526 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. IV., No. 97. 



and so told the king that the water in the lakes 

 and rivers of his native country annually be- 

 came so hard that people walked and drove 

 upon it. The king, in a fit of rage, informed 

 the Dutchman that he not only did not believe 

 this story, but now he did not believe any thing 

 he had been telling him, and ordered him to 

 immediate execution. The reader can point 

 the moral. 



Let us now inquire whether the ghost side 

 of telepathy can possibly be established b}^ the 

 methods hitherto employed for that purpose. 

 I will start out by trying to answer the ques- 

 tion asked Mr. Gurney in the last number, 

 respecting the probable number of respectable 

 credible people in the British Islands who 

 would not be above amusing themselves at the 

 expense of a learned society. Without waiting 

 for his reply, I roughly estimate that the num- 

 ber of respectable credible people alluded to 

 exceeds fifteen million. Knowing what we do 

 of human nature, I conceive that it will not be 

 considered excessive to suppose that one out 

 of every thousand would come into the categoiy 

 in question. This would give fifteen thousand 

 people who would be capable of the pleasantry 

 alluded to. It must be expected that some of 

 them would forward replies to such requests 

 for information as have been circulated in Eng- 

 land. How are the reports of such people to 

 be eliminated from the mass ? It will be hard 

 to establish even the possibility of detecting 

 the frauds. 



It ma} T be asked in reply whether the con- 

 clusion thus intimated, if extended to other 

 departments of inquiry, would not lead to a 

 general lack of confidence between man and 

 man, and to an unjustifiable incredulity in 

 regard to human testimony in a veiy wide field. 

 My repl}' is, that there are wide fields in which 

 human testimon}* would be wholly unreliable, 

 but that methods for eliminating the false, and 

 preserving the true, have come into use. These 

 methods are so common and familiar that we 

 forget all about them. Let us suppose that a 

 paleontological society should advertise for 

 human skulls found in the tertiary deposits of 

 a country. Suppose, also, that any ingenious 



person could in fifteen minutes manufacture a 

 skull which the most diligent investigation of 

 paleontologists could not distinguish from a 

 genuine fossil. Can any one doubt that the 

 society would be deluged with skulls ? Could 

 any investigator be made to believe in a single 

 one of them ? I trow not. The fact is, that the 

 only security that paleontologists have from be- 

 ing imposed upon by manufactured specimens 

 lies in their power of distinguishing at a glance 

 the true from the false. When, as in a case 

 known to the writer, a man who has spent 

 several months in elaborating a row of fossil 

 bird-tracks brings his production to amuseum, 

 and is informed on sight by the professor in 

 charge that this specimen is very interesting, 

 because he recognizes the tracks as those of 

 the domestic turkey, it produces a depressing 

 effect upon all manufactures of this class. 

 When psychic zoography is so far developed 

 that a spurious ghost can be distinguished from 

 a real one with the readiness with which 

 Cuvier is said to have detected a spurious 

 devil, there will be some outlook for establish- 

 ing the existence of such beings. For this 

 stage the reasonably incredulous will be likely 

 to wait. 



I have spoken as though the question were 

 that of intentional deception. In fact, how- 

 ever, it is hardly necessary to suppose any 

 thing of the sort. It is only the fortunate few 

 of mankind who are not subject to lapses of 

 memory, and illusions respecting the time and 

 place at which events have happened, as well 

 as to illusions of the senses. So far is this 

 true, that a prudent person will rarely trust im- 

 plicitly to a presentation of any complicated 

 statement made by another, unless it is verified 

 by independent evidence. If two persons 

 could see and describe the same psychic phe- 

 nomenon, the case might be better ; but, as 

 it really stands, there is no way of eliminating 

 delusions, deceptions, or mistakes of any kind. 



There is, however, a conceivable method by 

 which every thing except intentional deception 

 may be avoided. Let any psychical society 

 issue to the people of a country a request that 

 any person impressed in an unusual manner, 



