1895.] Psychology. 503 
PSYCHOLOGY. 
Psychical Research.—Mr. Podmore has recently brought out a 
book in the Contemporary Science Series which seems to have a 
double object. In the first place, Mr. Podmore is himself fully con- 
vinced of the reality of “ thought-transference ” or “ telepathy,” as an, 
as yet, unrecognized agent in communication between mind and mind, 
and in this little book he marshals the experimental and spontaneous 
evidence for the hypothesis in an attractive and convincing manner. 
In the second place, Mr. Podmore thoroughly disapproves of the ani- 
mistic and the spiritistic tendencies noticeable in much of current 
“psychical research” and is anxious to show that telepathy is suffi- 
cient to account fur the phenomena upon which spiritism and animism 
depend. If this thesis can be made good it will certainly go far to ac- 
credit the cause of psychical research in the eyes of contemporary 
science. The telepathic conception as outlined by Mr. Podmore is suf- 
ficiently in line with current scientific conceptions to gain admission to 
their number, if sufficient experimental evidence is forthcoming to 
warrant it. It would be, perhaps, more exactly described as a species 
of “ thought-induction,” rather than as “ thought-transference,” and it 
does not seem hard, so far as a priori considerations are concerned, to 
conceive that the transformations of energy which, taking place in a 
given brain, are manifested as consciousness may, under conditions at 
present undetermined, induce in the brain of some other person similar 
transformations, accompanied by a similar mental state. The adoption 
of such a conception would not materially affect our general system of 
thinking in psychology or in other branches of natural science. But 
when we turn to animism or spiritism, the case is quite different. No 
amount of evidence will avail to persuade the average man of scientific 
training that the human consciousness can be separated from its mate- 
rial body and go to and fro upon the earth, becoming cognizant of 
things at a distance in space from its body and even of past and future 
events, and occasionally manifesting itself to other human beings as an 
“astral” form. And the notion that after death the personal con- 
sciousness still exists and can sometimes manifest itself to the living, is 
viewed with scarcely less disfavor. “ Evidence” bearing upon such 
phenomena is usually thrown out of court without consideration. 
1 This department is edited by Dr. Wm. Romaine Newbold, University of Penn- 
sylvania. 
