June 19, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



in such matters from which our Proeeedings 

 have never departed, and a warning against 

 drawing any prompt inference whatever from 

 things that happen in tlie dark. The conclu- 

 sions to whicli some of us had been hastily 

 led on 'the Island,' melted away when, in 

 Cambridge, the opportunity for longer and 

 more cunning observation was afforded. 

 Some day, it is to be hoped, our Proceedings 

 may be enabled to publish a complete study 

 of this woman's life. "Whatever the upshot 

 of such a study, few documents could be more 

 instructive in all waj's for psj'chical research. 

 It is pleasant to turn from phenomena of 

 dark-sitting and rathole type (with their 

 tragi-comic suggestion that the whole order 

 of nature might possibly be overturned in 

 one's own head, by the way in which one 

 imagined oneself, on a certain occasion, to 

 be holding a tricky peasant woman's feet) 

 to the ' calm air of delightful studies.' And 

 on the credit side of our Society's account 

 a heavy entry must next be made in favor 

 of that immense and patient collecting of 

 miscellaneous first-hand documents that 

 alone has enabled Mr. Myers to develop his 

 ideas about automatism and the subliminal 

 self. In Mr. Myers' papers on these subjects 

 we see, for the first time in the history of 

 men's dealings with occult matters, the 

 whole range of them brought together, il- 

 lustrated copiously with unpublished con- 

 temporary data, and treated in a thoroughly 

 scientific way. All constructions in this 

 field must be provisional, and it is as some- 

 thing provisional that Mr. Myers offers us 

 his attempt to put order into the tangle. 

 But, thanks to his genius, we begin to see 

 for the first time what a vast interlocked 

 and graded sj'stem these phenomena, from 

 the rudest motor automatisms to the most 

 startling sensoi-y apparition, form. Mr. 

 Myers' methodical treatment of them by 

 classes and series is the first great step 

 towards overcoming the distaste of orthodox 

 science to look at them at all. 



But our Proeeedings contain still other 

 veins of ore for future working. Ghosts, 

 for example, and disturbances in haunted 

 houses. These, whatever else may be said 

 of them at present, are not without bearing 

 on the common scientific presumption of 

 which I have already perhaps said too 

 much. Of course, one is impressed by such 

 narratives after the mode in which one's 

 impressibility is fashioned. I am not 

 ashamed to confess that in my own case, 

 although my judgment remains deliberately 

 suspended, my feeling towards the way in 

 which the phenomena of physical medium- 

 ship should be approached has received 

 from ghost and disturbance stories a dis- 

 tinctly charitable lurch. Science may keep 

 saying : " such things are simply impos- 

 sible;" yet, so long as the stories multiply 

 in different lands, and so few are positively 

 explained away, it is bad method to ignore 

 them. They should at least acci'ete for fu- 

 ture use. As I glance back at my reading 

 of the past few years (reading accidental so 

 far as these stories go, since I have never 

 followed up the subject) ten cases im- 

 mediately rise to my mind. The Phelps 

 case at Andover, recorded by one of the 

 family, in 3IcClure''s Magazine for this month; 

 a case in China, in Nevius's Demon Posses- 

 sion, published last year ; the case in John 

 Wesley's life ; the 'Amherst Mystery ' in 

 Nova Scotia (New York, 1888); the case 

 in Mr. Willis's house at Fitchburg, re- 

 corded in The Atlantic Monthly for August, 

 1868 (XXII., 129); the Tel fair- Mackie 

 case, in Sharpe's History of Witchcraft in 

 Scotland; the Morse case, in Upham's Salem 

 Witchcraft; the case recounted in the intro- 

 duction of W. V. Humboldt's Brief an eine 

 Freundin ; a case in the Annates des Sciences 

 Psyehiques for last year (p. 86); the case of 

 the carpenter's shop at Swanland, near 

 Hull, in our Proceedings, Vol . VII. , Part XX. , 

 pp. 383-394. In all of these, if memory 

 doesn't deceive me, material objects are 



