Studies in psychical research

Preface

I DESIRE, in the first place, to record my obligations to Professor Henry Sidgwick and Mrs. Sidgwick, who have read through nearly the whole of my book in typescript, and have given me the benefit of their advice throughout. But in rendering this acknowledgment I should explain that, whilst we are, I believe, in complete agreement as to the attitude of mind in which the questions here discussed should be approached, and the general methods by which they should be investigated, the responsibility for the conclusions expressed rests on myself alone.

The greater part of Chap. VI. appeared in Time for February, 1886, and Chaps. V. and X. are based upon articles contributed to the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. Of the illustrative narratives quoted, the greater number are taken from the same source, or from the monthly Journal and other unpublished records of the Society. I desire to acknowledge the courtesy which has placed these materials at my disposal.

F. P.

February, 1897.

Chapter I. Introductory

Attitude of the educated world in general — The need of an extended and systematic enquiry — Founding of the Society for Psychical Research — Its methods and aims — The author's individual responsibility for the views here expressed 1-8

Chapter II. Spiritualism As A Popular Movement

Its origin, history, and wide-spread influence — Scientific interest in the subject — The movement as a whole essentially unscientific — Its character illustrated by the history of various exposures of fraud — Williams and Rita — Mrs. Corner — Miss Wood — Saadi and Wamik — Theology and philosophy of the movement — Stainton Moses — Serjeant Cox — Professor Hare and others — Rise of Theosophy and kindred mysticisms 9-41

Chapter III. The Physical Phenomena Of Spiritualism

Experiments by MM. Thury and de Gasparin — Dr. Hare — The Committee of the London Dialectical Society — Evidence of the Master of Lindsay — Experiments by Mr. Crookes — The mediumship of Mr. Stainton Moses — Experiments by Professor Zollner and others ...... 42-80

VI CONTENTS.

Chapter IV. Spiritualism And Psychical Research

Investigations of the S. P R. — Eusapia Palladino — Mrs. H. Sidgwick's experiences — Reichenbach's phenomena — Spirit photography — Slate writing — Dr. Hodgson's analysis of the evidence — Mr. Davey's imitation of the phenomena — Disinterested fraud — Some general propositions — Examination of the evidence quoted in Chapter III. — Insufficient to prove a new force — Indications of hallucination — Conclusion

Appendix : Note on the alleged spirit-communication of Mr. Stainton Moses .... 81-133

Chapter V. Poltergeists

Outbreaks of bell-ringing and physical disturbances — The antiquity of the phenomena — The Worksop case — Durweston — Arundel — The Ham case — The Wem case and others — Various cases in which no trickery has been actually detected — Detailed analysis of the evidence — Conclusion: That the alleged phenomena are due in the first instance to trickery, magnified by malobservation and errors of memory 134-162

Chapter VI. Madame Blavatsky And Theosophy

Origin of the movement — Its cosmology, philosophy, and theology — The revelation attested by miracles — The S. P. R. sends a commissioner to India — Collapse of the case for the miracles — Koot Hoomi letters shown to be forgeries — Later evidence — The early history of Madame Blavatsky — Solovyoff's intercourse with Madame Blavatsky . . . 163-194

CONTENTS. Vii

Chapter VII. Experimental Thought Transference

Various errors to be guarded against — Fraud, chance coincidence, association of ideas, involuntary communication of information — Experiments at close quarters — In the normal state, by Dr. Blair Thaw, Mr. H. G. Rawson, Mrs. A. W. Verrall — In sleep, by Dr. Ermacora — In trance, with subject in another room, by Professor and Mrs. H. Sidgwick — Production of movements and other effects — Experiments at a distance — By Professor Janet and Dr. Gibert, by Rev. A. Glardon, by Miss Campbell and Miss Despard — Diaries of telepathic impressions 195-233

Chapter VIII. Telepathic Hallucinations

Errors to be guarded against — Fraud, chance coincidence, fallacies of memory — Transference of ideas and waking impressions : Mr. Keulemans, Professor Alexander — Telepathic Dreams : Mr. F. Wingfield — Telepathic hallucinations: — Auditory: Miss King — Visual-experimental hallucinations : Rev. C. Godfrey — Spontaneous : Prince Victor Duleep Singh, Miss Hurley, Miss Hervey, Frances Reddell — Collective : Dr. W. O. S. and wife — Conclusion . 234-267

