Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/121

FRANK PODMOEE, Stiidies in Psychical Research. 107 by the facts which it rejects. For until the facts have been sub- mitted to dispassionate scientific examination, it cannot possibly be asserted that they do not connect with admitted truth. As a matter of fact the connexion has not been made chiefly because no one has tried to make it. The people who did concern them- selves with the alleged facts did not pursue scientific ends and so did not devise scientific theories ; those who did not, made the indiscriminate ascription of the phenomena to spirits or devils a pretext for declaring them to be essentially incapable of scientific investigation. But as soon as any one looks for order, order be- gins to appear out of chaos, and hence, Sir W. Crookes' recent declaration in his presidential address to the British Association,, that he is beginning to see " something like coherence among the strange and elusive phenomena, something like continuity be- tween these unexplained forces and laws already known," is highly significant. The truth is that the true scientific spirit is all-per- vasive, that the true scientific method is of universal application. to the psychology of angels, demons and spirits, if such things there be, as to that of men and beasts what has hitherto been lacking has been the will to apply it. But the feeling is growing that the time is approaching for the extension of science to regions of apparent experience hitherto abandoned to superstition, and Mr. Podmore's lucid survey of the field and critical sifting of the evidence cannot but contribute to strengthen public confidence in the work the Society for Psychical Eesearch has carried on with so much patience and pertinacity. A hasty reader might indeed draw the inference that Mr. Pod- more's results are mostly negative nay, that telepathy itself waa only a technical term to conceal a negation. But it cannot be too strongly emphasised that negative criticism like Mr. Podmore's. is on a totally different plane from that which prevailed twenty years ago ; it is criticism of the imperfections of a body of evidence which could not have come into existence but for the labours of the Society of Psychical Eesearch. And the defects which he criticises are in most cases such as can be removed by improvements in the quantity and quality of the evidence. Such improvement there has been and will doubtless continue to be if the social factor continues favourable. This indicates a characteristic of 'psychical research ' which might well have been emphasised by Mr. Pod- more. So long as the subject is in its observational stage its pro- gress necessarily depends largely on social sympathy. It is not enough that society should have desisted from its ancient sport of eliminating psychical sensitives at the stake. The superstitions, and social fears which render so much evidence inaccessible or valueless must be abated, and be succeeded by an interest or co- operation which will lead to an intelligent observation and adequate recording of an appreciable fraction of such phenomena as spon- taneously present themselves. For though we are like astronomers watching for sporadic comets that flare across the spiritual sky, we