J. MALCOLM BIRD 291 



pothesis covering this so far as broad philosophical 

 outlines are concerned, and the strong suggestion that 

 if science will but examine the matter, both the phe- 

 nomena and the philosophy covering them will be 

 found precisely in line with the new ideas toward which 

 science is verging. The more closely we scrutinize this 

 correspondence the more must we become convinced 

 that it is a significant one; that the phenomena of 

 psychical research, when rationalized as a matter of 

 non-mediumistic cognition by the operator, are truly 

 phenomena of the new universe that science is discov- 

 ering; that when this universe has been more fully 

 drawn in, we shall have at least a beginning of the 

 mechanistic explanation for our supernormal cogni- 

 tions which has been so conspicuously lacking in what 

 I have said to this point. 



One or two important angles have not been touched. 

 The relativistic philosophy presents time in a new 

 light, and pictures the future as having a real exist- 

 ence in some part co-extensive with the present. If 

 we are to take this seriously as corresponding to 

 reality, we must anticipate that any cognitive process 

 which operates in the relativistic milieu will to some 

 degree project itself into the future and bring back 

 observations thereof. Psychical research responds at 

 once, meeting this demand. Every branch of psychical 

 cognition includes brilliant examples of reading of the 

 future, inexplicable on any other basis than a rela- 

 tivistic one, and on precisely the scale which relativity 

 would lead us to expect. 



Again : psychology recognizes subnormal and hyper- 

 normal subjects. These it does not characterize as 



