r all decided, it is the mystics who have
usually proved to be right about the _facts_, while the scientifics had
the better of it in respect to the theories. The most recent and
flagrant example of this is 'animal magnetism,' whose facts were
stoutly dismissed as a pack of lies by academic medical science the
world over, until the non-mystical theory of 'hypnotic suggestion' was
found for them,--when they were admitted to be so excessively and
dangerously common that special penal laws, forsooth, must be passed to
keep all persons unequipped with medical diplomas from taking part in
their production. Just so stigmatizations, invulnerabilities,
instantaneous cures, inspired discourses, and demoniacal possessions,
the records of which were shelved in our libraries but yesterday in the
alcove headed 'superstitions,' now, under the brand-new title of 'cases
of hystero-epilepsy,' are republished, reobserved, and reported with an
even too credulous avidity.

Repugnant as the mystical style of philosophizing maybe (especially
when self-complacent), there is no sort of doubt that it goes with a
gift for meeting with certain kinds of phenomenal experience. The
writer of these pages has been forced in the past few years to this
admission; and he now believes that he who will pay attention to facts
of the sort dear to mystics, {303} while reflecting upon them in
academic-scientific ways, will be in the best possible position to help
philosophy. It is a circumstance of good augury that certain
scientifically trained minds in all countries seem drifting to the same
conclusion. The Society for Psychical Research has been one means of
bringing science and the occult together in England and America; and
believing that this Society fulfils a function which, though limited,
is destined to be not unimportant in the organization of human
knowledge, I am glad to give a brief account of it to the uninstructed
reader.

According to the newspaper and drawing-room myth, soft-headedness and
idiotic credulity are the bond of sympathy in this Society, and general
wonder-sickness its dynamic principle. A glance at the membership
fails, however, to corroborate this view. The president is Prof. Henry
Sidgwick,[2] known by his other deeds as the most incorrigibly and
exasperatingly critical and sceptical mind in England. The hard-headed
Arthur Balfour is one vice-president, and the hard-headed Prof. J. P.
Langley, secretary of the Smithsoni