May 27, 3R98.1 



SCIENCE. 



749 



Professor B. F. Nichols, of Colgate Uni- 

 versity, has accepted a call to the chair of phys- 

 ics at Dartmouth College. 



Dk. C. M. Bakewell, of the University of 

 California, has been appointed associate profes- 

 sor of philosophy at Bryn Mawr College. 



The Frank Small studentship in botany of 

 Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, will be 

 vacant in June. It may be held for two or 

 three years, and is of the annual value of £100. 



The Aberdeen Universities Court has ap- 

 pointed Mr. John Clarke, M.A., Aberdeen, to 

 be lecturer in education for the term of three 

 years, in succession to Dr. Joseph Ogilvie, 

 whose term of office has expired. 



DISCUSSION AND COBBESPONDENCE. 

 SPIRITUALISM AS A SURVIVAL. 



To THE Editor of Science : The discus- 

 sion in Science in regard to the occult phe- 

 nomena supposed to be manifested by Mrs. 

 Piper induces me to recall a controversy I had 

 with a distinguished psychologist who expressed 

 the belief that in Mrs. Piper he had, at last, en- 

 countered evidences of a supernatural character. 

 In a discussion with a very eminent English- 

 man, a spiritualist, I found that he placed im- 

 plicit faith in mediums who had been repeatedly 

 exposed as most arrant humbugs. No intelli- 

 gent seeker after evidences of supernaturalism 

 would, for a moment, accept the manifestations 

 of these frauds, and yet, with the blaudness of 

 an insane person, this eminent spiritualist re- 

 ceived, without a reservation, the messages of 

 these humbugs. In the Proceedings of the 

 Society for Psychical Research two eminent 

 psychologists recount the remarkable perform- 

 ances of a medium in Sicily, which they fully 

 accepted as genuine, yet my distinguished psy- 

 chologist above mentioned, with his keen 

 method of penetrating frauds of all kinds, ex- 

 posed this apparent wonder. Now he in turn 

 encounters Mrs. Piper and, his limit of penetra- 

 tion having been reached, he falls into line just 

 as promptly as the rest. Here you have, then, a 

 number of men with varying degrees of pene- 

 trating powers. One set all agape with specu- 

 lative wonder, as Huxley said of Bastian, ac- 

 cepting stuff as genuine which many alert 



newspaper reporters had shown to be spurious ; 

 another set, endowed with a modicum of com- 

 mon sense, repudiating the peripatetic mediums 

 yet snared by more skillful frauds ; still higher 

 are others who are not deceived by these, but 

 are in turn bamboozled by more deftly played 

 tricks ; and finally the highest intellects who, in 

 an encounter with some exceedingly adroit 

 female medium, are puzzled by the manifesta- 

 tions and, not having that judicious calm which 

 might frankly wait for more light, plunge into 

 the regions of the occult for an explanation as 

 readily as did their more ignorant confreres 

 under the capers of the charlatans. I think a 

 fair explanation of this attitude of the human 

 mind, which always excites more wonder in a 

 rational being than do the seances of cunning 

 mediums, is that we have clearly before us the 

 evidences of survival. From a time when all 

 believed in omens, portents, dreams, warnings, 

 etc., what wonder that a sufficient number of 

 molecules have been transmitted whose potency 

 overrides common sense. In no other way can 

 we explain why in the latter years of the nine- 

 teenth century there are in our midst men, 

 otherwise intelligent, who fully believe in as- 

 trology. It is as utterly impossible to convince 

 people thus afflicted as it would be to argue 

 with inmates of an insane asylum. We may re- 

 gard with interest, akin with pity perhaps, 

 those who waste their phosphorus in trying to 

 convince the world that they are right. "We are 

 compelled to explain their attitude, not by 

 significantly striking our head with the index 

 finger as we contemplate them, but by insisting 

 that they present most interesting examples of 

 survival, and, if they did but realize it, how in- 

 teresting they would be to themselves ! 



The conception of a flat world was at one 

 time universal ; to the masses, however, the 

 demonstration that it was round or square or 

 pyramidal induced no special mental disturb- 

 ance — no more, indeed, than when it was shown 

 that the air they breathed was composed of 

 certain gases, had a certain weight, etc. The 

 belief in dreams, omens, signs, etc., was an 

 active one ; it was invoked at all times ; the 

 mind, for centuries, was super-saturated with 

 it, and hence its survival among children, to- 

 day, among the masses and, rarer still, among 