Chapter IX. Ghosts

Influence of pre-conceived ideas on the testimony — Collective apparitions, a. Unrecognised : Mrs. E. F. and sister ; curious phantasmagoria : Mrs. Willett, Miss Du Cane ; b. Recognised: Miss Newbold, Mr. and Mrs. J. C, Miss C. N. and others, Mr. and Mrs. Davis — Solitary apparitions, a. Conveying news of

Vlll CON TENTS.

death: Rev. C. Wambey, Miss Kitching, Mrs. C. T. Haly, Miss , Mr. G. King ; Discussion ; b. Conveying other information : Mrs. Green, Col. H

c. Identified subsequently : Mr. Husbands, Mrs. , Mr. Tyre — Discussion — Evidence found inconclusive 268-297

Chapter X. Haunted Houses

Popular idea of a ghost — Six main features — (1) Identity of the figure: Cases i, 2, 3 — (2) Recognition of the figure : Case 4 — (3) Manifestation of purpose : Case 5 — (4) Connection with human remains — or (5) with a tragedy : Cases 6, 7, 8, 9 — (6) Recurrence at fixed dates — The evidence found not to justify hypothesis of post-mortem agency, though presenting certain characteristics which seem to point to telepathic origin ...... 298—335

Chapter XI. Premonitions And Previsions

Large amount of testimony, and widespread belief in the subject — Narratives of two kinds — Symbolic and direct — Discussion of symbolic premonitions — Case 1 — Evidence found to be in many ways defective — Direct premonitions — Fetches — Auditory cases — Visions — Prediction at seances, Case 2 — Dreams : General discussion on dream-evidence — Professor Royce's pseudo-presentiments — Cases 3, 4 — Specimens of dream-evidence in general — Cases 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 — General characteristics of the evidence — Conclusion : That a belief in the possibility of supernormal foreknowledge is not justed 33 6 -374

CONTENTS. ix

Chapter XII. Secondary Consciousness

Mr. Myers's view — Secondary consciousness in normal state — Automatic actions and dreams — Professor Hilprecht's experiences — Induced secondary consciousuess — The hypnotic trance — Madame B. — Relation of the hypnotic to the waking consciousness — Post-hypnotic premises — Mr. Gurney's experiments — Secondary consciousness in pathological cases — Cases of Mr. Joy, Felida X., Ansel Bourne, Lucie, Views held by Myers, Carpenter, Heidenhain, Ribot, Azam, Janet — Discussion . . 375-416

Chapter XIII. Impersonation, Obsession, Clairvoyance

Natural growth of secondary personality in trance — "Adrienne "— " Clelia "— " Dr. Phinuit "— On clairvoyance — Observations by Rev. P. H. Newnham, Miss Busk, Professor C. Richet, Mr. Ankarkrona, Mr. Dobbie, Dr. Ferroul — Spontaneous possession : the case of Lurancy Vennum — Possession in trance — Mrs. Piper — Evidence of Professor W. James, Mr. J. T. Clarke, Prof. Oliver Lodge, Dr. R. Hodgson — Conclusion ....... 417-454

Mex 455

Chapter I. Introductory

WHEN Boswell suggested that second-sight and other mysterious manifestations might be explained by chance-coincidence, Dr. Johnson replied : " Yes, sir ; but they have happened so often that mankind have agreed to think them not fortuitous." This attitude of hospitality towards the marvellous is no doubt less general than in Dr. Johnson's day. Nevertheless there are still to be found a considerable number of persons, many of them qualified by education and experience to judge of the matter, who believe in the occurrence of second sight, clairvoyance, death-wraiths, and kindred phenomena at the present day. So recently as last Christmas a leading London newspaper, in dealing with one of those mysterious outbreaks which are discussed in Chapter V. of the present book, summed up its comments on the case as follows : " The knocks of Edithweston must be added to the already rather long list of noises probably not to be explained until our knowledge of the physical world connects it more closely with the psychical." Indeed, if we exclude those whose training in the physical sciences has given them defined, perhaps too rigidly defined, ideas of the working and limitations of natural forces, the attitude of the educated world in general will be found to have undergone but little alteration since the last century. It is no longer indeed one of active recognition, but it is almost equally far removed, if we may rely on the testimony of newspapers, novels, and our non-scientific literature generally, from contemptuous rejection. It may perhaps be described as a cross-bench mind. And there are many who have exchanged this tolerant scepticism for a definite belief founded, as they aver, on evidence hardly less cogent than that which supports many of the accepted generalisations of physical science. Twenty years ago the number of these believers was much greater and the things which they believed much more difficult of acceptance. The number of avowed Spiritualists in this country and the States at that time might be reckoned probably by tens of thousands : some spiritualistic writers claimed millions. The Theosophists, too, in their heyday formed a body of not inconsiderable proportions. And outside those who were adherents of one or other of these definite creeds, there was a large and growing body of persons who found in the reported marvels of the

seance room, in the tales of ghosts and haunted houses, of clairvoyance, of warning dreams and visions, and not least in the then unfamiliar phenomena of hypnotism, something which they could not explain, or could explain only — ignotum per ignotius — by a reference to "occult" forces.

