 

 knowledge, to recoil from fear of difficulty or adverse criticism, is to bring 

 reproach on Science. There is nothing for the investigator to do but to 

 go straight on, 'to explore up and down, inch by inch, with the taper his 

 reason ' ; to follow the light wherever it maj-^ lead, even should it at times 

 resemble a will-o'-the-wisp. I have nothing to retract. I adhere to my 

 already published statements. Indeed, I might add much thereto. I 

 regret only a certain crudity in those early expositions which, no doubt 

 justly, militated against their acceptance by the scientific world. My 

 own knowledge at that time scarcely extended beyond the fact that 

 certain phenomena new to science had assuredly occurred, and were 

 attested by my own sober senses, and better still, by automatic record. 

 I was like some two-dimensional being who might stand at the singular 

 point of a Riemann's surface, and thus find himself in infinitesimal and 

 inexplicable contact with a plane of existence not his own. 



I think I see a little farther now. I have glimpses of something like 

 coherence among the strange elusive phenomena ; of something like con- 

 tinuity between those unexplained forces and laws already known. This 

 advance is largely due to the labours of another Association of Avhich I 

 have also this year the honour to be President — the Society for Psychical 

 Research. And were I now introducing for the first time these inquiries 

 to the world of science I should choose a starting-point different 

 from that of old. It would be well to begin with tclcpatliy ; with the 

 fundamental law, as I believe it to be, that thoughts and images may 

 be transferred from one mind to another without the agency of 

 the recognised organs of sense — that knowledge may enter the human 

 mind without being communicated in any hitherto known or recognised 

 ways. 



Although the inquiry has elicited important facts with reference to the 

 Mind, it has not yet reached the scientific stage of certainty which would 

 entitle it to be usefully brought before one of our Sections. I will there- 

 fore confine myself to pointing out the direction in which scientific 

 investigation can legitimately advance. If telepathy take place we have 



