A word, finally, as to the necessarily slow progress which has been and is being made in the study of "psychics." As this objection is often raised, I cannot do better, perhaps, than to quote an admirable passage from Prof. William James (Memories and Studies, pp. 175-76), where he says:—
"For twenty-five years I have been in touch with the literature of psychical research, and have had acquaintance with numerous 'researchers.' I have also spent a good many hours (though far fewer than I should have spent) in witnessing (or trying to witness) phenomena. Yet I am theoretically no 'further' than I was at the beginning; and I confess that at times I have been tempted to believe that the Creator has eternally intended this department of nature to remain baffling,—to prompt our curiosities and hopes and suspicions all in equal measure, so that, although ghosts and clairvoyances, and raps and messages from spirits, are always seeming to exist and can never be fully explained away, they also can never be susceptible of full corroboration.... It is hard to believe, however, that the Creator has really put any big array of phenomena into the world merely to defy and mock our scientific tendencies; so my deeper belief is that we psychical researchers have been too precipitate in our hopes, and that we must expect to mark progress not by quarter-centuries, but by half-centuries or whole centuries."
In the present book, I have endeavoured to show why this must necessarily be so; also to indicate the manner in which the subject may be studied in order to arrive at definite knowledge at an earlier date than might otherwise be possible.
H. C.
| Preface | [v] | |
| I | Is Psychical Research a Science? | [1] |
| II | Investigating Psychical Phenomena with Scientific Instruments | [82] |
| III | Life: and Its Interpretation | [93] |
| IV | The Human Will Is a Physical Energy (An Instrument which Proves It) | [110] |
| V | Modern Dissection of the Human Mind | [138] |
| VI | Psychic Photography (New Experiments) | [157] |
| VII | Hallucination and the Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism | [188] |
| VIII | The Problems of Telepathy | [210] |
| IX | The Uses and Abuses of Mind Cure | [237] |
| X | The Psychology of the Ouija Board | [247] |
| XI | Witchcraft: Its Facts and Follies | [261] |
| XII | Scientific Truths Contained in Fairy Stories | [277] |