Now all these beliefs, even in their most grotesque form, were avowedly founded on evidence, and on evidence which in many cases prima facie suggested and warranted the belief. The existence of such rational belief (I use the word without prejudging the value of the reasoning by which the belief was supported), and above all the existence of so large a body of believers, furnished, in the view of those who founded the Society for Psychical Research, sufficient justification for the examination of the marvels reported. For the uncritical rejection of the whole matter, which was the only articulate alternative to an acceptance often equally uncritical, seemed as irrational as it was certainly inconclusive. If the things alleged, or any of them, were true, it was highly important for them to be recognised and incorporated with the organised results of Science. If untrue, it was scarcely less important to inquire how they came to be accepted. The obiter dictum of the one party that the other party were all knaves or fools seemed hardly an adequate account of the matter, seeing that the other party included many persons of unquestioned probity and intelligence and some few men of eminence in various fields of human activity, including even the physical sciences.

Neither category, if we turn to a later date, could seem finely appropriate for such names — of those whom death has removed from our muster roll — as Balfour Stewart, Heinrich Hertz, Edmund Gurney,, or Harvey Goodwin.

It was in the early months of 1882 that the Society for Psychical Research was founded, under the Presidency of Professor H. Sidgwick, 1 with aims which are thus stated in its first manifesto :

It has been widely felt that the present is an opportune time for making an organised and systematic attempt to investigate that large group of debatable phenomena designated by such terms as mesmeric, pyschical, and spiritualistic.

From the recorded testimony of many competent witnesses, past and present, including observations recently made by scientific men of eminence in various countries, there appears to be, amidst much delusion and deception, an important body of remarkable phenomena, which are prima facie inexplicable on any generally recognised hypothesis, and which, if incontestably established, would be of the highest possible value.

The task of examining such residual phenomena has often been undertaken by individual effort, but never hitherto by a scientific society organised on a sufficiently broad basis.

Six Committees were forthwith appointed to take over different parts of the wide field of inquiry, viz. :

1. An examination of the nature and extent of any influence which may be exerted by one mind upon another, apart from any generally recognised mode of perception.

1 The other Presidents of the Society since its foundation to the present time have been Prof. Balfour Stewart, F.R.S. ; the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, M.P., F.R.S. ; Prof. William James (of Harvard), and Mr. William Crookes, F.R.S., and the President for 1896, and for the current year.

IN TROD UCTOR Y. 5

2. The study of hypnotism,' and the forms of so-called mesmeric trance, with its alleged insensibility to pain ; clairvoyance, and other allied phenomena.

3. A critical revision of Reichenbach's researches with certain organisations called " sensitive," and an inquiry whether such organisations possess any power of perception beyond a highly exalted sensibility of the recognised sensory organs.

4. A careful investigation of any reports, resting on strong testimony, regarding apparitions at the moment of death, or otherwise, or regarding disturbances in houses reputed to be haunted.

5. An inquiry into the various physical phenomena commonly called Spiritualistic ; with an attempt to discover their causes and general laws.

6. The collection and collation of existing materials bearing on the history of these subjects.

In the chapters which follow, an attempt will be made to estimate the value of the work done up to the present time by the Society through its Committees, and by individual members, on the several lines of inquiry thus mapped out, and to sketch briefly the conclusions reached or indicated at the present stage.

Before I pass to this detailed examination of the results attained, a few words may fitly be said on the spirit and method of these investigations. We did not, as already said, in undertaking the inquiry assume to express any opinion beforehand on the value of the evidence to be examined. Whatever the private bias of individual members towards belief or disbelief, it cannot fairly be said that any such bias has been allowed to pervert the methods of the inquiry. To ascertain the facts of the case, at whatever cost to established opinions and prejudices, has been the consistent aim of the Society and its workers. If some of our investigations have resulted in the detection of imposture, the discovery of unsuspected fallacies of sense and memory, and the general disintegration of some imposing structures built upon too narrow foundations ; whilst others have revealed the occurrence of phenomena which neither chance nor fraud nor fallacy of sense can plausibly explain, and for which the present scientific synthesis can as yet find no place, it is pertinent to remember that the investigators were in each case the same, the methods pursued were the same, and the object in all cases was simply the discovery of the truth.

