Psychic phenomena

PSYCHIC PHENOMENA A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE PHYSICAL MANIFESTATIONS OBSERVED IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH WITH FACSIMILE ILLUSTRATIONS OF THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE DRAWINGS AND AUTOMATIC WRITING BY EDWARD T. BENNETT ASSISTANT-SECRETARY TO THE SOCIETY OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH, 1882-1902 WITH A FOREWORD BY SIR OLIVER LODGE NEW YORK BRENTANO'S MCMIX
The writer desires to express his sincere thanks to the Council of the Society for Psychical Research for the permission given to make extracts from the Proceedings of the Society, from the privately printed Journal , and from Phantasms of the Living ; and for allowing the reproduction of a series of Thought-Transference Drawings. Also best thanks are due to Mrs. Myers, and to Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co., for permission to make quotations from Mr. F. W. H. Myers' great work, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death. Also to Mr. J. Burns and his brother, for freely granting permission for any use to be made of the James Burns 1873 Edition of the Report of the Committee of the Dialectical Society.
E. T. B.
Consulted by the publishers as to the production of a small popular text-book, which should constitute a summary indication of the nature of the evidence for ultra-normal physical or meta-psychical phenomena, I suggested Mr. E. T. Bennett as the right man for the task. I have now seen the proof sheets, and—without making myself in any way responsible for details—perceive that he has done the work well, and has presented a satisfactory outline of the testimony for whatever it may be worth. Concerning its value I will only say that to my mind there comes a stage at which belief in gratuitous invention and false statement becomes forced and irrational. With most of the evidence here adduced I have of course been familiar for years, in its original sources, and am well aware of the extreme difficulty or impossibility of understanding some of the alleged facts in any physical or physiological sense; nevertheless if I am asked whether such impressions can be actually received and honestly recorded by sane people, and whether I recommend experiment by careful and competent and unsuperstitious observers as if a primâ facie case had been made out—that is to say, as if some of these unusual and hitherto quite unexplained occurrences might possibly turn out to be true—having laws of their own and constituting an unopened chapter of science, or rather a new science, uniting characteristics from physical, chemical, physiological, and psychological sciences, and throwing new light on the connection between mind and matter—then, though doubtless the answer will be received with scorn, I answer unhesitatingly yes.