June 19, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



883 



not reached at all — just as a big conflagra- 

 tion will break out at a certain tempera- 

 ture, below which no conflagration what- 

 ever, whether big or little, can occur. We 

 have published records of experiments on 

 at least thirty subjects, roughly speaking, 

 and many of these were strikingly success- 

 ful. But their types are heterogeneous ; 

 in some cases the conditions were not fault- 

 less : in others the observations were not 

 prolonged ; and generally speaking, we 

 must all share in a regret that the evidence, 

 since it has reached the point it has reached, 

 should not grow more voluminous still. 

 For whilst it cannot be ignored by the can- 

 did mind, it j'et, as it now stands, may fail 

 to convince coercively the skeptic. Any 

 day, of course, may bring in fresh experi- 

 ments -in successful picture guessing. But 

 meanwhile, and lacking that, we can only 

 point out that our present data are strength- 

 ened in the flank, so to speak, by all obser- 

 vations that tend to corroborate the possi- 

 bility of other kindred phenomena, such as 

 telepathic impression, clairvoyance, or what 

 is called ' test-mediumship.' The wider 

 genus will naturally cover the narrower 

 species with its credit. 



Now, as regards the work of the Society 

 in these latter regards, we can point to 

 solid progress. First of all we have that 

 masterpiece of intelligent and thorough 

 scientific work — I use my words advisedly 

 — the Sidgwick Eeport on the Census of 

 Hallucinations. Against the conclusion of 

 this report, that death apparitions are 440 

 times more numerous than they should be 

 according to chance, the only rational an- 

 swer that I can see is that the data are 

 still too few, that the net was not cast wide 

 enough, and that we need, to get fair aver- 

 ages, far more than 17,000 answers to the 

 Census question. This may, of course, be 

 true, though it seem exceedingly unlikely, 

 and in our own 17,000 answers veridical 

 cases may have heaped themselves unduly. 



So neither bj^ this report then, taken alone, 

 is it absolutely necessary that the skeptic 

 be definitely convinced. But then we have, 

 to strengthen its flank in turn, the carefully 

 studied cases of 'Miss X.' and Mrs. Piper, 

 two persons of the constitution now coming 

 to be nicknamed 'psychic' (a bad tei'm, 

 but a handy one), each person of a different 

 psychic type, and each presenting phenom- 

 ena so chronic and abundant that, to ex- 

 plain away the supernormal knowledge 

 displayed, the disbeliever will certainly 

 rather call the subjects deceivers, and their 

 believers dupes, than resort to the theory 

 of chance-coincidence. The same remark 

 holds true of the extraordinary case of 

 Stainton Moses, concerning which Mr. 

 Myers has recently given us such interest- 

 ing documents. In all these cases (as Mr. 

 Lang has well said of the latter one) we 

 are, it seems to me, fairly forced to choose 

 between a physical and a moral miracle. 

 The physical miracle is that knowledge may 

 come to a person otherwise than hj the 

 usual use of eyes and ears. The moral 

 miracle is a kind of deceit so perverse and 

 successful as to find no parallel in usual 

 experience. But the limits of possible per- 

 versity and success in deceit are hard to 

 draw ; so here again the skeptic may fall 

 back on his general non posswnus, and with- 

 out pretending to explain the facts in de- 

 tail, say the presumption from the ordinaiy 

 course of Nature holds good against their 

 supernormal interpretation. But the of- 

 tener one is forced to reject an alleged sort 

 of fact, by the method of falling back on 

 the mere presumption that it can't be true 

 because, so far as we know Nature, Nature 

 runs altogether the other way, the weaker 

 does the presumption itself get to be ; and 

 one might in course of time use up one's 

 presumptive privileges in this waj', even 

 though one started (as om- anti-telepath- 

 ists do) with as good a case as the great 

 induction of psj'chology that all our knowl- 



