24 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 392. 



by the name of 'changes of personality' — • 

 these are surely enough to fire the popular 

 imagination to the belief that nothing is too 

 strange to come out of psychology. In this 

 way the whole field unfortunately comes to be 

 represented like those regions on the old 

 charts where no details ' were given, but only 

 some figures of winged monsters and headless 

 men. 



In view of the interest in what has been 

 called the 'borderland' of mind, the present 

 collection of papers by Professor Jastrow is 

 timely and will prove of service. The origi- 

 nals were published in various popular and 

 scientific joiirnals, but have in considerable 

 part been rewritten for this volume. Takeji 

 as a whole they work in well together and con- 

 tribute to a single end. His general aim is 

 both negative and positive — negative in that 

 he clips the wings of the soarers, the uncritical 

 enthusiasts over mental phenomena; positive 

 in that he attempts both to stimulate a healthy 

 interest in many strange and interesting phe- 

 nomena that do not immediately suggest the 

 occult, as well as to point out psychologicallj 

 the actual causes which lead here and else- 

 where to a belief in the occult. While the 

 spiritualists and psychical researchers are 

 wandering and wondering in their chosen 

 fields. Professor Jastrow has a specialist's eye 

 on the mental machinery of these border- 

 landers themselves, and finds them in their 

 way quite as instructive and as absorbing as 

 they in their turn find the mediums and Pol- 

 iergeister. Psychology thys stands to win in 

 any case; if there is 'nothing in' psychical 

 research, there is at least a great deal in the 

 researchers. 



The author points out the immense differ- 

 ence between 'psychical research' and psy- 

 chology, especially as regards the interest and 

 temper of the persons engaged in each. He 

 cordially admits that some few researchers 

 are actuated by a true scientific interest and 

 are guided by a critical sense. The rank and 

 file, however, are interested only in the dis- 

 covery of evidences for something supernor- 

 mal. In as far as the facts are explicable by 

 familiar natural law, in so far there is for 

 these persons 'nothing in them.' But the 



psychologist becomes interested just at the 

 point where the other's attention flags. His 

 very aim is to arrive, if possible, at a 

 natural and normal explanation of the 

 phenomena in question. Whatever good 

 qualities may be hidden within the psychical 

 research movement. Professor Jastrow believes 

 that its sins are more than an ofliset to its 

 virtues; it has withdrawn energy from fruit- 

 ful fields and has done much harm to scientific 

 psychology. In this judgment the author may 

 be right; but so far as psychology is con- 

 cerned, it is perhaps too soon to say what the 

 real and lasting effect of psychical research 

 will be. On the whole, the strength which the 

 movement has developed has probably been 

 drawn very little from psychology, just 

 because, as Professor Jastrow has so ably 

 pointed out, the temper and interests of the 

 two classes of persons are so fundamentally 

 opposed. Possibly by a kind of induction, or 

 after the manner of antipodal tidal waves, it 

 has positively helped toward a study of com- 

 monplace and normal mental phenomena. 



As regards the special question of telepathy, 

 the author feels that the believers here do not 

 take suificient account of the extent to which 

 communication is possible through the ordi- 

 nary means of sense, while the channels of 

 communication themselves remain unrecog- 

 nized; nor do they take sufficient account of 

 mere chance coincidence. The hypothesis of 

 telepathy, as usually understood, is scientific- 

 ally repugnant because it does not keep 

 within the bounds of psycho-physjcal causa- 

 tion. If modified to escape this objection it 

 might become a legitimate theory, although 

 sadly in need of facts to support it. The evi- 

 dence seems to him a " conglomerate in which 

 imperfectly recognized modes of sense-action, 

 hypersBSthesia and hysteria, fraud, conscious 

 and unconseioiis, chance, collusion, similarity 

 of mental processes, and expectant interest in 

 presentments and a belief in their significance, 

 nervousness and ill-health, illusions of mem- 

 ory, hallucin'ations, suggestion, contagion, and 

 other elements enter into the composition; 

 while defective observation, falsification of 

 memory, forgetfulness of details, bias and pre- 

 possessions, suggestion from others, lack of 



