NOVEMBEB 4, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



611 



The structure of brain and nerve being 

 similar, it is conceivable there may be 

 present masses of such nerve coherers in 

 the brain whose special function it may be 

 to receive impulses brought from without 

 through the connecting sequence of ether 

 waves of appropriate order of magnitude. 

 Eontgen has familiarized us with an order 

 of vibrations of extreme minuteness com- 

 pared with the smallest waves with which 

 we have hitherto been acquainted, and of 

 dimensions comparable with the distances 

 between the centers of the atoms of which 

 the material universe is built up; and there 

 is no reason to suppose that we have here 

 reached the limit of frequency. It is known 

 that the action of thought is accompanied 

 by certain molecular movements in the 

 brain, and here we have physical vibra- 

 tions capable; from their extreme minute- 

 ness, of acting direct on individual mole- 

 cules, while their rapidity approaches that 

 of the internal and external movements of 

 the atoms themselves. 



Confirmation of telepathic phenomena is 

 afforded by many converging experiments 

 and by manj' spontaneous occurrences only 

 thus intelligible. The most varied proof, 

 perhaps, is drawn from analysis of the sub- 

 conscious workings of the mind, when these, 

 whether by accident or design, are brought 

 into conscious survey. Evidence of a region 

 below the threshold of consciousness has 

 been presented, since its first inception, in 

 the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Re- 

 search ; and its various aspects are being 

 interpreted and welded into a comprehensive 

 whole by the pertinacious genius of F. W. 

 H. Myers. Concurrently, our knowledge 

 of the facts in this obscure region has re- 

 ceived valuable additions at the hands of 

 laborers in other countries. To mention 

 a few names out of many, the observations 

 of Richet, Pierre Janet and Binet (in 

 France), of Breuer and Freud (in Austria), 

 of William James (in America), have strik- 



ingly illustrated the extent to which patient 

 experimentation can probe subliminal pro- 

 cesses, and can thus learn the lessons of 

 alternating personalities and abnormal 

 states. Whilst it is clear that our knowl- 

 edge of subconscious mentation is still to be 

 developed, we must beware of rashly as- 

 suming that all variations from the normal 

 waking condition are necessarily morbid. 

 The human race has reached no fixed or 

 changeless ideal ; in every direction there 

 is evolution as well as disintegration. It 

 would be hard to find instances of more 

 rapid progress, moral and physical, than in 

 certain important cases of cure by sugges- 

 tion — again to cite a few names out of 

 many — by Liebeault, Bernheim, the late 

 Auguste Voisin, Berillon (in France), 

 Schrenck-Notzing (in Germany), Forel (in 

 Switzerland), van Eeden (in Holland), 

 Wetterstrand (in Sweden), Milne- Bram- 

 well and Lloyd Tuckey (in England). This 

 is not the place for details, but the vis medi- 

 catrix thus evoked, as it were, from the 

 depths of the organism, is of good omen for 

 the upward evolution of mankind. 



A formidable range of phenomena must 

 be scientifically sifted before we effectually 

 grasp a faculty so strange, so bewildering, 

 and for ages so inscrutable, as the direct 

 action of mind on mind. This delicate task 

 needs a rigorous employment of the method 

 of exclusion— a constant setting aside of ir- 

 relevant phenomena that could be explained 

 by known causes, including those far too 

 familiar causes, conscious and unconscious 

 fraud. The inquiry unites the difiiculties 

 inherent in all experimentation connected 

 with mind, with tangled human tempera- 

 ments and with observations dependent less 

 on automatic record than on personal tes- 

 timony. But difficulties are things to be 

 overcome even in the elusory branch of re- 

 search known as Experimental Psychology. 

 It has been characteristic of the leaders 

 among the group of inquirers constituting 