There is another not unnatural misconception of the nature of our work. Though fraud, and fraud of a particularly gross kind, is the most active force in producing some of the spurious marvels which have been the subject of our inquiries, yet fraud is on the whole neither the most prolific nor the most dangerous source of error. In our experimental work in thought-transference and the like, we have had mainly to guard against an innocent deception — and the more insidious because innocent, — the subconscious communication of information by indications too subtle to be apprehended by the normal self, but readily seized upon and interpreted by the automatic or somnambulic consciousness. And in that part of our work where experiment is precluded by the nature of the facts, and which has (

IN TRODUC TOR Y. J

consisted, therefore, mainly in obtaining and recording the testimony of others to such spontaneous phenomena as visions and apparitions, the real source of error is again the sub-conscious sophistication of the record owing to the instinctive tendency of the imagination to dramatic unity and completeness. This tendency is examined and illustrated in various parts of the book. 1 It is enough to say here that our researches have led us gradually to attach more and more importance to the effect of time on the value of testimony. Consider, for instance, the narratives of prophetic dreams dealt with in Chapter XL The alleged coincidences — many of them of the most conclusive kind — are not wholly due to chance and probably not in any appreciable degree due to culpable negligence or exaggeration, and still less to conscious bad faith, on the part of those who have supplied us with information, often with considerable expenditure of time and trouble and at the cost of unwelcome publicity. But a careful comparison of the most recent cases with those more remote reveals an ever ascending scale of marvel, and points to a general and hitherto imperfectly appreciated mental tendency, operating with almost the inevitableness of a natural law. There is but one more word to say here. Neither the Society nor any of my colleagues are in any way committed to the views expressed in this book. The reader should on this account pardon a certain apparent egotism in the treatment : the first person

1 See especially Chapters V., IX., X., and XI.

singular has often been chosen deliberately, where custom would have prescribed a less direct form of statement, in order to emphasise this individual responsibility. The book then represents my individual impressions of the results of our fifteen years' work.

More than one view is possible of the general effect of the evidence. To some of my colleagues, it seems to indicate that thought can influence thought, untrammelled by the machinery of sense organs and ethereal undulations ; that the human soul can, while still attached to the body, transcend the limits of space and time and the laws of the physical world ; and can after the death of the body prevail to make its presence known to us here. To my thinking, the evidence is too slender and too ambiguous to bear the weight of such tremendous issues ; and though I hold that there are grounds sufficient to justify telepathy as a working hypothesis, the proof of its transcendental nature is still wanting.

Chapter II. Spiritualism As A Popular Movement

CONCURRENTLY with the immense expansion and development, during the last half century, of our knowledge of the material world, there has come a striking recrudescence in civilised countries of the old-time belief in agencies working outside and beyond physical nature. The modern revival, to go no farther back, may be said to date from the " Rochester knockings," curious raps occurring in the presence of two or three members of the Fox family living in Rochester, New York, in the year 1848. From this small beginning, the occurrence of mysterious raps betraying an intelligent source, and referred by some to the agency of spirits, by others to supernormal powers exercised unconsciously by the " Mediums," and by a few scientific men, who investigated the occurrences at the time, to voluntary " cracking" (z*. e. partial dislocation ) of the knee-joints on the part of the girls concerned, arose the whole movement of Modern Spiritualism.

The phenomena did not stop here. Within the course of the next few years, the press of the world recorded other marvels too numerous to detail.

These may be roughly classified under two main heads, (a) There were first the physical phenomena, such as the raps already mentioned (which shortly became the recognised mode of communication with the " spirits " ) ; movements of furniture and small objects ; playing of musical instruments without apparent contact ; the appearance of so-called " materialised " spirit-forms ; the levitation of the human body ; " apports " of flowers and other trifles into closed rooms ( regarded as proofs of the passage of matter through matter) ; and the handling of live coals and other burning substances with impunity. (J?) The mental phenomena, which occurred chiefly through the agency of the medium when in a condition resembling in many respects the trance of the hypnotised subject. When thus entranced the medium would write or speak words purporting to emanate from an intelligence other than his own. Proofs would thus be given of spirit identity : descriptions of the spirit world ; information on spiritual things ; the inner thoughts of the inquirer would be revealed, or the medium would give particulars of remote events or distant scenes ; and there were occasional excursions into the regions of prophecy, psychometry, and retrocognition, or vision of the past.

