32 
PSYCHIC FORCE AND PSYCHIC MEDIA. 
By J. P. EARWAKER, Merton College, Oxford. 
PART II. 
I N our former article published in the October number of this 
Review, we examined the first experiments of Mr. Crookes 
on Psychic Force as described in the 66 Quarterly Journal of 
Science” for July 1871, and we essayed to show that those ex- 
periments, whilst ostentatiously called scientific, were in reality 
very far from being so. We drew attention to the errors of 
observation with which the accounts abounded, the gross inac- 
curacy of the details, the ambiguous way in which they were 
described, and in conclusion, showed how so many obvious 
causes of error had neither been allowed for nor even considered. 
Whilst that article was in the press further investigations on 
Psychic Force were in progress, and the October number of the 
same journal contained a second instalment of experiments on 
this subject. This last article of Mr. Crookes’ is a somewhat 
remarkable one in many respects. With genuine modesty he 
begins by comparing himself to Galvani, and also draws a 
parallel between his own investigations and those of the great 
discoverer of Galvanism, and the first reception accorded to 
each. But no one, we think, whose mind was free from the bias 
of foregone conclusions, would see much resemblance between 
the two series of experiments — Galvani, who experimented on 
the physiological effects produced by means of the contact of 
two dissimilar metals, and those of Mr. Crookes, who investi- 
gates the phenomena which are produced by a well-known 
spiritualistic medium. Are the two inanimate and dissimilar 
metals of Galvani to be compared to the ever-versatile and 
changeable Mr. Home ? Are the results, which, under all cir- 
cumstances, can be obtained by those who repeat his experiments, 
to be compared for one moment to those which depend on Mr. 
Home’s state of being at any particular time ? Can we, in 
fact, compare certainties with uncertainties, facts with hypo- 
thetical assumptions, or the rigid laws of science with the 
