266 



sciEJsrc:E. 



[Vol. IX., No. 315 



transferrence ' has been a failure. Not only have I 

 read every page accessible to me of the writings of 

 Mr. Gurney and his associates, and have begun read- 

 ing the ' Phantasms of the living,' but, on the whole, 

 I have spent more time in this department of litera- 

 ture than I care publicly to confess. The only justi- 

 fication with which I console myself for all this read- 

 ing is the glimpse here and there of an interesting 

 illustration of the psychology of ' psychic research ' 

 itself. If I have overestimated the importance of the 

 article I reported, it may have been due to the bright 

 contrast it afforded to so much of the literature on 

 that topic with which I have come in contact. 



J. J. 

 Baltimore, Md., March 12. 



To some of the facts brotight out by the English 

 branch for psychical research, and, which seem to 

 me well established, — quite as well, indeed, as 

 many facts in physical science which scientists ac- 

 cept because they cannot explain, — the American 

 branch of the same society enters its demurrer. 

 " The tests of so-called investigators have been ren- 

 dered quite unreliable by the fact that they were 

 themselves the dupes of their own ideas." Now, the 

 investigator maybe the dupe of his own fancies, — that 

 is most true, — biit his fancy may be a susceptibility 

 favorable to the fact, or a non-receptive susceptibili- 

 ty, that would require more than a logical train of 

 possibilities to dispel. He may be such a slave of scep- 

 tic habit, that the normal freedom of his judgment is 

 weakened by preconceived ideas so tyrannical as to 

 make of him a bigot. In scientific investigation the 

 one man is as worthless as the other, — on the one 

 hand, the scientiJ&c man who will not be convinced ; 

 and, on the other, the one who will be too easily con- 

 vinced. 



Humanity is made up of compounds pretty well 

 known ; and it seems hardly probable, that given 

 the same opportunities, and with mental calibre of 

 equal power, the English men of science should be 

 the victims of their own fancies to a larger degree , 

 than those in the United States. So I take it that 

 dupe No 1 prevails in Eurojje, and dujje No. 2 in 

 America. It will always be found difficult to explain 

 psychological phenomena upon physical bases, — 

 more than difficult : it is impossible. The theories 

 followed out by the American branch do not seem to 

 me to be applicable. In the first place, it is not a 

 fact in mental science, that because the power of 

 thought-transferrence occurs in one person, it must 

 occur to a certain extent in all persons, or in at least 

 a great many persons ; and I very much question the 

 existence of any mental system constructed upon the 

 relation of the digits or the determination of num- 

 bers. Starting out with these preconceived, firmly 

 I'ooted, and untenable hypotheses, the investigator 

 has already made himself the dupe of an idea. He 

 is the victim of the society's explanation. He comes 

 to the work totally unqualified as an unprejudiced 

 observer, because he is already prejudiced by pre- 

 conceived trains of thought, originated by the society 

 to which he belongs, and exaggerated by his own 

 in-dwelling upon the subject. He has withdrawn 

 from mental freedom something absolutely necessary 

 to its unfettered action, and cannot give to the in- 

 vestigation that just and honest study which alone 

 can be of service. The number of men in the world's 

 life capable of passing such judgment is exceedingly 

 small : they could be counted upon one's fingers. 



A man may be reverenced in the realm of letters, of 

 astronomy, of medicine, of natural history, etc., and 

 yet it is more than probable that he cannot bring to 

 a crucial test of psychic phenomena the freedom of 

 judgment that is necessary. In the very nature of 

 things, I should doubt most strongly if a physicist 

 is ever the proper person to pronounce upon meta- 

 physical processes, because his whole habit of thought 

 has been in a different direction. 



To accept nothing as positive that has not been 

 proved dwindles our world down to the geometrical 

 conception of a ' point,' which has position without 

 dimension : it makes of human life a mere idea, that 

 as yet lacks logical method, and is without definite 

 fashioning ; and robs every one that takes the life- 

 giving oxygen into his lungs without knowing why 

 he does it or what ultimate purpose it subserves, of 

 the very sweetest hope that a student can have, — that 

 some day the mysteries that now torment us shall be 

 made as clear as the noonday sun. This is not the 

 test of psychological phenomena, and never can be. 



I can understand, from a very considerable expe- 

 rience in hospital work on the continent, that many 

 conditions of self-deception are self-created. A man 

 may be the victim of excessive introspection, and 

 may conjure up mental states of being and mental 

 imageries which to him are absolute. Another may 

 receive into a ductile mind as truth certain disputed 

 ideas, because he has already tilled the ground for 

 the reception of the seed. Another will fail to re- 

 ceive any thing, because he has determined either 

 that he will not, or that, if he does, it will conflict 

 with his preformed scientific conception of the mat- 

 ter. Both of these latter are certainly dupes. I have 

 seen a few examples of thought-transferrence ; but 

 even the few were so unmistakably the evidences of a 

 new force or power, and so free from any suspicion 

 of fraud, that I cannot deny the possibility because I 

 am unable to explain the fact. I certainly do not in- 

 cline to relegate such power to the mere rudimentary 

 conditions of elementary human life ; neither has it 

 been my experience to find that the agent or per- 

 cipient were persons in whom the intellects were at 

 all weakened. We know so little of consciousness, 

 of brain-power, and of the power of the senses, that 

 we should blushingly announce ourselves as ignorant 

 and blind, before opening the door that leads to 

 regions of which the wisest know absolutely nothing. 



I am writing merely as my thoughts suggest, and 

 not at all as one versed in this the most abstruse of 

 all sciences ; and these thoughts have been called out 

 by a study of the plans and purposes of the society for 

 investigating these phenomena. It seems to me that 

 the ends and purposes aimed at are handicapped at 

 the outset by certain definitions and premental con- 

 ceptions that must be more or less dominant, and 

 thus tyrannize over the understanding ; so that the 

 very man who thinks himself free becomes the dupe of 

 preconceived ideas. The instinct of the animal that 

 leads him to interpret certain moods of his master, 

 and which is of a part with the whole transmission 

 of hereditj^ — the automatic action, so to speak, of the 

 higher nervous ganglia, or the impress that these 

 ganglia have acquired by similar experiences through 

 hundreds of preceding generations, — is quite an- 

 other thing from the comi^lex phenomena of thought- 

 transferrence, which are the exponents of a much 

 higher degree of civilization, calling for a much 

 more elaborate and intricate association of psychic 

 functions. 



