The most obvious particular wisdom of the present scientific period is undoubtedly just that concept denoted by the title of this volume, continuity. And this wisdom is advanced wisdom and, withal, wisdom which is very expedient and even indispensable at this day, as a reaction required to set right the over-specialization of recent minds thoughtful only of some little branch of knowledge. Just in proportion as one esteems "authority" will one give heed to the pronouncement of the presidential address before the British Association, yet for its own intrinsic sake it is a piece of work which cannot be ignored.
Interesting and revolutionary as are the recent additions to philosophical physics brought about by the discovery of radium and its like, it is the other phase of this great physicist's mental trend which particularly interests the student of human behavior— that wisdom which gives him (as it gave William James, and for a like reason), the bravery to look a bit beyond the more or less materialistic confines of mere science into the broader realm. And strange, is it not, that a man NEED be brave in this twentieth century Domini to discuss spiritism and survival and telepathy? Only those do it who cannot "lose their jobs." Can one indeed honestly doubt that many an intelligent psychologist to-day is kept from investigating this pressing phase of knowledge largely, or even solely, by the materialistic incubus whose continuance still stands for an academic salary usually sufficient to buy wife and children bread, if not a little meat?
"Material bodies are all that we have any control over, are all that we are experimentally aware of; anything that we can do with these is open to us; any conclusions we can draw about them may be legitimate and true. But to step outside their province and to deny the existence of any other region because we have no sense-organs for its appreciation, or because (like the ether) it is too uniformly omnipresent for our ken, is to wrest our advantages and privileges from their proper use and apply them to our own misdirection." . . . "I am one of those who think that the methods of science are not so limited in their scope as has been thought: that they can be applied much more widely, and that the psychic region can be studied and brought under law too. Allow us anyhow to make the attempt. Give us a fair field. Let those who prefer the materialistic hypothesis by all means develop their thesis as far as they can; but let us try what we can do in the psychical region, and see which wins. Our methods are really the same as theirs—the subject-matter differs. Neither should abuse the other for making the attempt."
Here is this matter in a nutshell, and the evolution of cosmology in the last few years makes this argument and this plea greatly more persuasive still, for it forges one more link in the actual knowledge of continuity.
Twenty-four pages of useful, explanatory notes follow in this volume, the text of the Address. The book lacks an index. To those sapient ones who have not already saved the important little work out of Science, the dollar which this volume costs is a dollar well-spent, unless, indeed, philosophy be to him but a reproach. GEORGE V. N. DEARBORN. Tufts Medical and Dental Schools.
ADVENTURINGS IN THE PSYCHICAL. By H. Addington Bruce. Little, Brown & Co., 1914.
Professor Flournoy, in the Preface to his Spiritism and Psychology, made the remark: "It will be a great day when the subliminal psychology of Myers and his followers, and the abnormal psychology of Freud and his school, succeed in meeting, and will supplement and complete one another. That will be a great forward step in science and in the understanding of our nature." (Page VI.)
Any one who attacks the problem from this standpoint, in the right manner, is to be commended; and this is, very largely, the method of attack taken by a certain group of "psychical researches"; it is also the method of approach of Mr. Bruce, in the book under review. Although it will probably contain but little new to the student of abnormal psychology, it is, nevertheless, a welcome and extremely sane presentation of the problems discussed; while, for the general public, the effect of the book cannot be other than beneficial,— giving a sound and scientific view-point of many of these obscure and outlying problems.
Much of this book will be familiar to readers of the JOURNAL. The chapters on the "Subconscious" (extended and amplified in his final chapter on "The Larger Self"), "Dissociation and Disease," and "The Singular Case of B. C. A.," contain a summary of material long familiar to general psychological students—though this data has not been sufficiently popularized as yet,—while the case of B. C. A. is a relief after the oft-quoted earlier cases!
The first chapter, "Ghosts and their Meaning," deals with apparitions of the living, of the dying, and of the dead—according to the tentative arrangement of these cases made by the English S. P. R. Most of these are quoted from the Society's Proceedings, and the usual theories are offered to account for them; in the case of apparitions of the dead, e. g., "ghosts," the theory of deferred telepathic suggestion being held. This brings us naturally to the second chapter, "Why I believe in Telepathy," which again contains a summary of much of the S. P. R. work in this field; accompanied, however, by some other cases and a few interesting incidents which fell under the author's personal observation. The next two chapters deal with "Clairvoyance and Crystal Gazing" and "Automatic Speaking and Writing" respectively. Here, again, the bulk of the material is familiar to psychical and psychological students; though it must be admitted that this material is all excellently and carefully summarized. The author's attitude, throughout, is strictly critical and scientific; and while he believes in telepathy and other supernormal powers, he rejects spiritism as an explanation, and his views throughout are temperate and modest.