So rapidly did the belief in these marvels spread in the United States, that as early as 1854 a petition was presented to Congress, signed by some thirteen thousand persons, praying for the appointment of a scientific commission to investigate the phenomena

SPIRITUALISM AS A POPULAR MOVEMENT. II

" now engrossing so large a share of the public attention " and ''likely to produce important and lasting results permanently affecting the physical condition, mental development, and moral character of a large number of the American people." The petition was ordered to be laid upon the table, and no action was taken. The movement soon spread to Europe. Early in the 'fifties Mrs. Hayden, Daniel Dunglas Home, and other mediums came to this country from America. Shortly after, centres of propagandism grew up here, native-born mediums appeared on the scene, and journals devoted to the subject came into existence. Some twenty-five years later, in 1887, there were about one hundred newspapers dealing with the philosophy and phenomena of Spiritualism ; of these about thirty were published in English (the majority of them circulating in the United States), and nearly forty in Spanish.

Shortly before the time that Spiritualism as thus described was spreading over the civilised world, two or three English medical men — Braid in Manchester, Esdaile in Calcutta, Elliotson and others in London — had been investigating the phenomena of hypnotism, or, as it was then more commonly styled, mesmerism. The important discovery, however, of chloroform as an anaesthetic in 1847, an< ^ its rapidly increasing usefulness, drew away the attention of the medical world from the remarkable results achieved, by Esdaile especially, in the performance of surgical operations under "mesmeric"

anaesthesia ; whilst the extravagances of the more ignorant practitioners of the art brought the whole subject into disrepute ; until some fifteen or twenty years later the work of Liebeault and Bernheim at Nancy, of Charcot at the Salpetriere, and sporadic inquiries like those of Heidenhain at Breslau, again called the attention of the scientific world to the matter.

The Spiritualists for their part gladly adopted as their own a subject which was thus contemptuously rejected by medical men. They found, not unreasonably, in the phenomena of the hypnotic trance much to support and illustrate their own views of the spontaneous mediumistic trance ; and, less reasonably, in the process of hypnotic healing proof of spirit intervention. Again, the numerous stories of the Double, or Doppelganger ; of apparitions at the time of death, and of strange things seen and heard in "haunted houses," which had for many centuries received an intermittent and Nicodemuslike belief not amongst the unlearned alone, were all pressed into the service of the new faith. The Spiritualist even found support and corroboration of his belief in the records of mediaeval witchcraft and the traditions of ancient magic.

Meanwhile the alleged physical phenomena of Spiritualism naturally attracted from time to time the notice of men of science. Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, Mr. Cromwell Varley, Dr. Huggins> and other competent persons published accounts of remarkable manifestations witnessed by themselves.

A Committee, which included many well-known doctors and barristers, was appointed by the London Dialectical Society in 1869, for the purpose of investigating the subject. The Committee reported in 1870 to the effect that, in addition to taking a great deal of oral and written evidence on the subject, they had formed themselves into sub-committees for the purpose of practical investigation, and that a large majority of the members had themselves witnessed " several phases of the phenomena without the aid or presence of any professional medium." The Committee concluded that, "taking into consideration the high character and great intelligence of many of the witnesses to the more extraordinary facts, the extent to which their testimony is supported by the reports of the sub-committees, and the absence of any proof of imposture or delusion as regards a large portion of the phenomena ; and further, having regard to the exceptional character of the phenomena, the large number of persons in every grade of society and over the whole civilised world who are more or less influenced by a belief in their supernatural origin, and to the fact that no philosophical explanation of them has yet been arrived at, they deem it incumbent upon them to state their conviction that the subject is worthy of more serious attention and careful investigation than it has hitherto received." * Mr. Crookes during the years 1870-74 conducted various investigations with Miss Cook, D. D. Home,

1 Report en Spiritualism, London, 1871, Longmans, pp. 5, 6.

and others, some of the results of which were published at the time in the Quarterly Journal of Science and elsewhere, and subsequently in a collected form under the title Researches in Spiritualism. x Mr. Crookes testifies to having witnessed, amongst other phenomena, the occurrence of inexplicable sounds ; the alteration of the weight of bodies ; the movement of chairs, tables and other heavy objects, and the playing of musical instruments without contact or connection of any kind ; the levitation of human beings ; the appearance of strange luminous substances ; the appearance of hands apparently not attached to any body ; writing not produced by human agency ; the appearance of a materialised spirit-form, of which he succeeded in obtaining photographs.

