This attitude of the scientific world toward these problematical occurrences is quite comprehensible. Throughout the nineteenth century the attention of scientists has been almost wholly directed toward the investigation of the forms and forces of matter, the phenomena and principles of the visible universe. In this they entered, at the opening of the century, upon an almost virgin field, which they have wrought with great diligence and with remarkable results. It is very possible, however, that in the twentieth century no such undivided allegiance will be given to the phenomena of matter, but that the attention of scientists will be largely diverted from the physical to the psychical field of investigation, which may prove to be a far broader and more intricate domain than we now have any conception of.
Psychical phenomena have attracted some attention during the recent century. One by one the problems of hypnotism, unconscious cerebration, double consciousness, telepathy, spiritism, and the like, all at first set down as unworthy of consideration, have forced themselves upon the attention of observers, and each of them has been found to present conditions amply worthy of investigation. This work has hitherto been performed by occasional individuals, but the number of workers in experimental psychics is steadily increasing, and their domain of research broadening, and we may reasonably look forward to results approaching, perhaps exceeding, in interest those reached in material investigation.
There is a whole world before us, that of the mind and its phenomena, fully equal in interest and importance to the world of matter, and presenting as numerous and difficult problems. Hitherto it has largely been dealt with from the ideal or metaphysical standpoint; only recently has it been subjected to physical analysis, and already with striking results. During the century before us it is likely to attract a wide and active circle of investigators, with what results it is impossible to predict. This is the only way in which the problem of the existence or non-existence of a spiritual life can be solved to the satisfaction of those of a scientific turn of mind, and this solution must be left to the future to attain.
In the present work we are concerned with man's past rather than his future. It is what man has come from, not what he is going to, that forms the subject of our inquiries. We have been led into these remarks simply as an outcome of a brief consideration of man's relations to the spiritual element of the universe, and may close our work with the suggestion that the problem of human evolution may be immensely greater than that involved in the study of the ancestry of man.
THE DAWN OF REASON Or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals
By JAMES WEIR, Jr., M.D.
Author of "The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire" etc.
16mo. Cloth. $1.25