676 ) 
[November, 
ANALYSES OF BOOKS. 
Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research . Vol. I., 
Part 1. London: Triibner and Co. 
The “ Society for Psychical Research ” organised at the begin- 
ning of the present year is no mere demonstration. To work it 
has gone with a good will, and in the pamphlet before us it gives 
the first-fruits of its activity on a much-contested subject. 
“ Thought-reading ” has, thanks to the public exhibitions of Mr. 
Bishop and Mr. “ Stuart Cumberland/’ attracted no small portion 
of attention. Journalists — scientific, unscientific, and even anti- 
scientific — have opened their columns to records of incidents 
which forty years ago would have been curtly rejected. Without 
an unpardonable digression we may here remark that there is at 
the present day a decidedly increasing relish for the so-called 
supernatural. What this change in the public taste signifies it 
would be rash to predidL A sceptic has, indeed, ventured the 
very just remark that all our social intercourse is based upon the 
assumed impossibility of our thoughts being read otherwise than 
through language, signs, gestures, changes of countenance, 
and the like. Yet at the same time certain of the experiments 
performed, if corredfly reported, seem to indicate that the thoughts 
of any person may, under certain circumstances, become known 
to others without any of the usual means of communication. It 
is natural and right that all such experiments should be scruti- 
nised with jealous care, and that every opening for fraud, collu- 
sion, and self-deceit should be eliminated. To do this has been 
the especial task of the Special Committee on Thought-reading. 
This Committee, in a Report given in to the Society July 17th 
of the present year, states that “ The present state of scientific 
opinion throughout the world is not only hostile to any belief in 
the possibility of transmitting a single mental concept except 
through the ordinary channels of sensation, but generally speak- 
ing it is hostile to any inquiry upon the matter.” We cannot 
venture to impugn this assertion, but we must regret that the 
latter clause should be true. Science, we think, should not refuse 
inquiry except in cases where there is a prima facie absurdity in 
the way. We may perhaps here usefully attempt to settle when 
an inquiry may be safely and justly refused as waste of time, and 
when it should be undertaken. Suppose a man who has scarcely 
mastered the elements of arithmetic, and who is totally ignorant 
of the higher mathematics, comes forward to point out errors in 
the astronomical calculations of Leverrier ; suppose another, in 
