September i8, 1891,] 



SCIENCE. 



163 



know uothing'. For brevity it may be styled "thought- 

 transference," though the name may turn out to be an un- 

 suita'ble one after further investigation. Further investiga- 

 tion is just what is wanted. No one can expect others to 

 accept his word for an entirely new fact, except as establish- 

 ing a, prima facie case for investigation. 



But I am only now taking this as an instance of what I 

 mean; whether it be a truth or a fiction, there is not, I sup- 

 pose, one of the recognized scientific societies who would 

 receive a paper on the subject. (This, however, is mere con- 

 jecture. I am not aware that the experiment has been tried.) 

 There are individual scientific men who have investigated 

 these matters for themselves ; there are others who are willing 

 to receive evidence, who hold their minds open and their 

 judgment in suspense; but these are only individuals. The 

 great majority, I think I am right in saying, feel active 

 hostility to these researches and a determined opposition to 

 the reception or discussion of evidence. And they feel this 

 confirmed scepticism, as they call it, not after prolonged in- 

 vestigation, for then it might be justified, but sometimes after 

 no investigation at all. A few tricks at a public performance, 

 or the artifices of some impostor, and they decline to consider 

 the matter further. 



That individuals should take this line is, however, natural 

 enough; they may be otherwise occupied and interested. 

 Everybody is by no means bound to investigate everything: 

 though, indeed, it is customary in most fields of knowledge 

 for those who have kept aloof from a particular inquiry to 

 defer in moderation to those who have conducted it, without 

 feeling themselves called upon to express an opinion Pome 

 there are, no doubt, who consider that they have given 

 sufficient time and attention to the subject with only negative 

 results. Their evidence is, of course, important; but plainly, 

 negative evidence should be of immense bulk and weight be- 

 fore it can outweigh even a moderate amount of positive 

 evidence. However, it is not of the action of individuals 

 that I wish to speak, it is of the attitude to he adopted by 

 scientific bodies in their corporate capacity; and for a cor- 

 porate body of men of science, inheritors of the hard-won 

 tradition of free and fearless inquiry into the facts of nature 

 untrammelled by prejudice, for any such body to decline to 

 receive evidence laboriously attained and discreetly and in- 

 offensively presented by observers of accepted competency in 

 other branches, would be, if ever actually done and persisted 

 in, a terrible throwing away of their prerogative, and an 

 imitation of the errors of a school of thought against which 

 the struggle was at one time severe. 



In the early days of the Copernican theory, Galileo for 

 some years refrained from teaching it, though fully believing 

 its truth, because he considered that he had better get more 

 fully settled in his university chair before evoking the storm 

 of controversy which the abandonment of the Ptolemaic 

 system would arouse. The same thing in very minor degree 

 is going on to-day. I know of men who hesitate to avow 

 interest in these new investigations (I do not mean credence 

 — the time is too early for avowing credence in any but the 

 most rudimentary and definitely ascertained facts — but hesi- 

 tate to avow interest) until they have settled down more se- 

 curely and made a name for themselves in other lines. Cau- 

 tion and slow progress are extremely necessary; fear of 

 avowing interest or of examining into orthodox facts is, I 

 venture to say, not in accordance with the highest traditions 

 of the scientific attitude. 



We are, I suppose, to some extent afraid of each other, 

 but we are still more afraid of ourselves. We have great 



respect for the opinions of our elders and superiors; we find 

 the matter distasteful to them, so we are silent. We have, 

 moreover, a righteous mistrust of our own powers and knowl- 

 edge; we perceive that it is a wide region extending into 

 several already cultivated branches of science, that a many- 

 sided and highly-trained mind is necessary adequately to 

 cope with all its ramifications, that in the absence of strict 

 inquiry imposture has been rampant in some portions of it 

 for centuries, and that unless we are preternaturally careful 

 we may get led into quagmires if we venture on it at all. 



Now let me be more definite, and try to state what this 

 field is, the exploration of which is regarded as so dangerous. 

 I might call it the borderland of physics and psychology. I 

 might call it the connection between life and energy; or the 

 connection between mind and matter. It is an intermediate 

 region, bounded on the north by psychology, on the south 

 by physics, on the east by physiology, and on the west by 

 pathology and medicine. An occasional psychologist has 

 groped down into it and become a metaphysician. An occa- 

 sional physicist has wandered up into it and lost his base, to 

 the horror of his quondam brethren. Biologists mostly look 

 at it askance, or deny its existence. A few medical practi- 

 tioners, after long maintenance of a similar attitude, have 

 begun to annex a jjortion of its western frontier. The whole 

 region seems to be inhabited mainly by savages, many of 

 ihem, so far as we can judge from a distance, given to gross 

 superstition. It may, for all I know, have been hastily 

 traversed, and rudely surveyed by a few clear-eyed travellers; 

 but their legends concerning it are not very credible, cer- 

 tainly are not believed. 



Why not leave it to the metaphysicians ? I say it has been 

 left to them long enough. They have explored it with in- 

 sufficient equipment. The physical knowledge of the great 

 philosophers has been necessarily scanty. Men of genius 

 they were, and their writings may, when interpreted, mean 

 much. But to us, as physicists, they are unsatisfactory; 

 their methods are not our methods. They may be said to 

 have floated a balloon over the region with a looking-glass 

 attached, in which they have caught queer and fragmentary 

 glimpses. They may have seen more than we give them 

 credit for, but they appear to have guessed far more than 

 they saw. 



Our method is different. We prefer to creep slowly from, 

 our base of physical knowledge, to engineer carefully as we 

 go, establishing forts, making roads, and thoroughly ex- 

 ploring the country, making a progress very slow, hut very 

 lasting. The psychologists from their side may meet us. I 

 hope they will; but one or other of us ought to begin. 



A vulnerable spot on our side seems to he the connection 

 between life and energy. The conservation of energy has 

 been so long established as to have become a commonplace. 

 The relation of life to energy is not understood. Life is not 

 energy, and the death of an animal affects the amount of 

 energy no whit; yet a live animal exerts control over energy 

 which a dead one cannot. Life is a guiding or directing 

 principle, disturbing to the physical world but not yet given 

 a place in the scheme of physics. The transfer of energy 

 is accounted for by the performance of work; the guidance 

 of energy needs no work, but demands force only. What is 

 force ? and how can living beings exert it in the way they 

 do ? An automaton worked by preceding conditions, that 

 is, by the past, say the materialists. Are we so sure that 

 they are not worked by the future too? In other words, 

 that the totality of things, by which every one must admit 

 that actions are guided, includes the future as well as the 



