20 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. IX., No. 205 



' Eationalism '), is better-attested evidence for 

 facts ; yet the evidence is now utterly discredited, 

 and the facts, then apparently so plenty, occur no 

 more. Mr. Gurney considers this objection, and 

 comes to an extremely interesting result. After 

 "careful search through about 260 books on the 

 subject (including the principal ones of the six- 

 teenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries) and 

 a large number of contemporary records of trials," 

 he affirms that the only facts of vs^itchcraft for 

 which there is any good evidence whatever are 

 those neuropathic phenomena (trance, anaesthesia, 

 hysteria, 'suggestion,' etc.) which, so far from 

 being now discredited, are more than ever ascer- 

 tained ; while the marvels like conveyance 

 through the air, transformation into animals, etc., 

 do not rest on a single first-hand statement made 

 by a person not ' possessed ' or under torture. 



The authors' theory of veridical phantasms is 

 that they are caused by thought-transferrence. 

 The ghost theory and the ' astral-form ' theory are 

 criticised as unsatisfactory (ghosts of clothes, phan- 

 tasms not seen by all present, etc.). Thought- 

 transferrence has been once for all established as 

 a vera causa. Why not assume that even the im- 

 pressions announcing death were made during the 

 last moments of the dying person's life ? 



Where the apparition is to several witnesses, 

 this explanation has to be much strained ; and, 

 in spite of Messrs. Myers's and Gurney's ingenuity, 

 I can hardly feel as if they had made out a very 

 plausible case. But any theory helps the analysis 

 of facts ; and I do not understand that Messrs. 

 Gurney and Myers hold their telepathic explanation 

 to have at present much more than this provision- 

 al sort of importance. 



I have given my impression of the ability of the 

 work. My impression of its success is this : the 

 authors have placed a matter which, previous to 

 them, had been handled so loosely as not to com- 

 pel the attention of scientific minds, in a position 

 which makes inattention impossible. They have 

 established a presumption, to say the least, which 

 it will need further statistical research either to 

 undo or to confirm. They have at the same time 

 made further statistical research easy ; for their 

 volumes will certainly stimulate the immediate 

 registration and publication, on a large scale, of 

 cases of hallucinations (both veridical and casual) 

 which but for them would have been kept private. 

 The next twenty-five years will then probably de- 

 cide the question. Either a flood of confirmatory 

 phenomena, caught in the act, will pour in, in 

 consequence of their work ; or it will not pour in 

 — and then we shall legitimately enough explain 

 the stories here preserved as mixtures of odd co- 

 incidence with fiction. In the one case Messrs. 



Gurney and Myers will have made an epoch in 

 science, and will take rank among the immortals 

 as the first effective prophets of a doctrine whose 

 ineffectual prophets have been many. In the 

 other case they will have made as great a wreck 

 and misuse of noble faculties as the sun is often 

 called to look down upon. The prudent by- 

 stander will be in no haste to prophesy ; or, if he 

 prophesy, he will hedge. I may be lacking in 

 prudence ; but I feel that I ought to describe the 

 total effect left at present by the book on my 

 mind. It is a strong suspicion that its authors 

 will prove to be on the winning side. It will sur- 

 prise me after this if neither ' telepathy ' nor 

 ' veridical hallucinations ' are among the beliefs 

 which the future tends to confirm. 



William James. 



MURRAY'S HANDBOOK OF PSYCHOLOGY, 



Dr. Murray has written an excellent elemen- 

 tary text- book for students of psychology. In the 

 present state of that science, it is difficult to pre- 

 sent its doctrines in a form suitable for didactic 

 purposes. It is often necessary for the author to 

 leave untouched certain important questions, the 

 settlement of which is only jjossible by a contro- 

 versial excursion into the department of meta- 

 physics. 



Dr. Murray's book is not a treatise on physio- 

 logical psychology, although the conclusions of 

 physiologists seem to be familiar to him. He has 

 occupied himself chiefly with what is called 

 ' subjective i)sychology,' — a field which must be 

 traversed before one can enter upon the more 

 positive science of the relation of psychical to 

 nervous states. He treats of psychology and its 

 method, gives a full and satisfactory account of 

 sensation, analyzing the knowledge given by the 

 various senses, and noticing the subject of general 

 or organic sensations. This is followed by an 

 account of association and its laws, and a short 

 chapter on comparison. These subjects constitute 

 what he describes as 'general psychology.' 



' Special psychology ' has to do with ' cognitions, 

 feelings, and volitions,' — a threefold division, 

 corresponding to the classical partition of * intel- 

 lect, feeling, and will.' Under the head of 

 ' cognitions ' we find an account of perceptions, 

 generalization, reasoning, idealization, illusory 

 cognitions, and a chapter on the general nature 

 of knowledge, which discusses 'self-conscious- 

 ness, time, space, substance, and cause ' from the 

 psychological rather than the metaphysical point 

 of view. After an introduction treating of the 

 nature of pleasure and pain and the expression 



A handbook of psychology. By J. Clark Muebat. 

 London, Gardner, 1885. 