Professor W. F. Barrett, at the meeting of the British Association, at Glasgow, in 1876, read a paper on " Some Phenomena Associated with Abnormal Conditions of Mind." In this paper he described, amongst other phenomena which he had himself witnessed, the occurrence in broad daylight of raps and other sounds exhibiting intelligence, in the presence of a young child, and under circumstances which seemed to put trickery out of the question. The paper provoked a good deal of discussion at the time, and the popular interest in it was heightened by the fact that a few days later there appeared in the Times a letter signed by Professor Ray Lankester and Dr. H. B. Donkin,

London, J. Burns, 1875.

giving an account of two visits which they had paid to the medium Slade, whose performances had been referred to at the British Association meeting. They claimed to have detected Slade in writing on the slate, at a time when he supposed himself secure from observation, a message which purported to come from the spirit world.

Again, in 1877-78, J. C. F. Zollner, Professor of Astronomy at Leipsic, held several sittings with this same medium, Slade, for the purpose of investigating the phenomena. At some of these sittings, Zollner was assisted by his colleagues of the same university, Professors Scheibner and Fechner, and by the veteran Professor Wilhelm P. Weber. Amongst the chief phenomena which Professor Zollner claims to have witnessed, were the following : Writing was produced on slates without the agency of anyone present. Coins, unknown to anyone present and enclosed in a securely fastened box, were correctly described ; the same coins were subsequently extracted from the box and bits of slate-pencil substituted, the fastenings of the box remaining intact. Knots were tied in an endless cord, i. e. knots, such as would in normal circumstances have required the end of the cord to be passed through the loop of the knot, were tied when the free ends were sealed together and under observation throughout the experiment. A small table disappeared and as suddenly re-appeared in broad daylight. Abnormal lights and abnormal shadows were observed. In these phenomena, or some of them, Zollner found experimental confirmation of his hypothesis of a fourth dimension of space, — a dimension which should stand to the known dimensions of cubic space, height, length, and breadth, in the same relation which height now bears to the two dimensions of plane space. Given the fourth dimension, the existence of which is mathematically foreshadowed, Zollner pointed out that, to a man or a spirit endowed with the capacity of dealing with it, the abstraction of objects from a closed box, the knotting of an endless cord, or the removal into invisibility of a solid object would be tasks of no special difficulty. 1

Of investigators without special training, but possessed of education, literary faculty, and general ability, two deserve special mention, — Mr. Stainton Moses and Serjeant Cox. Writing under the pseudonym of M. A. Oxon, Mr. Moses, himself a medium of very remarkable powers, has published accounts of numerous manifestations occurring in his presence, attested sometimes by himself, more frequently, when he himself was entranced and unconscious, by a circle of intimate friends. These phenomena ranged from the occurrence of raps, musical sounds, and curious lights, to the movement of objects of furniture and " levitation " of the medium himself, the "materialisation" of liquid scent and of jewels, and the introduction of solid objects

1 See Transcendental Physics, an abridged translation by C. C. Massey, London, 1880.

The idea of space of various dimensions has been well worked out in an amusing little book called Flat land, published by Seeley & Co. in 1884.

SPIRITUALISM AS A POPULAR MOVEMENT. I J

into a closed room. On the mental side they included much inspirational ( automatic ) writing, some evidence of thought-transference and clairvoyance, and communications which, purporting to come from deceased persons, furnished many and striking proofs of the genuineness of their claims. 1

In 1875 there was founded in London, under the presidency of the late Serjeant Cox, the Psychological Society, " for the promotion of Psychological Science in all its branches. Its object the investigation of all the forces, organic and intelligent, that move and direct the material mechanism of man," As a matter of fact, the main subjects of the Society's investigations at its periodical meetings were the physical phenomena of Spiritualism, ghosts, clairvoyance, and kindred subjects. Serjeant Cox himself was a witness to many of the marvels produced by D. D. Home, and other members of the Society added their quota of wonders. But the chief interest of Serjeant Cox's work lay in his attempt to give articulate expression to the current metaphysics of the Spiritualists, and at the same time to explain the phenomena, without having recourse to disembodied spirits, by means of a force latent in the human organism.