506 The American Naturalist. [May, 
Jules Héricourt, indeed, goes further, and suggests that we find here 
traces of the primeval unspecialized sensitiveness which preceded the 
development of a nervous system—a heritage shared with the amoeba 
and the sea-anemone. 
“On the other hand, it may be urged that our present knowledge, 
either of telepathy itself, or of the subconscious activities with which 
it is sought to link it, cannot by any means be held sufficient to sup- 
port such an inference as to the probable origin of the faculty, and, 
further, that the absence of mundane analogies and the difficulties at- 
tending any such explanation yet suggested, forbid us to assume that 
the facts are capable of expression in physical terms. 
“Tt is further urged that whilst the dependence of telepathy on any 
material conditions is not obvious, it is constantly associated, not only 
in popular belief, but in testimony from trustworthy sources, with phe- 
nomena which seem to point to supernormal faculties, such as clair- 
voyance, retrocognition, and prevision, themselves hardly susceptible 
of a physical explanation. This view has found its ablest exponent in 
Mr. F. W. H. Myers, and although Mr. Myers would himself readily 
admit that the evidence for these alleged supernormal faculties is not 
on a par with the evidence for telepathy, yet he maintains that such as 
it is it cannot be summarily dismissed. No doubt, if it should ap- 
pear with fuller knowledge that there are sufficient grounds for believ- 
ing in faculties which give to man knowledge, not derivable from liv- 
ing minds, of the distant, the far past and the future, it would be more 
reasonable to regard telepathy as a member of the group of such super- 
normal faculties, operating in ways wholly apart from the familiar 
sense activities, and not amenable like these, to terrestrial laws. Such 
considerations may, at any rate, be held to justify a suspension of judg- 
ment,” and Mr. Podmore concludes with an earnest appeal for more 
careful experimental work. 
I have given this passage in extenso, both on account of its interest 
from the point of view of biology and also on account of the clear 
statement which it makes of the “stratum ” theory which is now ac- 
cepted asa working hypothesis by many English psychologists, espe- 
cially those interested in “ psychical research.” The theory is not 
without its advantages in explaining the phenomena of hypnosis and 
automatism, but it is not readily reconciled with our physiological 
knowledge. Moreover, it involves certain assumptions as to the con- 
tinued independent existence of subconscious mental states which is 
wholly unjustified by the evidence. The analogous theory of “ co-ordi- 
nation ” or “ organization,’ propounded by Pierre Janet, seems to me 
$ 
