a matter of congratulation to have
been so soon delivered from what Dr. Lloyd Tuckey has well called "a mass
of superincumbent rubbish."'[18] Clairvoyance is part of a mass of
rubbish, on page 57. On page 67, Mr. Vincent says: 'There are many
interesting questions, such as telepathy, thought-reading, clairvoyance,
upon which it would be perhaps rash to give any decided opinion.... All
these strange psychical conditions present problems of great interest,'
and are only omitted because 'they have not a sufficient bearing on the
normal states of hypnosis....' Thus what was 'rubbish' in one page
'presents problems of great interest' ten pages later, and, after offering
a decided opinion that clairvoyance is rubbish, Mr. Vincent thinks it rash
to give any decided opinion. It is rather rash to give a decided opinion,
and then to say that it is rash to do so.[19]

This brief sketch shows that science is confronted by certain facts,
which, in his time, Hume dismissed as incredible miracles, beneath the
contempt of the wise and learned. We also see that the stranger and rarer
phenomena which Hegel accepted as facts, and interwove with his general
philosophy, are still matters of dispute. Admitted by some men of science,
they are doubted by others; by others, again, are denied, while most of
the journalists and authors of cheap primers, who inspire popular
tradition, regard the phenomena as frauds or fables of superstition. But
it is plain that these phenomena, like the more ordinary facts of
hypnotism, _may_ finally be admitted by science. The scientific world
laughed, not so long ago, at Ogham inscriptions, meteorites, and at
palaeolithic weapons as impostures, or freaks of nature. Now nobody has
any doubt on these matters, and clairvoyance, thought-transference, and
telepathy may, not inconceivably, be as fortunate in the long run as
meteorites, or as the more usual phenomena of hypnotism.

It is only Lord Kelvin who now maintains, or lately maintained, that in
hypnotism there is nothing at all but fraud and malobservation. In years
to come it may be that only some similar belated voice will cry that in
thought-transference there is nothing but malobservation and fraud. At
present the serious attention and careful experiment needed for the
establishment of the facts are more common among French than among English
men of science. When published, these experiments, if they contain any
affirmative instances, are denounced as 'su