fess 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.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

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

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The "Will Board" _Frontispiece_

PAGE
FACING
1. "Psychic Photograph" 158

2. "Psychic Photograph" 158

3. "Thought Photograph" 17